Evening star., 1900-04-21

crannles, one OF them in every two three
London blocks one can do any kind of reg
ular post Office business, send a telegram to
Huddersheld or a cable message to New
ork, hire a messenger boy (at a fee which
Is the merest trifie), get his life insured. or
purchase an annuity. and deposit money or
Withdraw 1t, to say nothing of buying gov
ernment stocks, without even a letter of in
PRODUCTION.
Schools of Domestic Economy.
One especially entertaining feature of
paternalism as manifested in London is to
be found in the schools of domestic econ
! omy,' established by the London county
council, in which girls are taught cookery,
housewifery, laundry work and home nurs-
| ing. OF course, a large percentage Of these
girls are in training for household service
but the chief aim of this branch of the
London county councils work is to educate
| the wives and mothers Of the future. These
are schools where instead OF reddin' writin'
and rithmetic, the girls study lamp clean
ing, metal polishing, boot backing, dressing
Of wounds. how to hygienically wash and
| dress a baby, prepare its food and how to
keep the proper sort of milk bottle clean.
One of the departments is fitted out as a
typical workman's home. Four girls stay
here to dinner, draw up a menu, stipulating
that the food mustn't cost beyond cents a
head; go out with a basket and do the mar
keting, cook the food, and better yet use
up what was left from the day before. AZ
ter dinner the children wash up and make
=,
light the fires, scrub and dust the rooms,
clean boots and knives, polish furniture
In the same way a mythical fathers dinner
Is gotten up in a round dish that a work
The greater part of this instruction is alb
solutely free.
Transforming a Slum.
Thus If the aim of this system be
achieved, the management Of the home of
the artisan of the future will be vastly diff
ferent from that of the working man of to
day Unless other plans of the city of Lon
don are also frutless the home itself will
be quite as much in contrast. The endless
building of factories on ground that for
merly was devoted to homes for the work
ing classes, and the acquisition of acres
upon acres of such dwellings by syndicates
who Straghtway doubled or tripled the rem
tails, have made the housing problem in
London more and more acute.
The county council first attacked it by
converting a Whitechapel slum into a
pleasant-looking and smelling neighbor-
hood at a cost of S3 600 600 Shoreditch,
the progressive, promptly followed the
councils lead, spending quarter of a
million, and now every district in the city
has its housing scheme either on the stocks
or we'll under way, arranging for the hous-
ing of 5000 people at a cost of two mil
lions and half
Next, the city will blossom out as a pro-
prietor of line of steamboats, and a series
of wharves all along the Thames The
steamer service on that much-sung stream
has been wretched for years 1t was only
maintained for certain period in the sum-
mer, anyway, and was of no use to the
class that 1t might benefit most, the work
ing men who live in the suburbs The
company that owns the boats put the blame
on the people who own the piers saying
that their tolls were so high that the lines
could be run with profit only during the
months when all London is on the water
The pier people rejoned that the wharves
wore out so fast that they couldn't be kept
in repair for less than the present tolls
and so the city has almost decided to buy
up boats, wharves and all, repair the one
and regulate the other, running the boats.
hereafter, all season long, providing special
rates for artisans and generally reforming
the system. 1t is understood that the pur-
chase will be made soon, although all the
particulars have not been made public.
MARSHALL LORD.