Page:Garden Cities of To-morrow (1902).djvu/76

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
66
GARDEN CITIES OF TO-MORROW.

share of charitable work. It has allotted sites of 30 acres for various institutions, and at a later stage will doubtless be prepared to assume the whole cost of maintaining them.

With regard to police rates, it is not believed that these can be largely increased by the coming into the town of 30,000 citizens, who, for the most part, will be of the law-abiding class; for, there being but one landlord, and this the community, it will not be difficult to prevent the creation of those surroundings which make the intervention of the police so frequently necessary. (See Chapter vii.)

I have, I think, now fully established my contention that the rate-rent which would be willingly offered by the tenants of Garden City, in respect of the advantages afforded them, would be amply sufficient, (1) to pay landlord's rent in the form of interest on debentures; (2) to provide a sinking fund for the entire abolition of landlord's rent; and (3) to provide for the municipal needs of the town without recourse to any Act of Parliament for the enforcement of rates—the community depending solely on the very large powers it possesses as a landlord.

N. Revenue-bearing Expenditure.

If the conclusion already arrived at—that the experiment advocated affords an outlet for an extremely effective expenditure of labour and capital—is sound in regard to objects the cost of which is usually defrayed out of rates, that conclusion must, I think, be equally sound in regard to tramways, lighting, water-supply, and the like, which, when carried on by municipalities, are