Encouragement is given by the Council to the idea that working-men and women--since they cannot, in so many cases, live chock-a-block with their employment--should be provided with homes upon, or a little beyond, the Council’s boundaries, and be brought backwards and forwards by train, for the popular 1_d._ Being practical men, the Councillors know that any transference on a large scale of London factories to the country, however desirable, cannot be effected yet awhile. And even if they could acquire sites in the centres of industry, and erect gigantic lodging-houses, the cost would be prohibitive. They have to deal with the present necessity. Their ideal is probably the workshop as it exists in London, with the heads of firms at Belsize Park, Bayswater, and Dulwich, the clerks at Wandsworth, Chelsea, and Fulham, and the workmen at Tottenham, Wood Green, and Hammersmith. On the other hand, figures quoted by Mr. Troupe, of the Home Office,[5] show to what a large extent it might be possible to relieve congestion by the removal of factories to the country. He said that there were 748 factories in London classified, in the following proportions, viz. 50 for machine-making, 30 for bread and biscuit-baking, 14 for cabinet-making, 11 for turning out fruit preserves, 16 breweries, 47 book-binding establishments, 72 printing houses (not including newspapers), and 19 saw-mills. In these 748 factories close upon 200,000 people were employed, representing with their families some 600,000 human beings, and if, following the recent example of the largest cabinet-makers in London, the bulk of these removed into the country, which they might do if suitable railway arrangements could be made, a considerable number of the 600,000 men, women, and children would be rehoused amidst “fresh woods and pastures new,” greatly to their benefit. This is a dream at present, as factories cannot without great loss be summarily transferred from suitable urban quarters where water-frontages and locomotive facilities exist. They have grown up with, and in many cases created the district in which they are situated. Bermondsey has for years been the home of the leather trade, Lambeth of the pottery industry, and although Mr. Justice Grantham instances Doulton’s as an awful example of an uneconomical delinquent London manufactory--their clay in Dorsetshire, their coal in the Midlands, their salt in Cheshire, and their works on the banks of the Thames--it is no light matter to break with long business ties and take up with fresh ones, not so easy to leave the old love and take up with the new.