gSj£M<, ASSSSSiie.'MWW!#-MW I ! M WZ! MBA MM ■ WMM MWWK -WW-WWW: WWW WM WWW WWWsT MW WWW WM'M KM WM MM /■ Xx:-: MW X.MM . MWWM MM WM KM MM WKM WM MWM Mr MW WM - WZ SSt -o.-:<WW,W' WMM MM M. . WM WMW8WWWW>MW«MW«W«W8W8 MM- m MLZ • '" -■>'-,r:: ; -->i g&Li > ; HHB :-. ,*:•• : 5? - iU' •"•Akf-x* 1 THE HOUSING QUESTION KOgoRbe-vwbbgsi-at ®mgm. !H>,'m iTtgaiT-mF,^: t-J w r THE HOUSING QUESTION BY A FORMER HOUSING COMMISSIONER WITH A PREFACE BY THE RT. HON, ARTHUR HENDERSON, P.C. LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. r First published in 1922 ^ BiblTothek ” Is nt J, Rights Reserved Printed in Great Britain DEDICATED TO THE WORKING MEN AND WOMEN OF BRITAIN . . While the housing of the working classes has always been a question of the greatest social importance, never has it been so important as now. It is not too much to say that an adequate solution of the housing question is the foundation of all social progress. Health and housing are indissolubly connected. If this country is to be the country which we desire to see it become, a great offensive must be undertaken against disease and crime, and the first point at which the attack must be delivered is the unhealthy, ugly, overcrowded house in the mean street, which we all of us know too well. “ If a healthy race is to be reared it can be reared only in healthy homes; if infant mortality is to be reduced and tuberculosis to be stamped out, the first essential is the improvement of housing conditions ; if drink and crime are to be successfully combated, decent, sanitary houses must be provided. If ' unrest' is to be converted into contentment, the provision of good houses may prove one of the most potent agents in that conversion. . . ." His Majesty George V at Buckingham Palace, nth April, 1919. " It would be a black crime indeed if we were to sit still and do nothing by way of preparation to ensure that when these men come back they shall be provided with homes with as little delay as possible. To let them come back from the horrible water-logged trenches to something little better than a pigsty here would indeed be criminal on the part of ourselves, and would be a negation of all that has been said during this War that we could never repay these men for what they have done for us.”— Mr. Walter Long, in 1916, when President of the Local Government Board. 3 • ' <1. v.-c ' ;a ; ~h .; - '. • ;• : ' ; v.-L'Tv-i : •- ' > CONTENTS Page Foreword 9 Preface n PART I An Examination of Fourteen Excuses offered by the Government for their failure to provide Houses - iZ (For list see page 16.) PART II The Government’s Record in Slum Clearance - 71 PART III The Government’s Record for Truth and Justice 83 PART IV The Main Indictment against the Government - 101 7 r ^ "i: ^ :• w v^X." />?''^.E v.<--•■x :'^--''s „ •«-* •r-WWW ■ E/S -Tv_ 5i^?E^^5!<5Q!sSSSNS?SSS^ r-.'.vS 'i:: -v: 9 FOREWORD An attempt is made in this book to present to the Electors an account, as brief as is consistent with a fair measure of completeness, of the manner in which the late Government have carried out their promises to the men who won the war, and to all, men and women alike, who, on the strength of those promises, placed them in office in December, 1918. The Government, with those who supported them, conscious of the fact that they have failed to carry out the promised rehousing of the working classes and clearance of the slums, which have so long disgraced ­ our country and produced a C3 population, have endeavoured to throw the blame for their own failures and broken pledges on to all and sundry except upon themselves. More especially have they sought occasion by every excuse which they could invent to inflame public opinion against the working-classes, who contributed with their own lives and suffering to the winning of the war. It is an old truth that a man dislikes no one so much as him whom he has injured. No doubt it is with some such instinct as this that Mr. Lloyd George has called working men Bolshevists (would he say so to-day ?), and that Sir Alfred Mond has condemned ­ them as idlers. It will perhaps therefore be convenient if we enter 10 FOREWORD upon the subject by an examination in detail of each of the specious arguments by which the inexcusable failure of the Government in Housing is from time to time defended. Fourteen such excuses are examined. This examination ­ constitutes the First Part of the book. The Second Part deals with the Government's record in slum-clearance, which in touching speeches they announced, when they took office, that they would carry out. An apology should be offered to the reader for this Chapter, as the Government's record in the clearance of slums would more suitably have been expressed by a blank sheet of paper. The Third Part is an attempt to picture to the Electors the Government's fidelity to truth and justice by means of instances drawn from their speeches on, and administration of housing matters, since they took office. The Fourth Part is a summary of the main indictment against them in respect of Housing. It should be added that this book was written before the collapse of the Coalition Ministry. October, 1922. PREFACE There is no aspect of the social problem more fundamental ­ than housing. The health and strength of the people, their efficiency, the quality of their family life, and even their moral standards depend largely upon the housing accommodation which is provided for them. The effects of overcrowding, of insanitary and badly equipped houses, of congested slum areas, have been the subject of detailed enquiry by Government ­ Committees, by scores of Medical Officers of Health and by many Social students. It is known that bad housing means a heavy loss of infant life, lowered vitality, the ravages of preventable diseases —in a word, an incalculable loss of human life, health and quality. All this is beyond dispute. The extent of the housing famine in town and country alike and the magnitude of the problem of slum clearance are now well known. After the war the Local Authorities in England and Wales, who after all are the best judges of local needs, estimated that 800,000 houses were required. Before the year 1910 about 75,000 new houses were built annually to compensate ­ for wear and tear, and to meet the normal growth of the population. If that represents the necessary ­ annual additions to the nation's housing accommodation, ­ it is clear that since the investigation of ii 12 PREFACE the Local Authorities, at least a further 200,000 have become necessary. It is indisputable therefore that the nation needs a million houses. This is clearly not an exaggerated estimate when one realises that in England and Wales alone, there are nearly a million dwellings consisting of two rooms or less. Mr. Bonar Law and Mr. Lloyd George, in their joint manifesto of 1918, declared that “ one of the first tasks of the Government will be to deal on broad and comprehensive lines with the Housing of the People, which during the war has fallen so sadly into arrears, and upon which the well-being of the nation so largely depends.” The history of the past four years is a tragic story of the betrayal of one pledge after another. But there is no more dishonourable episode in the life of the joint Unionist and National Liberal Government than the sacrifice of the housing policy which it was pledged to carry out. It commenced with a programme which was inadequate to fulfil the lavish promises made to the electors, and in a panic of " economy ” virtually closed down its programme. The net result of the " broad and comprehensive " lines of policy promised by Mr. Bonar Law and Mr. Lloyd George was the provision of 161,442 new houses by the end of June last, and 35,971 houses under construction. The total supply of new houses is less than sufficient to meet the normal needs of the years since the war. As the leeway of the war period has not been made up, it is obvious that the housing situation to-day is worse than it was before the PREFACE 13 war. In other words, the national housing programme of Mr. Bonar Law and Mr. Lloyd George has amounted to less than nothing. This book, written by one who speaks with knowledge and authority, is a strong indictment of the late Government's ­ record as regards housing. I trust that it will be widely read, and that it may do something to stimulate ­ a live public opinion on one of the most pressing social problems. Arthur Henderson. 24M Oct., 1922. — Part I 16 3-5- ii. 12. IZ. 14. The Fourteen Excuses are as follows:— Page That the working-classes do not need the houses 17 That the working-classes do not want such good houses 22 That the Government houses are not worth having 22 That the rural labourer is content with things as they are 25 That the working-classes cannot afford to pay the rent - 28 That the cost will be ruinous - - - - 32 That the necessary capital cannot be found - 32 That more houses cannot be built for lack of labour ----- - 37 That the operatives of the building trades are generally idlers, whereas building contractors have been content with a normal profit - 37 That a Housing bureaucracy is ignorant, idle, and expensive *53 That control by Government and Local Authorities ­ is necessarily slow and inefficient - - 53 That the Architects are mainly responsible for the failure of the Government Housing Scheme 53 That private enterprise sufficed in the past and should suffice to-day ------ 59 That Local Authorities, which say they do not want houses, know best and should be let alone 60 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 temperament ­ 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 i8 THE HOUSING QUESTION the needs as statutorily reported by Local Authorities in 1919 after detailed investigation. Does Sir Alfred Mond run his own business by calculations ­ such as these, or had he his tongue in his cheek when he palmed off those figures on to an innocent House of Commons ? Early in 1921, the Minister, following in this respect the example of the Unjust Steward, wrote down by departmental ukase the needs of Local Authorities (which had been carefully investigated by the Councils) to a figure more convenient to the Treasury. This was done without consulting the Local Authorities themselves. The results were somewhat unfortunate as it was found that the true needs could hardly be reduced at all. Indeed, owing to the lack of progress of the building programme, they had in many places grown considerably. The Minister therefore took the easy course of wiping off the slate all houses needed to replace unfit houses and insanitary areas—thus reducing the needs by one half ! At the beginning of 1921 the official newspaper of the Ministry, Housing, proclaimed that the needs had been greatly over-estimated, citing as evidence the annual report of the Registrar General, who had said that :— " As the estimated population for 1919 is 700,000 in excess of that of the last census, it would only require (apart from replacement of defective houses) a net addition of 140,000 houses for the whole period 1911-19 to maintain the 1911 average.” The Ministry carefully ignored the vital words— those in the parenthesis —and the Registrar-General THE HOUSING QUESTION 19 had to point out that his Report could bear no such construction as had been placed upon it. The truth has a way of coming out when Government Departments ­ differ. The following are some extracts from speeches of Ministers and supporters of the Government as to needs :— His Majesty King George V, on nth April, 1919, at Buckingham Palace (this speech was, of course, made on the advice of his Prime Minister) :— " I am informed that the immediate need of working-class houses for England and Wales alone is estimated at approximately 500,000.” The Prime Minister, in the House of Commons 21st December, 1920 :— “ At least 500,000 houses are needed to supply the legitimate demands for housing in this country.” Dr. Addison (Minister of Health), at Bishopsteignton, 1st July, 1920 :— “ 800,000 houses are needed.” Dr. Macnamara, Minister of Labour (Oct. nth, 1920, quoted in the Government official paper, Housing):— “ It has been estimated that this country required 100,000 new houses every year. Therefore the war left us with a shortage of half a million houses.” Major (now Lord) Astor (Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health), on 7th April, 1919, at the Second Reading of the Housing Bill:— 20 THE HOUSING QUESTION “ Our own estimate, our own figures, inadequate as we believe they are, are tor 400,000 houses here and now." Lt.