Page:Garden Cities of To-morrow (1902).djvu/58

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48
GARDEN CITIES OF TO-MORROW.

make such sites extravagant, not to say prohibitive—they would cost about £40,000,000 sterling—but does not this of itself suggest a most serious defect of system, and that at a most vital part? Can children be better taught where land costs £9,500 an acre than where it costs £40? Whatever may be the real economic value of the London site, for other purposes—as to which we may have something to say at a later stage—for school purposes, wherein lies the advantage that the sites on which its schools are built are frequently surrounded by dingy factories or crowded courts and alleys? If Lombard Street is an ideal place for banks, is not a park like the Central Avenue of Garden City an ideal place for schools?—and is not the welfare of our children the primary consideration with any well-ordered community?" "But," it may be said, "the children must be educated near their homes, and these homes must be near the places where their parents work." Precisely; but does not the scheme provide for this in the most effective manner, and in that respect also are not the school sites of Garden City superior to those of London? The children will have to expend less than an average amount of energy in going to school, a matter, as all educationists admit, of immense importance, especially in the winter. But further, have we not heard from Professor Marshall (see heading to Chapter III.) that "150,000 people, in London, engaged in the clothes-making trades, are doing work which it is against all economic reason to have done where ground-rent is high"—in other words, that these 150,000 people should not be in London at all; and does not the consideration that the education of the children of such workers is carried on at once under inferior conditions