FIRST EXCUSE 
That the Working-Classes do not need the 
Houses 
The following passage occurred in the speech of the 
present Minister of Health on the 21st July, 1921, in 
the House of Commons, when the Government’s policy 
to stop further housing was under debate :— 
“ So far as I can ascertain—and nothing is more difficult to 
ascertain —what the housing shortage is depends upon the tem 
perament of the people who are making out the needs. There 
was really no scientific basis for it. The best figure I have been 
able to obtain of the shortage of working-class houses since 1914 
puts it at about 300,000. You have to take from that something 
like nearly 50,000 built during the war, and that makes these 
500,000 houses of the Right Hon. Gentleman opposite [Mr. 
Asquith] come down to about 250,000. If you take from that 
210,000 houses, which are going to be built, we see where we are. 
The hiatus in all quarters and from all causes is not as great as 
the Right Hon. Gentleman estimated.” 
This remarkable statement contained a prodigious 
deception. Assuming Sir Alfred Mond’s figure of a 
shortage of 300,000 houses in 1914 to be right, he took 
no account of the fact that the wastage of houses in Britain 
is about 90,000 a year, so that by the date he was 
speaking the 300,000 had become some 930,000, or, 
deducting 50,000 built in war-time, 880,000. This is 
not far off the figure of 911,000, which was the sum of 
17 B