-Col. Fremantle, M.P. (Chairman of the Housing Committee, London County Council, and a Coalition Member), in the House of Commons, nth May, 1921 "The requirements in the matter of housing at the present time are appalling, and it is absurd to say otherwise. It is quite certain that the general requirements—without taking into account any question as to improvement of status or condition— represent a total of something like a million houses throughout the United Kingdom. This is increasing at the rate of 70,000 or 80,000 houses a year, and we have not even got to the stage of keeping pace with that requirement, still less of making up the arrears.” Such were the admissions of the Government. Now to get at the facts :— The net needs of the country, as assessed by the Local Authorities in October, 1919, in accordance with the statutory duty placed upon them by the Housing Act, 1919, were (according to figures supplied by the National Housing and Town Planning Council) For England and Wales ... 796,246 For Scotland H5.5 6 5 Total for Great Britain ... 911,811 From these figures must be deducted about 100,000 working-class houses built in the last 2\ years. But an addition more than equivalent to this number must be made owing to the wastage of houses and growth of population in the same period. The above net needs probably, therefore, fully hold good to-day. THE HOUSING QUESTION 21 It is true that if needs were re-investigated some areas would to-day show a decrease. But the contrary would be true in other areas, especially in a vast number of country villages, where houses were much needed, yet were not proposed in the original Surveys of Local Authorities. The Minister told the House of Commons on 13th March, 1922, that the Surveys of Local Authorities were not serious. Why does he say that ? His Department puts Local Authorities to immense trouble and then he ignores and insults the results they arrive at. NOTES ON THE FOREGOING. (1) The following interruption by the Minister of Health, Sir Alfred Mond, during the speech of Lord Robert Cecil in the House of Commons, on 13th March, 1922, is illustrative of his mind :— Lord Robert Cecil : "... There were five years during which no houses were built. Then it was said with a good deal of force that the ordinary number of houses which were built in every year was, I think, 80,000, and therefore in five years, since no houses were built, you would expect a shortage of 400,000. Add to that the already proved shortage, which I say, and many of my Hon. Friends opposite say, was due very largely to the unfortunate experiment in land taxation—but whatever it was due to, which is not the point for the moment, there was a shortage of houses before the war. If you add to that shortage the 400,000 which were not built during the war, you come very near the 500,000, which the Right Hon. Baronet regards as such a ridiculous figure.” Sir A. Mono : " What about the number who were killed ? ” 22 THE HOUSING QUESTION When Sir Alfred Mond was thus suggesting that he fortunately did not have to build so many houses because their possible tenants had got themselves killed, he forgot their wives and children, presumably because he never thinks of them. He also forgot that during the war all emigration for Great Britain had been stopped, which immensely increased the congestion of population in the country. (2) Sir Alfred Mond repeated on the 13th March, 1922, the gross fallacy referred to at the beginning of this chapter. He said :— "... We have supplied houses with public assistance to the extent of about a quarter of a million, and if you take the number of years of the war, and take the average number of cottages that were built pre-war of this kind, you will see that the Government ­ have filled the hiatus which the war created. . . ." Thus again he omitted all consideration of the wastage of houses and increase of population between 1914 and 1922 ! SECOND AND THIRD EXCUSES (a) That the Working Classes do not want such Good Houses, (b) That the Government Houses are not worth having. These two excuses, which are maintained by differing schools of thought, might be considered as cancelling each other. However, they are worth some examination. ­ THE HOUSING QUESTION 23 The Minister of Health in the debate in the House of Commons, on 21st July, 1921, when the Government stopped their housing scheme, said :— " Our needs are very much what we want to make them. For instance, possibly we should all like to live in a very much better house than we have got." One feels that such a sentiment, if the Minister would advance it at a meeting of slum-dwellers, would greatly relieve their discontent and would enable them to realise that even Sir Alfred Mond has to live in a house which is not nearly as good as he would like. Mr. Pecksniff could not have put it more clearly. And, after all, have we not grown into the greatest nation in the world without all this molly coddling ? Did not our population pour forth from the garrets of Bethnal Green, the back-to-back houses of Leeds, and the tenements of Glasgow, to do battle with the Hun, and did we not win the war ? What do our people want with gardens and porches, and parlours ? Baths ! They are only used for coals and cauliflowers. Drains! They generally involve smells : better do without them as our fathers did. Our needs are only what we make them. These great “ wens " of England, as Cobbett called them, with their strength belching forth out of their chimneys and lying like a pall between the blue vault of heaven and the children of men : these human warrens where stand the houses of massed humanity, 40 or 50 to an acre : close and neighbourly no doubt, and handy to the factory and workshop: these, says 24 THE HOUSING QUESTION the Minister of Health, are all the poor really need. ai Anything beyond is a luxury—a sin against the tax- p payer—an " economic loss.” And, besides, the poor s< do not understand it and do not want it. U As regards the third excuse, the suggestion is some- w times made, not only by those who desire to stop any si kind of housing by the Government, but also by some a of the working classes themselves, that the houses a: which are being built are not worth having. This r< opinion, when honestly held, is often arrived at after si seeing the houses at an early stage of their construction, h when, as is well known, the rooms always look smaller o than they really are. The belief rarely survives an inspection of the finished house, if it has been built ri in accordance with the model plans which in 1919 the si Ministry published and promised to adhere to. a Have you ever been into one of these new “ Government ­ Houses ” and talked to its tenants, a working man and his family ? They have just moved in from a very different sort of home. With their savings j they have perhaps bought a little extra furniture, and at last after so many years the lady of the house has the opportunity, which she so longed for when she V married years ago, of making a real home. Have you a seen the beauty of it ? The little garden gate, the I s pretty walk to the house and the flower and vegetable ri plots, which her husband digs when he is home from o work. You enter and find a tiny but carefully planned f< hall with a commodious living-room, and leading out g of it a thoroughly well-equipped scullery and larder a THE HOUSING QUESTION 25 and bath. On the other side of the house is a small parlour where guests can be entertained, where the son of the house can study, or where the maiden of twenty summers can talk things over with that someone who is so much to her. Go upstairs by the well-lighted stair, and enter the three bedrooms, and, as you look at the order and beauty with which the mother has arranged her nest, think for a moment of those dark rooms you have known in a vile and insanitary slum, from which perhaps these people have moved—as from hell to heaven. And ask the mother what she thinks of it all. And then ask yourself, firstly, whether those are right who say that the working classes do not want such good houses ; and, secondly, whether the houses are not worth having. FOURTH EXCUSE That the Rural Labourer is Content with things as they are When Dr. Addison became Minister of Health and was armed by Parliament with powers to re-house the Nation, he was rightly advised that the bane of the rural labourer was the “ tied " cottage, the cottage owned by the landlord and handed over to the farmer for the use of his labourers. These cottages were generally situated on, or close to, the farms, a considerable ­ distance from the nearest village. This system 26 THE HOUSING QUESTION gave the farmer a double hold over his man. Not only could he, if the latter proved idle or unruly, turn him out of his job, but he could also deprive him of his home as well. With two-fold chains the labourers were held. After taking counsel, therefore. Dr. Addison in his Manual of State-Aided Houses, issued early in 1919, and in memoranda to his Staff and to Local Authorities, directed that the sites for the new subsidised houses in the rural areas were to be chosen in villages or assembled in new communities, instead of being placed on the farms. Not only for the reasons of liberty, to which we have alluded, but for this reason also, that where the house is remote from a village, although the breadwinner is near his work, the housewife ­ becomes a lonely woman and has far to go for shopping and neighbours. The children, too, have long walks to and from school, and in bad weather have to be kept at home ; whereas, if the house is built near to others, the mother and children gain very greatly and the bread-winner, if he has a bicycle, need lose comparatively little time to get to work. And, in any case, he is only one, and the strongest, and he, too, gains through security of tenure and access to society. For, if the subsidised cottage, owned by the local Council, were built on the farm, then, although the man’s dismissal from his work would not automatically eject him from his home, yet practically it would have that result, since a house on a farm, where he could not work, would be little use to him. THE HOUSING QUESTION 27 Now, Rural District Councils are composed very largely of farmers. And farmers have a very sharp eye to their own interests. That is why they get elected on the Councils. The farmers did not take kindly to Dr. Addison’s new-fangled ideas. Only too often they opposed the housing scheme altogether. In parts of England more than half the Rural Councils have done practically nothing to house their ratepayers, to whom they are responsible, and whom by Act of Parliament they are bound to see housed efficiently— not at the expense of the local rates, but at the expense of the Treasury. Practically nowhere have they done very much. And when they were asked why they did so little they usually replied: " The labourers don’t want these houses : they’re quite well enough off at present.” It may be said: “ Why then do the labourers not vote such councillors out of office ? ” 0 Sancta Simplicitas ! Those who say that know little of England ­ and less of rural England. Few labourers know much about Council voting, even in this year of grace. Nor is there as a rule any other candidate to vote for. A labouring man in the country generally cannot afford the time and money to get elected and attend Council meetings in his own working hours. He shakes his head a bit, but accepts the situation as ordained by Providence, as his father did before him. The farmer is again returned in an uncontested election, and sets himself to do little else but keep down the rates. 