42 
THE HOUSING QUESTION 
no evidence that prices at the time of contract included any ex 
cessive margin for profit. There is on the other hand evidence 
that the profit being obtained is not unreasonable." 
What were the Committee doing ? It included 
technical men like Sir James Carmichael (a prominent 
builder and formerly Director General of Housing), 
Mr. W. H. Nicholls, another very well-known building 
contractor in the west, and Mr. Walker Smith, Director 
of Housing, at that time, at the Ministry. These men 
knew the fact of the sudden drop in tenders in March, 
1921, and its implication. 
One wonders if this Committee had ever heard of 
the Devizes Case. That town and the neighbouring 
rural districts were the victims of local contractors, 
whose ideas on prices ran to about £200 a house more 
than any other builders in the south-west for similar 
houses. 
In a case like this the Office of Works could have 
been and should have been set to work to break the 
ring. But the vested interests in the House of Commons 
and elsewhere prevented this, and to-day not a house 
has been begun in or around Devizes. 
And Devizes does not stand alone. In scores, 
perhaps hundreds, of places, building has been held up 
for a long time, or altogether, by the greed of local 
contractors and their power of keeping the ring. 
It may be added that the Labour representatives, 
Messrs. Barron and Shanks, as well as Sir Thomas 
Robinson, M.B., dissented from the Committee’s 
Report, which is undoubtedly to be the basis of any 
new policy under the present Minister