On the other hand, the fact that houses can be and are allowed to be built without curtilage has given an altogether fictitious value to land, the price of which varies in this country (according to situation) from about £200,000 to £10 per acre. It is not surprising that the bias of landlords and builders is very much in favour of our present system of Sanitation. Sanitary authorities are also in favour of it because, having borrowed enormous sums of money, which have to be paid out of the rates, they are naturally quite regardless of hygiene if they can increase the rateable value of the district, and so make the burden of rate-collection lighter. “Black care (in the form of rates) sits behind the councillor.” Everywhere throughout the metropolitan area houses are being pulled down and replaced by others twice as high; extra storeys are being added to old houses, and back-yards and gardens are fetching enormous prices for building purposes, so that the buildings in the centre of London have doubled their height and have lost all their curtilage. Huge thoroughfares have been driven through London in all directions, but as the ultimate increase in the height of the buildings has been proportionately greater than the increase in the width of the street, locomotion has become more difficult, our traffic has become more in need of police regulations, and it has become an acknowledged rule in the City that if you want to keep an appointment it is dangerous to take a cab, because one can thread one’s way with more certainty on foot.