28 THE HOUSING QUESTION People sometimes have the idea that more cottages are not wanted in the country, and that the existing ones are all that can be desired. “ How pretty" they say, as they fly past in a car. “ Do look at those roses on that cottage.” But it is not the roses which matter; it is the drains, and it is as well not to look at those—if there are any. It is only God’s air and sunlight which saves the countryside from epidemics as serious as any in the slums. The rural labourer knows this and he is not content. FIFTH EXCUSE That the Working Classes cannot Afford to Pay the Rent The present Minister of Health is the principal propagator ­ of this excuse, which is very widely held. Let us quote from his speech to the House of Commons on July 2 ist, 1921 :— " The Chairman of a Housing Committee, full of enthusiasm, and the Medical Officer of Health come and talk to me about the vast number of houses required, whilst the Chairman of the Finance Committee and other officers of the Corporation assure me that if you build these houses there is not the slightest likelihood of their ever being let.” Again:— " There has been a trade depression and people who entered themselves as applicants for these houses are now not so anxious to take them. Unfortunately a great many cannot afford to take them.” THE HOUSING QUESTION 29 Again, Sir Alfred Mond on 19th May, 1921, when meeting a deputation of the larger Local Authorities, remarked :— " In regard to houses, as with everything else, it is not what people want, but what they can pay for. . . . “ If you have these houses, have you the people to come and rent and live in them ? " Whereupon Alderman Symonds, Chairman of the Housing Committee of Manchester, felt it necessary to ask the Minister whether the Government had altered its policy of “ Homes for Heroes " into " Homes for Heroes who can pay for them ! The Minister does not appear to have replied. Why is it that Ministers of State do not take the trouble to read the regulations which their own Departments draw up ? Or is it that they do read them but would rather other people did not know about them ? The financial regulations, formulated by the Minister of Health, after the passing of the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1919, approved by the Treasury, and laid on the table of the House of Commons and by it endorsed, provide that the Local Authority in first fixing the rents under an assisted scheme shall have regard to :— {a) The rents obtaining in the locality for houses for the working classes. (6) Any increase in the rent, authorised under the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest, etc.. Act. 30 THE HOUSING QUESTION (c) Any superiority in the condition or amenity of the houses to be let by them under the assisted scheme, or in the accommodation provided therein; and (d) The classes of tenants in the district for whom the houses are provided. It is further provided in the same Regulations that, if the Minister of Health considers the rents fixed by the Local Authority too low, he may appeal to an Independent Tribunal, whose decision is final. This Tribunal consists of two representatives of the Minister, two of the representative bodies of Local Authorities, and a Chairman elected by the first four. It is obvious to anyone who reads these regulations that the meaning of them is that the rents shall be such as the local working-classes can afford to pay. This view has been taken by the Tribunal each time a case has been referrred to them, and it may be added that in nearly every case the Local Authority has won and the Minister has lost. It is further the case that, where the rent arrived at by («), (6), and (c) exceeds that required by {d), the latter and lower rent is the one to be fixed. More than this, Local Authorities are fully entitled to lower rents, previously fixed by them, if the dwindling wages of the tenants render such a course equitable. This has been done by several Authorities. Where Local Authorities have fixed the rent at such a level that the working classes cannot pay, it can only be because, either they do not know the regulations. THE HOUSING QUESTION 3i or because—often one regrets to say from interested and party motives—they do not wish to carry them out and desire an excuse for not building more houses. In short, the rents must, ipso facto, be such as working-class ­ people can afford to pay. When Sir Alfred Mond spoke as quoted above he was permitting himself to talk nonsense. It is true that emissaries from the Treasury have frequently informed Local Councils that if they do not fix rents high enough they will lose some of the subsidy. But this is ordinary bluff and should be disregarded. Government Departments often bluff. As has already been made clear, excessive rent is not legally enforceable by the Government. As things are there is a tendency to allow the working classes to be defrauded of these houses, which by Act of Parliament were intended for them, and to allow the houses to become the residences of quite another class. It suits the Treasury’s book, but it is unjust, contrary to the will of Parliament, and ought to be stopped. Mr. Inskip, a Conservative Coalition Member for Bristol, said in the House of Commons, in the Housing Debate, on the nth May, 1921 :— “ What dismays me— I have made enquiries in my own constituency—is ­ that I am very doubtful whether the right people are to occupy the houses. . . . They were intended for the ex-service man, in the first place. He was generally the unskilled man, who gave up his own house and put his wife and children in the house of relatives, and now that he has returned he requires a house to live in. . . , »»» 32 THE HOUSING QUESTION *■ We found that the rates, added to the rent charged, mean that the houses are impossible for workpeople. For instance, in Bristol, where houses have been built in most admirable positions and in the most admirable way, for a living-room, parlour and three bedrooms the rent and rates amount to 2is. 2d. weekly. . . ." “ There is a total charge of 21s. 6d. per week for the houses mentioned, 17s. yd. for a house with a living-room and three bedrooms, and 16s. for a house with a living room and two bedrooms, and that is more than the ex-service men can afford.” SIXTH EXCUSE That the Cost will be Ruinous SEVENTH EXCUSE That the necessary Capital cannot be Found The former excuse attempts to show that the British people, now and in the future, cannot afford the annual charges which a complete State-aided Housing Scheme will bring on the Exchequer, owing to the impossibility of fixing the rents high enough to meet the interest and sinking fund on loans together with the usual landlord’s expenses for repairs, voids and management. The latter excuse is an assertion that the Government and the Local Authorities combined cannot, at least without grave detriment to the finances of the nation, borrow the money for paying the builders, quite apart from the question of being able to pay annual charges. Let us quote once again the Minister of Health in the housing question 33 the pivotal Housing debate on List July, 1921, in the Commons :— “ The fact remains that we have now a permanent burden for 60 years of ten millions a year on our taxes in order to provide these houses. ... I say we have incurred a commitment of £600,000.000 to provide these houses. . . ." Even so good a Coalitionist as Mr. Holmes—a Housing expert—could not swallow this. He interrupted ­ Sir Alfred Mond thus :— Mr. Holmes : " May I ask the Right Hon. Gentleman to clear up one point ? He said that it meant a sum of £600,000,000. I think his announcement was that 1 76,000 houses had been built at an average cost of £1,000 each. That comes to £176,000,000. How does the Right Hon. Gentleman arrive at a total of £600,000,000 ? " Sir A. Mond : “ There is a loss of £10,000,000 a year for 60 years. It will not be quite £600,000,000. As the Hon. Member knows, some of these loans are of shorter date than others. I am not going into details, but roughly V may be estimated that you would spend £10,000,000 a year for 60 years. That is not Capital.” Let us apply Sir Alfred Mond’s curious reasoning to the cost of the war. About six thousand millions it cost and its annual interest is some three hundred millions a year. Suppose the debt is paid off in a hundred years— we shall be very fortunate if it jg he would no doubt tell us that the cost of the war worked out to thirty thousand million pounds. Is that the new arithmetic for which we are indebted to a Government of business men ? “ A permanent burden for 60 years of ten millions a vear.” When he tried to make the House of Comc 34 THE HOUSING QUESTION mons believe this, the Minister knew well that by far the greater part of the money borrowed was on shortperiod loan, e.g., Housing Bond money and the whole of the Local Loans Fund, which is the " banker " for all Local Authorities of under £200,000 rateable value. Does he mean to say that the Treasury borrowed money in 1919 and 1920 at 6 per cent, for periods of 60 years ? Had they done so, the sooner the National Exchequer were removed from the custody of his colleagues the better. The facts, of course, are that for most of the 60 year period the rate of interest on housing loans will, it may reasonably be expected, be nearer 4 per cent, than 6 per cent. Let us take another point. The subject under discussion on the 21st July was not so much a lament on the cost of houses contracted for before that date as whether Local Authorities should be allowed to build more houses in the future. The factor to take into account was the probable cost of future houses. When the Minister was speaking he knew well that the cost of houses had at that date dropped from £950 or more to £750 or so, and was likely to drop much further. (To-day the same house is less than £500.) But his whole calculations and argument were based on the house at £1,000. He was again wilfully deceiving the House of Commons. What then may we expect to be the annual " loss " per house to-day ? Assume a £500 house (i.e., more than the cost to-day). Add £75 for land, streets, THE HOUSING QUESTION 35 sewers, and architect’s fees. Assume the rate of interest ­ at 5 per cent, (it will almost certainly fall below this). Add f per cent, sinking fund. Loan charges will thus be £33 a year. Assume rent so low as 8s. a week. The charge to be added for repairs, voids, and management will then, by statutory regulation, not exceed 2s. a week, or £5 a year. The balance sheet is then as follows :— Income. Expenditure. £ s. d. £ s- d - Rent (at 8s. a week) 21 o o Loan Charges ... 33 0 0 Penny rate, say ... 4 0 0 Repairs, voids. “ Loss " falling on management ... 500 the Exchequer 13 0 0 £38 0 0 0 0 00 CO The annual loss above is £13 os. od. The Minister of Health, whenever he refers to it, calls it £60 a year (in House of Commons, nth May, 1921, and again on nth August, 1921). Why ? To frighten the House of Commons and the country, and to persuade them to break their solemn election and parliamentary promises that they will properly re-house the poor. Suppose the Government were to carry out their promises and build all the houses needed. This number ­ was estimated by Local Authorities at 911,000 throughout Britain. This would mean building another 735,000. The annual loss on these, if their production were spread over a number of years and the pace were not forced, would be £9,500,000 a year. A country 36 THE HOUSING QUESTION that can spend £140,000,000 a year (the reduced figures n< after the Geddes cuts) on the fighting services can P 1 spend £9,500,000 on making us an Ax nation, whereby Vi incidentally two private soldiers would become as good tl fighters as three of our present population can be. ei A warning may here be given against accepting 01 without investigation the statements recently circu- 01 lated by the Ministry of Health that the cost of houses is to-day is less than £400 and approaching a figure at c: which private enterprise can build for an economic f< rent without assistance. cl In the first place these abnormally low tenders are generally offered only for a few houses by an odd firm 0 or two, who have already got their plant on the ground " and wish to keep a section of their men at work for a b while. Such offers cannot be considered normal market prices until made upon a large scale. In the second place, the house for which such tenders are offered is always of a non-parlour type, and will be found also to be one with abnormally small rooms and greatly reduced amenities (as recently encouraged by the Ministry), far below the standards set by the Ministry and by informed public opinion in 1919. And finally to refute the fallacy that the capital cannot be found. Of course, if we are going to persist in the mistake of the present Government and try | and build all the houses the country wants in three 1 years, we shall, besides sending up builders' prices to a fabulous figure, exhaust the supply of Capital, except ' at a ruinous rate of interest. But why do this ? Why t THE HOUSING QUESTION 37 not take the sensible course of spreading the building programme of 735>ooo more houses over, say, 10 years ? We shall then only have to borrow annually in capital thirty or forty millions a year. And are we not entitled to say that a nation which spends annually on drink and tobacco five or six hundred millions, on cinemas as much more, and which can raise in new issues of capital three or four hundred millions a year, can certainly afford the nine millions annually needed for “ losses ” incurred in re-housing the working classes ? It should not be forgotten, too, that the building of working-class houses greatly stimulates the trades which supply furniture, cutlery, linen, etc. The benefit to the nation in such ways is incontestable. EIGHTH EXCUSE That more Houses cannot be built for Lack of Labour NINTH EXCUSE That the Operatives of the Building Trades are generally idlers, whereas Building Contractors have generally been content with a Normal Profit These two statements may well be considered together. 