Review

Author(s): L. Fisher
Review by: L. Fisher
Source: The Economic Journal, Vol. 13, No. 49 (Mar., 1903), pp. 85-86
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Royal Economic Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2956873
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 HOWARD: GARDEN CITIES OF TO-MORROW 85

Garden Cities of To-mnorrow. By EBENEZER HOWARD. Is. 6d.

net. (Swan Sonnenschein. 1902.) Prospectus of the
Garden City Co., Ltd. Garden City Association, 77 Chancery
Lane. July, 1902.

IF, as Mr. H. G. Wells and others assure us, the next generation will
live almost entirely in towns, and scarcely at all in the country-as
we understand country life-how can the conditions of this city life
best be rendered healthy and possible? At present we have a constant
flow of people into the big towns, and an equally constant repetition
of the complaint that there is no room for them when they get there.
Consequently buildings have been crowded on to every available space.
and people crowded into every available building, in a manner quite
incompatible with healthy and wholesome living. Many are the
remedies which have been suggested for this evil, but it is difficult to
see how any of them can prove itself completely adequate. Municipal
housing, the favourite panacea of to-day, may improve the conditions
of- those who become tenants of the local authority, but does not do
away with the essential difficulty, that the greater the number of
people who want to live in any given place, the more valuable that
place will become, and the higher, consequently, will be the
price of the houses built upon it. Improved means of transit should
do much, some alteration in the system of land taxation may help.
Mr. Ebenezer Howard's scheme, however, has one great attraction
when compared with all the other schemes, in that it attacks the
difficulty at the root, and to a great extent follows the lines indicated
by economic tendencies, instead of going in an entirely opposite
direction.
It is, briefly, as follows: Instead of trying to solve the housing
problem b,y buying at a very high price slums situated on land
which is made more expensive by the competition of those who want
it for warehouses and similar purposes with those who want it for
living on, by then demolishing insanitary houses and rebuilding new
ones, all on these very expensive sites, so that the whole operation is
excessively costly-instead of this plan, Mr. Howard would go straight
into the country, where land is cheap, choose a suitable area, and
build a brand new town. Besides the cheapness of the site, this
scheme would have other advantages. The new town would grow up
on an ordered plan, which would forbid blind alleys, closed courts, and
the other horrors of old cities, and would provide amply for open
spaces and recreation ground. Thus the " Garden City" would be
superior to any ordinary suburban building, where houses and streets
grow up in the fashion best suited to the builders' convenience, a
fashion which is seldom satisfactory to any one else. The site of the
Garden City would belong to the community which inhabit it. There-
fore the town would, Mr. Howard thinks, be able to raise its revenue
from rents, and do without rates. This would be one of the attrac-

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 86 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL

tions upon which he relies to induce manufacturers to transfer their

works from expensive urban sites to the Garden City. The town is to
be limited in size, but its transit arrangements, planned beforehand,
are to be excellent. It will have round it an agricultural area, which
will help to supply it with food, and will afford a market for its manu-
factures. If it succeeds, other Garden Cities, each properly planned
and each surrounded by open country, can grow up, and can be con-
nected with the original one, and presumably with older towns, by
railways.
By this plan, Mr. Howard hopes not only to create a model city,
but by attracting manufacturers and others, to diminish the com-
petition for land in older towns and thus, indirectly, to ,solve their
housing problems, to make it possible for town dwellers to grow up
healthy and strong, to avoid excessive rents, in short, to solve, or
help to solve, all the complicated evils spoken of generally and
vaguely as the housing question.
The difficulties are fairly obvious. Will manufacturers move into
the new city? Can a city be created, so to speak, artificially ? If it
is created, can it succeed? Will others, besides the manufacturers-
if they come-and their workmen go and live there ? If not, a purely
workman's city will grow up, and every social reformer will probably
agree that this is not desirable. We own to some doubt of
Mr. Howard's elaborate financial schemes. His dissertations on capital
are confused. There are minor difficulties. He can provide against
overcrowding of houses on land, but not against overcrowding of
people in houses.
Nevertheless, the scheme seems to us worthy of every encourage-
ment(, and we are glad to learn that the preliminary garden city com-
pany is proving successful, and has, we understand, obtained sufficient
capital to begin operations. Even if Mr. Howard's own plap, with all
its elaborate details, is not carried out, his work must pave the way to
better things. His little book, though not very well written and
occasionally somewhat confused, is stimulating and interesting, and be
deserves the highest praise for his energy and zeal. L. FISHER

Depositenbanken ubnd Spekullationsbanken. A comparison between

German and English Banking. By Dr. jur. et phil. ADOLF
WEBER. (Leipzig: Dunclier & Humblot. 1902.)

WITH the object of this book a good deal of sympathy may be

expressed. It evidently is directed against fresh legislation in
Germany, which, conceived as it would be in semi-panic consequent
on the recent banking suspensions in Saxony, could not but hamper
legitimate enterprise. The proposals for new restrictive banking
legislation in Germany, some of which emanated from quite respect-
able quarters, were mostly very puerile, the children of doctrinaire

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