ht within the reach of the
poorer classes? Some small progress has been made of recent years
towards the realisation of this ideal. Three chief difficulties stand
in the way of success: the length of the working-day, which makes the
time required for travelling to and from a distant home a matter of
serious consideration; the defective supply of convenient, cheap, and
frequent trains or other quick means of conveyance; the irregularity
and uncertainty of tenure in most classes of labour, which prevents
the establishment of a settled house chosen with regard to convenient
access to a single point of industry. Some recent progress has been
made in large cities, such as Vienna, Paris, and London, in providing
workmen's trains and by the cheapening of train and 'bus fares; but
such experiments are generally confined within too narrow an area to
achieve any satisfactory amount of decentralisation, for the interests
of private carrying companies demand that the largest number of
passengers shall travel from the smallest number of stations. It would
appear that considerable extension of direct public control over the
means of transport will be required, in order to secure to the people
the full assistance of modern mechanical appliances in enabling them
to avoid the mischief of over-crowded dwellings. For such purposes the
railway has now replaced the high-road, and we can no more afford to
entrust the public interest in the one case to the calculating
self-interest of private speculation than in the other case. A firm
public control in the common interest over the steam and electric
railways of the future seems essential to the attainment of adequate
decentralisation for dwelling purposes. Private enterprise in
transport, working hand in hand with private ownership of land, will
only substitute for a single mass of over-crowded dwellings a number
of smaller suburban areas of over-crowded dwellings. The bicycle
alone, among modern appliances of mechanical speed, can safely be
entrusted to the free private control of individuals, and, if one may
judge by the remarkable expansion of its use, it seems likely to
afford no trifling assistance to the decentralising tendencies.

Sec. 10. The removal of the other two barriers belongs to that joint
action of labour organisation and legislation which aims at building
up a condition of stable industrial economy. One of the most
serviceable results of that shortening of the working-day, u