38 THE HOUSING QUESTION As regards the former, what again are the facts ? The facts to-day are these : that whereas in August, 1921, 148,026 skilled operatives were being employed on Council houses, this figure had dropped in June, 1922, to 66,651. What had become of the other 81,000 ? Had they gone to private building ? Everyone ­ knows that there is less private building than months ago. What are the 81,000 doing ? d They are mostly drawing unemployment allowance. ti They are costing this country about £700,000 a month. b In addition to this it is possible that the actual number \ of unemployed building trade operatives immensely v exceeds these 81,000, for the Housing Schemes of Local Authorities have probably never employed more than / a fraction of the operatives, and it is unquestionable ii that private building has also declined, probably to ( a greater extent proportionally than has Housing. The number of operatives in the building trade in England and Wales is between eight and nine hundred thousand. Last autumn the Prime Minister announced that the Cabinet affirmed that the building trade would be kept employed up to the limit of its capacity in the Housing Schemes of Local Authorities. Let us again quote i the oft-quoted words of Mr. Lloyd George in the debate ; in the Commons on the 21st July, 1921, when he in- 1 duced members to vote for the policy of approving no more housing contracts :— ] " The present commitments will fill up the building trade for 18 months—in Scotland, I am told, for two years. What will THE HOUSING QUESTION 39 be the result ot this policy ? Not a single house the less will be built for 18 months in England, and for two years in Scotland.” And again in the same speech :— “ We are only now crying a halt—not to stop building. There will not be a single house the less built. On the contrary 'here will be more houses built. . . .” " Not a single house the less.” And in June, eleven months later, more than 80,000 of the building trade are unemployed. Could not these men be building houses, houses that to-day cost £500 or less ? Was it the House of Commons that the Prime Minister was deceiving, or only himself ? The same question may be asked in respect of Sir Alfred Mond. On 14th July, 1921, he made the following ­ deliberate pronouncement to the House of Commons :— “ We are endeavouring to review the situation at a time—and I want the House particularly to note this—at a time when sufficient ­ contracts have been approved to give occupation for at least 18 months to the whole of the building facilities of the country. The approval of more contracts would not provide in the next 18 months any appreciably increased number of new houses." Eleven months after this statement there is great and increasing unemployment in the building trade, and yet the Government will allow practically no more houses to be begun. The fact of the matter is that the people of England have been deceived, are being deceived, and, if Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Alfred Mond and members of the Cabinet can manage it, will continue to be deceived. 40 THE HOUSING QUESTION Now for the ninth excuse. It is true that for some time after the war, working men, not only in the building trade but in all trades, were giving a reduced output. That is one of the results of a five years' war. It tires men. It demoralises men. It often kills men or reduces their efficiency through wounds and disease. Were working men the only portion of this community who felt the reaction after the war ? Did the upper and middle classes pull their full weight in 1919 and 1920 ? Let it be remembered that the building trade operatives were not a protected occupation ­ in the war. They went to fight in large numbers. There was even a time when we were thankful to them for fighting for their Country. To a large number of people, however, including the present Minister of Health, they are merely an object of criticism, as for instance, on July 21st, 1921, the Minister said in reply to Mr. Clynes :— “ I feel in duty bound to point out that the reason we have made so little progress with housing has been the extraordinary low output of the building industry.” Well, if that is so, what has brought the price of houses down from £950 to £500 in a year ? The reason is two-fold. Firstly, builders have had to cease profiteering. Secondly, workmen have immensely ­ increased their output. With regard to the former, it is a most significant fact that, on a certain occasion, builders throughout the kingdom, dropped their prices by more than £150 in a fortnight. The occasion was this : In February, THE HOUSING QUESTION 4i 1921, the Ministry of Health were permitting Local Authorities to enter into contracts for subsidised parlour-type houses for £950—and often more. At the end of that month Dr. Addison struck. He refused from that date to approve prices for such houses at more than £800. Within a fortnight this decision became known to building contractors throughout the country, and by the middle of March tenders were being sent in freely for the same type of house at about £795 • Had the output of Labour so suddenly increased as to account for this self-denying ordinance ? Of course not. Output, it is true, was increasing and had been doing so for many months, but not by jumps of £150 in a fortnight, which would represent a suddenly increased output of some 4° P er cent. It is as clear as daylight that, for months before the Addisonian axe fell, builders had been pocketing a nice little sum per house, approaching £150, in addition to the fair normal profit, which they no doubt calculated to obtain on their £800 tenders in March, 1921. This extraordinary incident has never been referred to by the Minister, and the public know nothing of it. It is astonishing, in view of the foregoing, to find the important Departmental Committee on the High Cost of Building Working-Class Dwellings (Cd. 1447) report in August, 1921, as follows :— " Although there are no doubt cases of builders having obtained favourable contracts, yielding more than normal profit, we think that this condition must be exceptional. . . . There is certainly 42 THE HOUSING QUESTION no evidence that prices at the time of contract included any excessive ­ 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 THE HOUSING QUESTION 43 Finally, as to the men’s output. The steady fall of prices in a year from £950 to £500 tells its own tale. Every architect and surveyor in England knows how greatly output has increased in the last 18 months. Charts prepared by a Ministry of Health official, from statistics covering the erection of thousands of houses between June and November, 1921, shewed that in that period the output of plasterers and bricklayers increased by 50 per cent., and of slaters by 75 per cent. Let us quote the witness of the National Housing and Town Planning Council on this subject (their Weekly Statement of 16th April, 1921) :— “ Enquiries made over a large number of areas demonstrate the erroneous character of many statements made as to the number of bricks laid per day. The normal number of bricks laid in cottage schemes is over 500 per day. “ Over the whole of the Manchester City Council schemes on which 475 bricklayers are now employed (as compared with 48 last summer) the average is greater than this. " In a typical Home Counties town (Aylesbury) the Chairman of the Housing Committee—a builder—states that the average has never fallen below 600 a day. " Concerning the possibilities of laying a greater number of bricks per day in cottage work, it is pointed out that there is much misunderstanding. A modern ' Balbus' can lay 1,000 bricks a day in the construction of a simple wall surrounding an estate. But the most skilful bricklayer cannot greatly exceed 200 a day in the construction of the flues of a cottage chimney carried through the roof. “ For this and similar reasons, those familiar with the actual operations of cottage building regard with a large measure of good-humoured scepticism the stories which are told, wherever male gossips congregate, as to the sins of the bricklayers. These 44 THE HOUSING QUESTION stories are regarded by men of practical building experience as demonstrating little more than the lack of real knowledge on the part of those who give currency to them.” To-day the output of labour is practically at pre-war standard, but the Government continue to refuse to authorise the building of more houses. An important reason for the lesser output of building operatives in 1919 and 1920, but one which has never properly been allowed for, is the inadequate production of materials in those years. If stacks of materials are not to be had on the ground, it is useless to expect a high output. But let us get to the real cause of the lack of progress of the Housing Schemes of Local Authorities. That cause was the private demand for building labour after the war. Two main factors brought about this demand:— (1) The fact that for five years no repair or decoration work had been done throughout the country. (2) The desire of business firms to extend and beautify their premises, very largely to escape paying to the Treasury Excess Profits Tax. So powerful were these influences that, so late as the end of 1920, only 10 per cent, of the building labour in the country was employed on working-class houses. Even last year, after the slump and the removal of the Excess Profits Tax, only about 150,000 out of 900,000 were so employed; to-day many less. Very early in the life of the scheme the Government were warned by their own officials that the erection of THE HOUSING QUESTION 45 houses was being hopelessly retarded through rich clients and contractors luring away labour for their private work, by offering higher wages, and by other methods of cold-shouldering housing schemes (not least of which was the influence of builders and their friends elected on Local Authorities). An Act known as the Housing (Additional Powers) Act was passed later in 1919, a section (No. 5) of which empowered Local Authorities to prohibit private building if it could be shewn to be interfering with their housing scheme. This section was a total failure, for three reasons :— (1) Local Authorities were unwilling to work it. Anyone who knew how local interests are favoured by local Councillors could have foreseen how impossible it would be to expect men to take the bread out of the mouths of their friends whom they met every day in the street. (2) The Act only allowed Authorities to move against private building within their own area. But the common trouble was that a big firm in a neighbouring area lured labour away. The Law forgot