THE HOUSING QUESTION 
9i 
position was grave in the extreme. And,” continued the lec 
turer, " the building of houses is being stopped in the holy interests 
of economy. Was there ever such a false idea of what real 
wealth is ? Wealth is not money. If we can provide houses 
we shall be building up real wealth. It is the opposition of the 
Minister of Health to-day that is keeping houses from the people, 
and our own folly in not spending money on our houses. Bradford 
wanted 10,000 more houses,” continued Dr. Buchan, " excluding 
about 5,000 which should replace unfit ones, and they were to 
have only 800. People were being overcrowded in miserable 
dens. Venereal disease was not so far apart from housing as was 
thought. The great barrier to it should be a proper environment 
at home. It was the worst where homes were worst. Among 
the decent working-classes there was least of it, and it was most 
prevalent among the richest and the most miserable poor. In 
slumdom the people could not help not having moral ideals, 
and the rich seemed to have too much money to spend to cultivate 
them." 
The following further quotation from Sir Alfred 
Mond’s speech in Parliament on 13th March, 1922, 
and its refutal by his own political supporter, Colonel 
Fremantle, Chairman of the L.C.C. Housing Committee, 
is significant:— 
Sir Alfred Mond : " . . . The last census shewed that in 
normal times you have 430,000 empty houses of the working-class 
kind. My point is that all these houses have been filled with 
tenants, and that fact has never been taken into account.” 
Viscountess Astor : “ Were they uninhabited ? ” 
Sir A. Mond : " Yes. We all know that there was throughout 
the country a certain number of empty houses. ... I know 
that a large number have disappeared, and this has no doubt 
relieved the situation to a considerable extent. 
Colonel Fremantle, : “. . . The Right Hon. Gentle 
man made one point which must be explained or I will challenge 
it as wrong. He said that there were 450,000 empty houses