The Transit Problem and the Working Man

Author(s): Ebenezer Howard

Source: The Town Planning Review, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Jul., 1913), pp. 127-132
Published by: Liverpool University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40100778
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 THE TRANSIT PROBLEM AND THE
WORKING MAN
It is difficult to imagine any greater or more beneficent changes in t
social life of our people than would take place if, owing to the slow or sw
coming into practical use of some new invention or of new social' a
industrial arrangements, it should, for the great majority of the worke
become easily possible (and of course, when the good time comes,
except the children, the sick, and the infirm, will wish to be workers) t
within a few minutes of laying down tool, or pen, or brush, or other instru
ment by which he gained his livelihood, or added to the wealth of the world
he should be at mid-day, and again at eve, within the pleasant walls
his own home, partaking with his family of a quiet meal, or playin
chatting, reading, or working with wife or children in the garden, in t
fields or play-room.
It has been truly said by many writers that it is doubtful whether al
the wonderful inventions of the past century have really lightened the t
of the workers ; and it might with equal truth be said - indeed it is perh
but another way of saying the same thing - that it is doubtful whether
the improvements that have been made iir locomotion during the p
80 years have brought working life in point of time one minute nearer
home life than it was before, or have done anything to strengthen tho
family ties which represent the most lasting elements of strength and
wealth of any nation.
The reason for these disappointing results is not far to seek. It is in
both cases essentially the same. It is because immediate and mater
results have been the chief end sought ; because the more vital and essen
tial things - such as human fellowship and truth and justice - have bee
forgotten in the mad rush for material wealth - forgotten, too, the qui
elementary truth, that all material enjoyments, if they are to be real
permanent, must be for ever under the control and guidance of ma
higher and more spiritual nature.
Consider, for example, the question of the cost of transporting goo
from the factory to the point of use or consumption, or to the port wh
they are to be placed f.o.b. That cost is everywhere recognised as
charge on industry - a charge which has to be borne by the industry itse
Therefore, the manufacturer who is about to set up a factory will reg
the cost of transit, if the goods he produces are heavy in relation to the
value, as probably even more important than the rent or capital cost o
the site for such factory, or even than the rates which he will have to pay t
local authorities. But, though the annual cost in time and in money

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128 THE TOWN PLANNING REVIEW

and in loss of vital energy of the transportation of lab

home will probably be far greater in the aggregate th
transporting goods produced by those workers from f
this heavier cost the proprietor of the factory will ha
Why is this ? It is because the cost of carrying the
need not be directly thrown upon the industry itself,
measure borne by other shoulders. Therefore, that co
more to drop out of the calculations of the factory
practical interest in his workers too often ceases when
tory gates. This fact, coupled with the fact that the w
seek to get lodging in an area where rents are as low
an ever-increasing tendency for factory and home to
further apart ; while the cost of getting to and from
accompanying injury.which must tend to follow from
stuffy, over-crowded railway carriages or cars, tends
thrown upon the workers ; or where, as in some case
pelled by statute to run workmen's trains under actua
the cost of transport is thrown upon the shareholders
will, if possible, shift that burden on to the backs of
quickly lose sight of it among its many other burdens
only as part of an intolerable mass.
Now, the chief and indeed the only remedy for th
working life and home life, will be found in a wider ou
a fixed determination to put first things first, assur
things, such as wealth-getting, will not suffer, but w
essential things like health-gaining and loving joyous
put first.
Now, the Town Planner should have something to say and to do in
reference to this problem. He is, from the very nature of his calling,
presumably a man who takes, not a narrow, personal, profit-making view of
things, but looks upon the welfare of the town, with the planning of which he
is concerned, as a whole - as a living entity - and he will therefore regard
the question of nearness of home to work, with all the essential economies
and all the social advantages and benefits this nearness may represent,
as of even greater importance than the cost of transit from factory to
consumer of the goods produced. He will, therefore, direct no small part
of his energy, skill and persuasive powers to bringing about this result -
that the dwellers in the towns may, if they wish, live near their work
and near their play, a result which can be obtained not only without
adding one farthing to the average cost of transportation of the products
of the factory, or workshop, but in such a way as to reduce that and other
working expenses.

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 THE TRANSIT PROBLEM AND THE WORKING MAN 129

Something more than Town Planning, as ordinarily understood, will,

however, be needed for the complete solution of this problem of sufficien
nearness - not too close a proximity - of home life and working life, and
for the solution of the many other problems which will quite naturally
come up for solution at the same time. I say that something more than
Town Planning is needed, because, after all, the Town Planner may be in
his professional life a mere local patriot, employed by local patriots who
are filled with those jealousies and pettinesses which are ever to be foun
in men whose thought realm has too narrow boundaries. What is needed
is a statesmanlike survey of the whole country with a view to the develop-
ment of its resources for the benefit of all the people. Nothing shor
of this will suffice, and it is high time that our Town Planners recognised
that very simple, but most pregnant fact ; and, so far, I have seen but
rare and scant recognition of it.
Let me, however, give extracts from three writers who seem to have
had this conception in their minds. Captain Swinton, late deputy chair-
man of the London County Council, and now on the Town
Planning Commission of Delhi, has written a pamphlet entitled, " Spread
the People." In this he says : " The trouble is not a growth of one year,
or 10 years. For the last 50 years there has been a pronounced and quite
understandable tendency in the one direction - a drag into the towns
To a great extent this was due to the enterprise of the railways, which ha
added vastly to our comfort and to the national wealth ; but we want th
people who are public spirited to turn over in their minds whether it is no
now time that an equally definite tendency in the reverse direction should
be encouraged, and if so, how ? We want them to sink * Party,' and help ;
because spreading the people and giving them a stake in the country i
the greatest need of the hour. The knowledge of this is only coming now
by degrees. It is not that our eyes have been opened by the cry that men
are hungering after land ; it is because it is being borne in upon us that,
whether they hunger or not, they ought to hunger ; they should be tempt
ed to, made to ; that the well-being of the race demands it. In spite of the
general advance in wealth, we are failing to cope with the pauperisation
of the poor. It is a malignant, cancerous growth. Even if serious trouble
is not actually upon us, we can see it ahead of us, and we should take
action betimes