this—or intended to forget it. (3) The Section allowed an appeal to the Ministry if a prohibition order were made by a Local Authority, but the wording of the Section was so badly drawn that these appeals were practically always successful. Why the Section was so worded that a coach and six could be drawn through it, it would be interesting to know. Perhaps the big business interests in the present House of Commons could say. 46 THE HOUSING QUESTION Dr. Addison, who was the Minister, saw clearly where the trouble lay, and in 1920 introduced a Bill (the Housing " Miscellaneous Provisions ” Bill) which gave power to the central authority (the Ministry, working through its Regional Commissioners) to prohibit private building which interfered with the erection of working-class houses. This is what should have been done from the first. This Bill also provided that Local Authorities might combine together to prohibit building in their joint or respective areas. This provision would also have been of much value. The House of Lords threw this Bill out and it was never revived. In 1921, Sir Alfred Mond repealed Section 5 of the “ Additional Powers " Act. Big business had won, thanks to their friends in the House of Lords and in the Coalition Government. This is by far the most potent cause of the poor progress made by the Government Housing Scheme. NOTES ON THE FOREGOING, The following quotation from the Housing debate on 13th March, 1922, is indicative of the Minister’s desire to attack building trade operatives without ascertaining the facts :— Sir A. Mond : . We have completed already a relatively small part of our 176,000 houses, and one reason they are not getting finished is that we cannot secure the plasterers. I would like to read to the Committee a letter from the Deputy-Chairman ere :he Lve mg bit of :en cal ng ild yas :he in, :he mt mt ite t’s )Ut ely not uld ian THE HOUSING QUESTION 47 of the Manchester Housing Committee. He does not want more houses ; he wants more plasterers. He says : " ' The scheme was begun in July, 1919. There are now 2,020 men engaged on the scheme, of whom 195 are plasterers. Altogether 2,000 houses have been begun, of which 890 are finished. Of the remainder, 1,137 are roofed in, 364 are awaiting plasterers, and have been in some cases for six months.’ " I am told there are unemployed plasterers ! Why do no* you get them into Manchester ? . . . " The letter goes on : " ' An attempt has been made, without success ’—this is important, ­ and I hope the Hon. Member will note it—' to induce the local Federation to vary the demarcation under which the different sections of the trowel trades work so as to overcome the delay caused by shortage of plasterers. Eighty plasterers could be kept in full employment for six months.’ " Why cannot you get over the line of demarcation ? ” Mr. William Graham : " Is it not the case that in Manchester an agreement has been reached under which if there is an insufficiency ­ of plasterers, bricklayers will do the work, and should not that be brought out ? " Sir A. Mond : " If the Hon. Member has information to that effect I accept it, and am very pleased to have it. . . .” As an example of the standard of intelligence of Ministers on Housing, the following conversation in the House of Commons, on 2nd March, 1921, is worth recording:— Mr. Waterson asked the Minister of Labour, seeing that the Government are arranging for dilution in the building trade, if he is prepared to draft legislation to prevent unemployment in such industry ; and, if not, what hopes has he that the men employed as dilutees will be able to secure a livelihood in the future ? 48 THE HOUSING QUESTION Dr. Macnamara : " Unemployment in the building industry at the present moment is of very small proportions, apart from those occupations which are either particularly liable to seasonal fluctuations in demand or have been specially affected by the shortage of craftsmen in the key trades of the industry. There appears to be no need for special legislation to be adopted for the building industry.” Mr. Watbrson : " Am I to understand that these men, who have been put into the industry and trained somewhat at the expense of the taxpayers, will probably, in the course of two years’ time, find themselves on the streets without any employment at all ? ” Dr. Macnamara : “ My Hon. Friend is not to understand that at all, and he will understand this rather remarkable fact that, of all the crafts I know of, there are only two, even in the present grave state of industrial depression, where the number of vacancies offered is smaller than the number of men offered. These two are the bricklayers and the plasterers." Now, on the 17th February, the same Minister had given the following statement as to unemployment in the Building Trade on that date :— Dr. Macnamara : " The number of men in the building trades of the United Kingdom on the live register of Employment Exchanges at 3rd February, the latest for which figures are available, ­ is as follows :— " (I give also the vacancies notified). Numbers Vacancies Unemployed. Offered. Carpenters 3.524 817 Bricklayers 238 5.576 Masons 74° 266 Slaters 154 8O Plasterers 228 774 Painters 25,514 55 Plumbers 1,808 147 Labourers ... • ... 32,016 26 " THE HOUSING QUESTION 49 It will be noticed that Dr. Macnamara’s statement is just the opposite of his figures, whereby his whole argument is invalidated. Another interesting specimen of lack of clear thinking ­ is to be found in the following replies in the House of Commons, relative to Building Guilds. It should be prefaced by the explanation that for a considerable period there had been complaints by advocates of Building Guilds, firstly that the Minister was not allowing them a sufficient number of schemes to work at, and secondly that he was keeping the House of Commons in ignorance of the fact that houses erected by the Guilds worked out cheaper than those erected by contractors. iZth February, 1921. Mr. Charles Edwards asked the Minister of Health if he will state why only 16 housing schemes were permitted to be erected under the building guild system ; what are the reports from the local authorities for whom the guild is building houses ; whether general satisfaction is given both as to the time taken and the workmanship put into such schemes ; and if he will consider withdrawing all restrictions which prevent local authorities from adopting the above, or direct labour, or any other scheme which appears to them locally to be best ? Dr. Addison : " I have agreed to twenty housing contracts being carried out under the Guild System, not sixteen. The contracts at present being carried out have not advanced very far, but so far as I have information Local Authorities are satisfied as to the progress and workmanship. The system, however, is still in an experimental stage, and until I am satisfied that the Guilds will build houses quickly and economically I am not prepared to sanction contracts in excess of twenty. A revised form of contract will also be required." 50 THE HOUSING QUESTION 16th March, 1921. Major Kelley asked the Minister of Labour if he is aware that operatives employed on building guilds’ contracts are laying 900 bricks per day, while on private contracts they will not lay more than 300 ; can he state approximately what difference in time this will make in completion ; what reduction in cost there would be in housing schemes ; and can the Government now use all possible means to see that trained or semi-trained ex-service men are absorbed in the building trade ? Dr Addison : " There is considerable variation in the output of bricks obtained in various schemes. The Building Guilds state that they have obtained a high average in certain schemes and the same is true of some contractors’ schemes. I have no evidence that there is any such difference as the Hon. and Gallant Member suggests between the output obtained on Guild and other contracts. " An increase of output from zoo to 900 bricks a day would be equivalent on the average to a saving of approximately two months in the time taken to complete the houses in a scheme and to a saving in cost of about ^70 a house.” Lieut. -Commander Kenworthy : " Why not give greater facilities to the Guilds ? ” Dr. Addison : " There are many difficulties in presenting a proper statement on this matter. The number of Guild schemes is so small that it is difficult to make a fair comparison. We are getting such information as we can, and I will give it to the House as soon as I have it.” Could anything be more astonishing than for a Minister to say that he will not allow further houses to Guilds until he is satisfied with their work, and, in another reply, to say that he cannot find out how they are progressing because they are at work on so few. Or take the case of dilution of the building trade. THE HOUSING QUESTION Zi On the 17th October, 1920, Dr. Addison, in the Sunday Times, vigorously attacked Labour for its unwillingness to agree to dilution, in the following passage :— " Looked at purely from the point of view of sectional selfpreservation, the attitude of the Unions is superficially reasonable. Unemployment has been the bugbear of the trade in the past, and they have often been very badly treated. The contention is that, if the personnel is to be unduly inflated now,unemployment will be even more rife when the present demand is satisfied. The contention is reasonable only on the surface ; because it deliberately ignores the fact that the demand for dwelling-houses alone is sufficient under the most favourable conditions of progress to provide steady work for a largely increased number of workers for a long period of years to come.” Have ever a man’s rash words come home more quickly to roost ? Where to-day is the “ steady work for a largely increased number of workers for a long period of years to come ? " The Labour Party knew their Coalition Ministry better than Dr. Addison did, even when he was a member of it. (He knows them better now.) The far-sightedness and shrewd caution of Labour has saved the building operatives from an intensity of unemployment far worse than that from which they now suffer. It would, however, be unjust not to remind the reader of the way in which Dr. Addison resigned office last year rather than be a party to the reactionary policy and broken pledges of his former colleagues, and of the continual fight he has since made on the platform and with his pen for a return to an adequate Housing policy. 