THE HOUSING QUESTION 
59 
are beginning to see through it. 
afford to malign its own servants. 
No country can 
NOTES ON THE FOREGOING. 
The following quotation from the Minister of Health’s 
speech in the House of Commons, on 13th March, 1922, 
displays a power of exaggeration and prejudice difficult 
to compete with :— 
"... A large amount of this saving [i.e., a reduction of the 
Ministry’s annual estimates] is partly war bonus and partly the 
abolition or reduction of the housing staff, and, when I said earlier 
in the Debate that I wondered whether anybody was anxious 
that we should continue with the scheme we had been working 
in the past, I was thinking of the enormous overhead charges 
involved from the nature of the scheme, and I thought it could 
be avoided by a scheme of a different character. I am sure nobody, 
either local authorities or anybody else, desires to have these 
unnecessary overhead charges and duplication of salaries if they 
can be avoided. . . 
He was, of course, playing to the gallery. No one 
knows better than the Minister of Health how small, 
how necessary, and how fully economical was the 
money expended on his housing staff. 
Evidently one cannot expect from Sir Alfred Mond 
any recognition of the work done by his officials, 
whether permanent or temporary. 
THIRTEENTH EXCUSE 
That Private Enterprise sufficed in the Past and 
should suffice To-day