problem of a congested population. That d

For that, we must decentralise. We must se
If we are to tackle successfully the troubl
Law Eeport, if we are to get at the root of th
above all, if we want to make men free of t
which is needed"

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130 THE TOWN PLANNING REVIEW

" We see trouble ahead of us, and the great cities,

are the danger points. In their interests, and in the i
something must be done. We must spread the people
or abroad. Let us try home first. It will not be easy,
come quickly. Encouragement, enterprise, and
needed ; above all, that without which no movement
the driving power of public opinion. The time for sit
hailds is past ; the machinery is set up, let us use it to
Next let me quote a passage from Edward Bella
under the heading of, " What became of the great c
" The only way in which the vast populations of th
crowded into spaces so small was by packing them li
ment houses. As soon as it was settled that everybod
with really good habitations, it followed that t
the greater part of their population. These had t
dwellings in the country. Of course, so vast a work
plished instantly, but it proceeded with all possib
to the exodus of people from the cities, because ther
them to live decently, there was also a great outflow
there had ceased to be any economic advantages in
tracted by the natural charms of the country ; so tha
that it was one of the great tasks of the first decade
to provide homes elsewhere for those who desired
The tendency country ward continued until, the cities
of their excess of people, it was possible to make rad
arrangements. A large proportion of the old buil
unsightly, lofty, and inartistic ones, were cleared awa
structures of the low, broad, roomy style adapted
living. Parks, gardens, and roomy spaces were multip
and the system of transit so modified as to get rid of
and finally, in a word, the city of your day was chan
city. Having thus been made as pleasant places to
country itself, the outflow of population from the c
equilibrium became established."
My third extract is from a leading article in the T
17th, 1908, under the title of " Civilisation and Tr
" Any mechanical tendency to diffuse population w
the instincts and desires of the population itself. It i
now are apt to prefer the excitement of the town to
country. But the country has been made dull by
great towns and the concentration of all life into th
tration ceased, if there were more numerous and sma

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 THE TRANSIT PROBLEM AND THE WORKING MAN 131

provincial stagnation, the country would lose its dullness and huge c
would lose their attraction. Already there is a conscious effort towar
diffusion, helped even now by the most modern improvements in tr
port, and already the size of our greatest towns is becoming a ser
material disadvantage to their inhabitants. The amount of time
energy and money wasted every day in getting about London and in
and out of it, is so enormous, that if there is much further increase in th
waste it will go far to nullify even the present advantages of concentratio
Those advantages are all material. Our spiritual instincts revolt ag
them, and their revolt grows stronger every day. Every further adv
in transport will help that revolt ; and perhaps some of us will live to
the decline of London brought about by a great ring of subsidiary to
each getting its first impulse of life from the metropolis and each gro
daily into greater independence and keener competition with it. Thu
may be that all the conditions of our life will be swiftly altered again
for the better. But the improvement will be great only if we h
learned the lesson of the past and refuse to be taken by surprise yet a
Little towns can be as squalid as big ones, as any one can see in Yorks
and Lancashire and the Black Country. A mere diffusion of Lon
slums will not help us. We must be ready with our ideal of the s
town of the future, and we must have the determination to make th
ideal come true. For civilisation consists not in the perfecting of
kind of machinery, but in the use of machinery as of everything else
the realisation of ideals. Without ideals there can be no civilisation, a
it is owing to the lack of them that machinery has so often produced
barbarism in the past."
The promoters of the Garden City at Letchworth are seeking to m
it such " an ideal of the small town of the future " as the Times leader-
writer refers to. There the workers, to the utmost extent that our finan-
cial resources have enabled us to go, have housed the workers in garden-
surrounded cottages near their work and near their play. There, too, the
workers are within easy reach of the sweet, pure, open country. In that
town, too, I am hoping shortly to carry out another experiment - that of
Co-operative housekeeping for people of the working class - on
lines that will secure full privacy, the advantages of concerted
arrangements, great economies, and, as I believe, ready means
for increasing the family or individual income by women released
from much of mere domestic drudgery. If that experiment is
successfully carried out - and I am sure it will be - it must at once serve
as a model for many similar experiments in different parts of the country.
But, inasmuch as the principles it will set forth cannot be fully or com-
pletely adopted except away from the big towns, and where land can be ob-

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132 THE TOWN PLANNING REVIEW

tained at moderate prices, that experiment must, lik

itself, further stimulate the diffusion of population a
more urgent that the Town Planning idea, without
degree lost sight of, should be merged in a yet greater
of very large areas of land, suitable, not for a single to
group of towns.*
In this manner will the problem of the transport of
most economically and happily solved by bringing the
to be travelled within easy range of a walk or a bicycl

Ebenezer Howard.

* For an account of this experiment see the July number of the " Garden Cities and
Town Planning Magazine."

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