52 THE HOUSING QUESTION The following questions and replies in the House of Commons throw a ray of light on Sir Alfred Mond’s familiarity with his subjects :— loth August, 1921. Mr. Trevelyan Thomson asked the Minister of Health whether he has recently sanctioned the erection of a further 456 houses, more or less, in Newcastle-on-Tyne ; and whether he can now see his way to grant the application of the Middlesborough County Borough Council for the erection of zoo more houses, seeing that the housing shortage and resulting overcrowding is as severe in Middlesborough as in Newcastle-on-Tyne ? Sir Alfred Mono : “ I have agreed to tenders being obtained for the erection of a further zoo to 400 houses at Newcastle-on-Tyne. In view of the large number of houses contracted for at Middlesborough which is still to be completed, I have advised the Local Authority that their proper course is to concentrate at present on the houses already sanctioned and to leave open the question of additional houses till these are nearer completion.” Mr. Thomson : “ Is the Right Hon. Gentleman aware that owing to his refusal to sanction these houses a number of bricklayers ­ and others in the building trade are out of work, and receiving unemployment pay ? ” Sir Alfred Mono : " They might go to work at Newcastle' then." From his last reply it is clear that the Minister of Health conceives that working men can at any time change their home, with or without their families, and go and live elsewhere. One wonders how he would care to do so himself. One wonders, too, whether he had made any enquiry as to the availability of living accommodation for more workmen at Newcastle. It is time that Ministers realised that working men are human beings like themselves. THE HOUSING QUESTION 53 TENTH EXCUSE That a Housing Bureaucracy is Ignorant, Idle and Expensive, ELEVENTH EXCUSE That Control by Local Authorities is necessarily Slow and Inefficient, TWELFTH EXCUSE That the Architects are mainly responsible for the Failure of the Government Housing Scheme. These three errors may be analysed together. They are the usual case put forward by the Federation of Building Trade Employers, Chambers of Commerce, the National Union of Manufacturers, the Federation of British Industries, the Middle Classes’ Union, the Daily Mail, “ Taxpayer,” “ Mother of Seven,” the Carlton Club, the Anti-Socialist Union, and Mr. Horatio Bottomley. The twelfth excuse is the private property and invention of Sir Charles Ruthen, Director General of Housing, political ally of Sir Alfred Mond, and— until he brought this charge against his own profession, but not afterwards—President of the Society of Architects. “ Business men,” all of them claim to be—except perhaps " Mother of Seven,” and hers is generally the temporarily assumed title of a local tradesman who objects to paying his income tax. 54 THE HOUSING QUESTION Let us first investigate the credentials of the critics. There was, not so long ago, an investigation by a Government Committee* of the finance of those companies who make it their business to insure poor people and the working classes. That Committee reported that, for every £i paid in by the insured persons in premium, about nine shillings never came back to them in benefits, but were eaten up in the running expenses of the Companies and their profits, very largely accruing through lapsed policies. Now let us compare with this 45 per cent, of total income spent in overhead charges and profit the cost of the whole of the regional Housing officials set to work by the Government in 1919, to represent the taxpayer throughout Britain and to urge on, supervise and control the building of the first 200,000 houses. This cost, according to a reply in the Commons by the Minister in 1921, was £323,647 a year. As far as one can ascertain this worked out at from £3 to £5 per house built, i.e., less than half of one per cent.— proportionally one hundredth part of what business men appear to charge for their overhead expenses in insurance ! Nor is this the whole story. It is a fact that the Government housing officials, through their close technical supervision of plans, estimates, tenders and contracts, saved an amount per house to the taxpayer vastly exceeding the few pounds their service cost. * The Parmoor Departmental Committee of the Board of Trade which reported on 19th February, 1920, Cmd. 6x4. The present Government have done nothing to remedy the criminal state of things shown up by this Committee two years ago. THE HOUSING QUESTION 55 It is no exaggeration to say that, had it not been for these officials, houses would have cost on an average £50 more than they did. Few, except the officials of Local Authorities, know the energy, patience and financial and technical common-sense brought to bear by the Government’s Housing Officials on the vast and novel problems which had to be dealt with after the war. These men had to build up their own organisation and methods. During the “ hustle" period, which lasted from the Spring of 1919 to the end of 1920, they never rested. Ten to twelve hours a day was their common lot. They were almost all ex-officers, and their clerks too were ex-servicemen. They entered the service of reconstructing England with the same keenness which they had shewn in previous years in fighting for her. They were none too well paid. The technicians—architects, quantity surveyors and the like—drew salaries distinctly below those of their brethren in private practice. And in spite of abuse they worked on. The abuse came generally from quarters which found the existence of these men somewhat detrimental to the high level of trade profits. At conferences which constantly took place between Government Quantity Surveyors and Builders to settle the prices of houses, it was no uncommon ­ thing for the agreed price to be £200 or more below that tendered by the builders when they entered the conference room, and these reductions were effected without reducing materially the size and amenities of the houses. 56 THE HOUSING QUESTION No, there were not too many of this kind of official. There were too few. Owing to the procrastination and niggardliness of the Treasury—in its best penny-wiseand pound-foolish style—Housing Commissioners had to fight the taxpayers’ battle with too few and underpaid ­ quantity surveyors. For want of staff the flood of tenders and of conferences to decide prices could not be got through without inordinate delay, and all the time the price was steadily rising in favour of the builder, under pressure of demand. Moreover, owing to the poor rates of pay offered by the Treasury, the builders had the pick of the technical professions— and gained far more profit than they should have done. Nor is it any more possible to maintain the eleventh excuse. In 1919, a new and better style of building working-class houses came into vogue. In many parts no building had taken place for twenty years or more. In others, and these the vast majority, only old and bad jerry-built types had been erected. Everywhere builders were timid after the war and workmen not always at their best. Architects had to get used to procedure and the new model plans and specifications. But once these difficulties had been surmounted—and it was extraordinary how quickly they were surmounted—plans, ­ tenders, and contracts were arranged far faster than builders could set men to work at them. All honour is due to the hard, self-sacrificing work of the permanent officials of Local Authorities in clearing away all obstacles and getting the houses actually begun and completed. The flow of contracts THE HOUSING QUESTION 57 did not really begin till the autumn of 1919. By the Spring of 1922, 100,000 houses are nearly completed. This rate compares well with most pre-war years, taking into account the reduced numbers and output of operatives and the abnormal demand for private building and repairs after the war. The twelfth excuse is, as has been remarked, the private property of Sir Charles Ruthen, whom Sir Alfred Mond, his ally in South Wales, appointed Director General of Housing. At an address which he gave in January, 1922, to the Society of Architects, of which he was then (but by desire of the Society no longer is) President, he said, firstly, that the prime responsibility for the failure of the Government Scheme rested on the shoulders of architects, and, secondly, that architects had profiteered in their schemes. There was a prompt rebuttal of these remarkable charges. The following letter in The Builder, February 10th, 1922, from a late Housing Commissioner, may be quoted :— Architects and Housing. " Sir,—With reference to the charges brought by Sir Charles Ruthen, Director General of Housing, against the architectural profession, I ought to narrate what was my experience while Housing Commissioner from March, 1919, to September, 1921 :— “ (a) The plans, &c., submitted by architects for the local authorities in the Region were very rarely in excess of the standard set in the ' Manual for State-Aided Houses ’ issued by the Ministry of Health in 1919, and in the model form of specification similarly issued. 58 THE HOUSING QUESTION “ (6) The Ministry, soon after the inception of the scheme, began reducing its own standards, and continued doing so until contracts were stopped in 1921. The policy of reducing amenities was never publicly given out, and architects could only become aware of it by finding their plans and quantities, drawn up in accordance with the Ministry’s Manual, cut down in the office of the Housing Commissioner. " (c) Commissioners continually advised the Ministry against this policy of attrition. " (d) The control of the situation was all along entirely in the hands of the Ministry through the Memoranda which it issued to the Commissioners. Any detail of plan or specification which exceeded the instructions (to Commissioners) of the Ministry was as a matter of course cut out. Moreover, even if the plans were in accordance with the Ministry’s standard at the time they were submitted, yet, if the lowest tender exceeded the Ministry's limits, the amenities were cut down still further by the Commissioner ­ under the orders of the Ministry. Not infrequently further excisions took place at the Ministry itself, after the plans, &c., had been passed by the Commissioner. " It must theref re be clear to any impartial person that the architectural profession is blameless in the matter. I am not an architect, nor am I now an official, and therefore may, perhaps, be considered to hold a neutral position. " Late Housing Commissioner for the South-West of England.” E. N. Mozley, Lieut-Colonel, RE. (retired). These three excuses are instigated by clever people who do know the facts (and like to misrepresent them) and are repeated by other people who do not. Running down men who work in the public service, whether Government or Local, is nowadays done by certain classes of society as a matter of deliberate policy. It is a clever game but an ungenerous one, and people 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 6o THE HOUSING QUESTION That Local Authorities, which say they do not want Houses, know best, and should be left alone Let us consider the former statement. It all depends bi on what you mean by " suffice.” Private enterprise it has to its " credit ” many notable achievements. be Houses, 40 or 50 to an acre. Seventy thousand backto-back houses in Leeds. An England flooded out with Gi two-bedroom cottages, whose families have to sleep nc three or more in a small bedroom. Long rows of se mean streets, where the front doors open on to the dc pavement and two-year old children play on the bi doorstep and risk their lives in the road. Back ext en- ot sions which deprive the main body of the house of 0 air and light; tiny paved yards or a wretched patch so of useless ground serving only as a waste-heap. Party- ai walls which it is dangerous to lean up against. Dark it stairs and small windows, and rooms low, small and 01 ill-ventilated. No doubt there are a lot of people in T England who think this sort of thing has " sufficed ” bi for the working classes. But the working classes do cc not think so. ai It is the peculiar glory of private building enterprise p; that it has been responsible for 95 per cent, of these “ homes for the people ”—" brick boxes with slate lids ” as John Burns once called them. cl Let us apply another test. How would it have done ti to have left to private enterprise, after the war, the h task of meeting the housing needs of the country ? si THE HOUSING QUESTION 61 How many houses, not the excellent cottages which have been built by Local Authorities, but just the good old-fashioned sort, would they have built ? How many —with prices what they were and the clamour for building and repairs by rich firms and individuals what it was ? Shall we say a thousand a year ? It would be a sanguine estimate. What has been done by private enterprise in America, Germany, France and Italy since the war ? Practically nothing. This fact is known to every authority on the subject. And British private enterprise would have done about as much. Will those who oppose housebuilding ­ on estates by Local Authorities tell us by what other means modern, healthy lay-outs can be secured ? Of recent years builders of middle-class villas have found it has paid them to introduce some kind of art and amenity into the lay-out of an estate. But is it likely that speculative builders will take the trouble or afford the expense to do so in working-class houses ? They will do what they must to comply with local building by-laws and no more. The practice of converting Britain into a crowded and insanitary ant-heap will duly proceed. It has “ sufficed " in the past. Why should it not “ suffice " in the future ? And now for the fourteenth and last excuse. The Law as made in the 1919 Housing Act was clear. It became the statutory duty of Local Authorities ­ to submit and carry out an adequate scheme for housing the