British Socialism: An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical ProposalsBarker, J. Ellis
History
British Socialism: An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals
Barker, J. Ellis
Socialism; Socialism -- Great Britain
"We see in imagination the County Council's aqueducts supplying London
with pure soft water from a Welsh lake; the County Council's mains
furnishing, without special charge, a constant supply up to the top of
every house: the County Council's hydrants and standpipes yielding
abundant cleansing fluid from the Thames to every street. When every
parish has its public baths and washhouses open without fees, every
Board school its swimming-bath and teacher of swimming, every railway
station and public building its drinking-fountain and basin for
washing the hands, every park its bathing and skating ponds--then we
shall begin to show the world that we do not, after all, fall behind
Imperial Rome in this one item of its splendid magnificence. By that
time the landlord will be required, as a mere condition of sanitary
fitness, to lay on water to every floor, if not to every tenement, and
the bath will be as common an adjunct of the workman's home as it now
is of the modern villa residence. And just as in some American cities
hot water and superheated steam are supplied in pipes for warming
purposes over large areas, we may even see the County Council laying
on a separate service of hot water to be drawn at will from a tap in
each tenement. Why should London's million families waste their
million fires every time hot water is needed?
"The economy of fuel leads, indeed, to the municipalised gas-supply,
then laid on, as a matter of course, to every tenement, and used, not
only for lighting, but still more largely for cooking in the stoves
supplied at a nominal charge.
"In order to relieve the pressure of population in the centre, and
reduce the rents of the metropolitan "Connaughts," the County Council
tramways will doubtless be made as free as its roads and bridges.
Taxes on locomotion are universally condemned, and the economic
effects of a penny tram-fare are precisely the same as those of a tax
on the trip. The County Council will, however, free its trams on the
empirical grounds of economy and the development of its suburban
estates of artisans' dwellings, built on land bought to retain the
unearned increment for the public benefit. Free trams may well imply
free trains in the metropolitan and suburban area. Does not the
Council already run a free service of steamboats on the Thames at
North Woolwich--eventually, no doubt, to be extended all along the
stream?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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