working classes in their area. It was further provided in the Act that, if a Local Authority — 62 THE HOUSING QUESTION which ought to submit and carry out a scheme failed to do so, the Ministry of Health could act for them, build the houses and charge the Local Authority with the whole (or any part) of the cost. We have already referred, in investigating the fourth excuse, to the futile conditions under which the average Rural Councillors are elected and how little they represent the working classes or consider their interests. In many Boroughs and Urban Councils the same thing, unfortunately, is true. Large numbers of Councillors did not approve of the Government Housing Scheme. When the Act first came into force in 1919 and the people of England remembered their debt to the ex-servicemen, and seemed determined to end the housing miseries of the poor, these Councillors lay low. But, as time passed and enthusiasm inevitably cooled and prices rose and difficulties accumulated, these men began to lift up their voices against what they called " senseless extravagance,” “ pandering to the poor ” and so on. They sat as Councillors, they voted as Councillors, but they argued politically on behalf of the taxpayer, not of the ratepayer. These men usurped the position of Members of Parliament ; they allowed their votes as to whether to proceed with Housing Schemes to be affected by their party politics and their private interests, and in Council after Council they killed or mutilated their housing schemes. It is true that Local Authorities had great difficulties to contend with. The Government was often very non-committal and vague as to the financial and legal THE HOUSING QUESTION 63 implications involved in the undertaking of a Housing Scheme. The Treasury’s refusal to allow drainage and water supply of the houses (except actually within the limits of the estate) to rank for subsidy was something ­ uncommonly like breach of faith. Nothing had been said about this limitation when the Bill was going through. Difficulties were put in the way of Local Authorities in their endeavour to obtain capital for their schemes from the Local Loans Fund (which, although a Government issue, is allowed to be administered ­ by a group of financiers who are very imperfectly under Government control). And many more difficulties ­ they had, causing irritation and suspicion in the minds of local men who in the past had often found their irritation well justified, and their suspicions well grounded (as they have again found in the present outcome of the Government Housing Scheme). But, allowing for this, many Councils deliberately defied the Law. They knew houses were badly wanted and they refused to build them. What is the history of the employment by the Minister of Health of the powers given to him by Parliament to act in default of Local Authorities ? Here is a reply on 18th February, 1920, in the House of Commons :— Mr. Leonard Lyle asked the Minister of Health whether he now possesses adequate powers to compel lethargic authorities to build houses where these are urgently needed ; and, if so whether he proposes to exercise these powers ? 64 THE HOUSING QUESTION Dr. Addison : " I would refer my Honourable Friend to the terms of the Housing, Town Planning, etc.. Act, 1919, under which I am empowered to authorise County Councils to act, or may act myself, in default of Local Authorities who do not take adequate steps to provide the houses needed in their areas. I have for some time been pressing backward authorities to expedite their schemes, and it is my intention to use my powers where this is necessary.” This looked like business. The first case of a refractory ­ Council was Bedford. There the Ministry held an Inquiry and actually defaulted the Council— for a day or two. But it was not very seriously meant. Bedford were let off, have no intention of completing their statutory Housing Scheme, and to-day the Minister would not allow them to do so, even if the Council were desirous. But only in a few cases were the Ministry as brave as at Bedford. On a certain number of occasions they caused to be written petulant and semi-threatening letters. But defiant Local Authorities soon got used to these and learnt how little harm came of ignoring them. When Sir Alfred Mond succeeded Dr. Addison, and completely altered the ship’s course, all dilatory Councils knew they were through their troubles and in smooth water again. Let there, however, be no mistake. Parliament, in 1919, gave powers of default to the Minister and intended ­ them to be used. Owing to the short-lived sincerity of the Coalition Government and their forgetfulness ­ of the promises upon which they rode into office, these powers were not used. It is entirely THE HOUSING QUESTION 65 disingenuous to say, as Ministers and Coalition Members too often say, that unwilling Local Authorities know best and should be let alone. Such Local Authorities know the facts perfectly well. The housing conditions and misery of the poorer of their constituents are patent everywhere. They know the facts but will not apply the remedy—because they believe that, as taxpayers, their pockets will be touched, and because Councillors are often slum-owners, or the friends of slum-owners, and know that new houses will lower the value of their own ignoble property. They prefer that the working classes shall remain miserable and in unhealthy conditions, rather than that they themselves and their friends should have to pay for improvements. All honour to the many Local Authorities and to the innumerable Councillors who have worked with a will to press on with their Housing Schemes. But there are others, and it is hypocritical to deny it. And the Coalition Government have protected them in their criminal neglect. NOTES ON THE FOREGOING. The following quotations from the Housing Debate of 13th March, 1922, give an indication of the present Minister of Health’s complaisant attitude towards private enterprise in cottage building, and what other people, including some of the supporters of his Government, think about it. 66 THE HOUSING QUESTION Mr. Trevelyan Thomson “ The Minister, in a reply to me last Thursday, said : “ ' . . . In view of the large programme of housing still to be completed ’—that is, the 176,000 houses—' and the continued reduction in prices, I hope that further State intervention in any form will not be required, and that the building industry will return to its pre-war economic basis.’ . . ." Viscountess Astor : “... It must be confessed that, nationally, private enterprise has failed and failed lamentably in the matter of housing. ..." Sir Alfred Mond : "... I am convinced that with a little management and patience we can induce private enterprise to come in again. . . Lt.-Col. Fremantle (Coalition Conservative Member and Chairman of Housing Committee, L.C.C.) : "... So far as the Minister of Health makes any case, it is that, looking at the problem as a whole, we depended before the war on private enterprise to the extent of 95 per cent., and that we should get back to that as soon as we can. During my period on the Housing Committee of the London County Council I have been challenging those who advocate private enterprise to give us their scheme. They keep on saying that the Government is killing private enterprise in housing. I say it is not the Government which is killing private enterprise now, because private enterprise has not done any of this kind of work for 20 years, and would not do it at the present time even if the Government were not in business. . . ." Sir Alfred Mono : "... If you say it is also your duty to provide all the houses that did not exist before the war at the expense of the taxpayer and Treasury, when before the war any such housing schemes were done at the expense of the ratepayer ­ and the local authority, it is a fundamentally new axiom that one person is to own the houses and the other person is to pay for them ; one person to build and another to finance. . . This extract is significant as shewing what the present Minister of Health really thinks of any old-fashioned THE HOUSING QUESTION 67 proposal that the Government shall keep its promises to the ex-service men. Lord Robert Cecil : ". . . It is all very well to say that people ought to pay for their housing. So they ought to pay, perhaps, in one sense, for everything, but we, at any rate, in this country have very clearly laid it down that, for good or ill, there are many things in which the State shall assist the poorer citizens of the country. We have done it with regard to education and with regard to disease. We have done it with regard to housing in various ways. . . Finally, the National Housing and Town Planning Council, in their Report of August, 1921, say :— " It is all very well for critics to say that if the carrying into effect of this work had been left to the forces of enterprise a far larger number of houses would have been built at a much lower cost. “ This statement is absolutely out of keeping with the recorded facts concerning housing progress in other countries. “ In France and America home building for the poorer members of the community is at a standstill. In Belgium and Italy a certain measure of activity is being shewn by the State and Local Authorities acting in conjunction, but the actual achievements ­ are far below those of this country. Throughout the whole of Europe and America the cost of building is so high that private enterprise has ceased to operate, and the pressure of demand for remedial action is as great or greater than it is here.” The following quotations shew the brave words of Ministers in 1919, when boasting of how they would, as in duty bound, deal with Local Authorities who failed to carry out their Housing obligations, and their dwindling courage as time went on : 68 THE HOUSING QUESTION Dr. Addison, in moving the second reading of the Housing Bill on 7th April, 1919, said :— “The power is asked, where a local authority defaults, to either prepare a scheme or build the houses ourselves, and if that were the conduct of an Oriental potentate I daresay we should have less trouble in the East. Let us come to the proceedings of the Industrial Conference the other day, and what did they say ? The Report, signed by both employers and employed at that conference, on page 9, contains the following : ‘ In order to meet the present crisis, the Committee recommend that the Government should without delay proceed with a comprehensive housing programme. . . . The Committee urge that where the local authorities fail to utilise their powers to provide suitable housing accommodation the Local Government Board should take the necessary steps for the erection of suitable houses in the area of the authority, and special powers, if necessary, to compel authorities to act in accordance with the housing needs of the district. ’ " That is exactly what is in the Bill. Let me say this : the local authorities are only too anxious to get on with the work. I have had many conferences with them on this Bill, and we have always got on very happily together, without any difficulty or conffict. But many of them fully recognise that it is in the highest national interest that this power should be taken in the event of an authority failing to do its duty. There is no affront to the authorities in making this proposal. “ We have in this Bill some very unique and unusual provisions ­ which authorise the Ministry to act the part of and in place of the authority. At the same time it is coupled with provisions which give an altogether unprecedented measure of aid to local authorities in carrying out the duties which the Act casts upon them, and it is right that it should, and I think the House will expect me, if I am a Minister, to exercise that right and discharge that duty, and in the case of those who are neglecting this urgent national duty not to hesitate to call upon others to operate, if necessary, on their behalf. THE HOUSING QUESTION 69 " Where people do not do their duty in all walks of life we impose special conditions. I would like to ask the critics who described this power as that of an Oriental potentate what is going to happen ? Here we are prepared to find millions of money to assist in building houses, and if, in a certain area which shows that a certain need exists, the authority responsible for dealing with that area is not disposed to try to meet these needs, what are we going to do? Are we to stand by and do nothing? because that is the alternative. It is clear that the only thing we can do under such circumstances is to invite somebody else to step in and do the work. We propose that it may be the County Council, or it may be the central Government Department." But by April, 1921, the Cabinet had side-tracked Dr. Addison and his inconvenient desire to build houses. In that month, Sir Alfred Mond, the new Minister of Health, when addressing a deputation of the Association of Municipal Corporations, said:— " I think it would be premature to deal with the question now, but all I can say is that, as far as we are concerned, the default powers, which, of course, are rightly inserted in the Act to deal with people who should have moved, are not going to be used to compel local authorities to carry out ruinous schemes." As an example of Sir Alfred Mond’s methods of using the powers Parliament has given him and making Local Authorities do their duty, the case of St. Ives, in Cornwall, is of interest. In 1920, the Council determined to build 130 houses, employed an architect, obtained tenders, got them approved by the Ministry and actually signed contracts with the builders. In November, 1920, a new Council was elected, unfriendly to housing. Their problem was how to evade the signed contracts of their predecessors. They appealed 70 THE HOUSING QUESTION to the Minister, who not only allowed them to drop their whole scheme, but actually caused the taxpayer to dole out thousands of pounds to the architects and builders in compensation for the abandoned work ! Everyone in Cornwall knows the shocking housing conditions of St. Ives. It is a new proposal that the taxpayer should be mulcted in order that houses should not be erected. Nor is the case of St. Ives by any means unique. The present Minister has for nearly a year been employing ­ his staff to induce Local Authorities not to proceed with houses which the Ministry has fully approved. ■ ; l' MM i NEW R35S» PART II The Government’s Record in Slum Clearance " While the housing of the working classes has always been a question of the greatest social importance, never has it been so important as now. It is not too much to say that an adequate solution of the housing question is the foundation of all social progress. Health and housing are indissolubly connected. If this country is to be the country which we desire to see it become, a great offensive must be undertaken against disease and crime, and the first point at which the attack must be delivered is the unhealthy, ugly, overcrowded house in the mean street, which we all of us know too well. " If a healthy race is to be reared it can be reared only in healthy homes ; if infant mortality is to be reduced and tuberculosis to be stamped out, the first essential is the improvement of housing conditions ; if drink and crime are to be successfully combated, decent, sanitary houses must be provided. If ‘ unrest ’ is to be converted into contentment, the provision of good houses may prove one of the most potent agents in that conversion. . . So spoke the King by the advice of his present Ministers on nth April, 1919, at the start of the Government Housing Scheme. Let us see what the Government have done to make good His Majesty’s words. The law on the subject is clear. The 1919 Housing Act provided that all schemes technically known as Part I and Part II. i.e., Schemes providing for the clearance of slums and of unfit houses, were to be financially assisted by the Treasury precisely in the same manner as Part III Schemes (i.e., schemes for 73 74 THE HOUSING QUESTION erection of new houses). Thus a Local Authority would not have to pay for slum clearance out of its rates. Further, the Act provided that if a Local Authority failed to do its duty in slum clearance the Minister of Health was empowered to order it to be done, and, if the Authority failed to comply, then the Minister might carry out the scheme himself (or through the County Council). The financial regulations which accompanied the Act with the authority of the House of Commons, provided that Local Authorities were to have six years from August, 1919, to carry out their slum clearance schemes, or such further period as lack of labour and materials might necessitate. Great were the hopes held out by Ministers from time to time. Take these specimens of the utterances of the Government on the subject: Dr. Addison, Minister of Health, at the time of the passing of the Act, July, 1919 :— “ When the Housing Act has received the Royal Assent we shall at last be equipped with powers to deal with schemes and to tap in London that vast reservoir of accommodation which its empty houses afforded in many districts.” From the Ministry of Health official publication Housing for December 6th, 1920 :— " Under recent legislation the powers of local authorities and of the Ministry of Health in dealing with unfit houses and unhealthy ­ areas have been greatly strengthened, and assistance from the Exchequer is promised in cases where a re-housing scheme is carried out in connection with an improvement or THE HOUSING QUESTION 75 reconstruction scheme, subject to the work being done within the period prescribed by the Regulations issued under the Act. " So far as c rcumstances will permit, local authorities should begin the work now, though it may be on a comparatively small scale. They will thus acquire the necessary experience to enable them to cope with the task when the time arrives for more extensive ­ operations.” Dr. Addison, Minister of Health, at Exeter, Feb. 1921:— “ When other accommodation has been provided it would enable the sweeping away of a large number of slum areas.” And what during the two and a half years since the Act passed has taken place ? Not a slum has yet been cleared in the whole country. The total number of dwelling-houses in schemes of slum clearance submitted, ­ including those confirmed, is “ over 4,000, with a population approximately of 20,000" (Sir Alfred Mond in the House of Commons, 13th March, 1922). It would be safe to say that the numbers confirmed amount to perhaps a quarter of the above figures— probably less. Submission to the Ministry is by no means the same thing as approval. In 2^ years therefore, an attack on the slums of perhaps 5,000 people in all has been begun. Probably only a small number even of these have reached the stage of actual commencement of clearance ­ on the ground. It is a long step from “ confirmation ­ " by the Minister to commencement of demolition. Practically speaking the Government have done nothing worth recording in slum clearance in spite of all their brave words. 7 6 THE HOUSING QUESTION Take a typical and well-known instance—the Brady Street area in Bethnal Green. Early in 1919, Queen Alexandra visited this area, and as a consequence the Ministry of Health “ had their attention directed to it,” and presumably set to work. In a reply in the House of Commons on 29th June, 1921, 2^ years later, Sir Alfred Mond said that no decision had yet been given in regard to this scheme. Can procrastination ­ go further ? On 13th March, 1922, the Minister at length reported that “ a start had been made on the Brady Street Scheme.” However, Colonel Fremantle, a Conservative Coalition Member and Chairman of the Housing Committee of the London County Council, threw new light on this. He told the Minister that, although the Brady Street Scheme had been sanctioned two months before (January, 1922), the L.C.C. had heard nothing from the Ministry as regards approval of 17 other most urgent slum-clearance schemes, where enquiries had been held 18 months ago. He added, “ We were right behindhand with this slum business and waiting for a policy.” If such was the case in this famous slum, things elsewhere in the country are much worse. Not only has slum clearance practically nowhere begun, but the Minister would not during 1920 or 1921 consider slum clearance schemes at all, and at the beginning of the latter year sent his emissaries round the larger boroughs to implore them to rescind any “ resolutions ” proposing to proceed with such schemes. THE HOUSING QUESTION 77 Further than this, the Government, on 14th July, 1921, announced to the House of Commons that in future they would only give £200,000 a year towards the deficiency of all the Local Authorities in the Country together, in respect of improvement of slum areas. £200,000 a year! This meant practically the repeal of the 1919 Act by administrative order, as far as slum clearance was concerned. The " first point of attack ” of which the King spoke in the quotation at the beginning of this Part has definitely been stopped. Instead Sir Alfred Mond recommends Local Authorities to induce owners to patch up existing tenements—the larger part of them little better than hovels. The Ministry now find themselves unable to approve slum clearance schemes because they cannot find schemes small enough to come within this precious figure ! The usual excuse offered for the inaction of the Ministry up to now in respect of slum clearance is that slum dwellers cannot be cleared out until new houses have been built to which they can remove. The entire insincerity of this argument can be shewn by the following considerations :— (a) The Ministry have discouraged Local Authorities from even preparing and submitting plans for slum clearance. It may be taken that the period which would generally elapse between first consideration of a slum-clearance proposal by the technical officers 78 THE HOUSING QUESTION of a Local Authority, in conjunction with the Housing or Health Committee, through the protracted stages of negotiation for and valuation of land, consideration of alternative plans, questions of compensation, obtaining ­ of tenders, and the discussion with and approval by the Ministry of all these stages up to signing of contracts with builders, would be two years. If the Government had ever been in earnest they would have encouraged Local Authorities everywhere to begin working out these details, so that they might be ready to carry out the clearances by the time sufficient new houses had been erected. (b) The removal of the review of all slum-clearance schemes from the Ministry’s Regional Headquarters to Whitehall. The Ministry’s technical and administrative ­ staff in London is totally inadequate in numbers to cope with any real volume of slum-clearance schemes. They would be choked in the bottle-neck. (c) The gross disproportion between the number of unfit houses, schemes for the demolition of which have up to date been confirmed by the Ministry, and the need of the Country. And, most important of all:— (d) The stoppage of contracts for more new houses. The Ministry have deliberately excluded in their revised statement of needs any houses to replace unfit ones. The argument therefore runs thus : Slum-Dwellers : “ When will you clear our slums ? " Minister of Health :—“ When we have built houses we can move you to.” THE HOUSING QUESTION 79 Slum-Dwellers (2 years later) : " Can you start now ? " Minister of Health : " We’ve stopped building houses, so you must stay where you are.” In view of this refusal of the Government to provide the necessary money to work the Act, it is poignant to read of the way people are to-day existing in Great Britain. The following is an extract from the report of the Royal Commission on Housing in Scotland in 1917 " These are the broad results of our survey : unsatisfactory sites of houses and villages, insufficient supplies of water, unsatisfactory ­ provision for drainage, grossly inadequate provision for the removal of refuse, widespread absence of decent sanitary conveniences, the persistence of the unspeakably filthy privymidden in many of the mining areas, badly constructed, incurably damp labourers' cottages on farms, whole townships unfit for human occupation in the crofting counties and islands, primitive and casual provision for many of the seasonal workers, gross overcrowding and huddling of the sexes together in the congested industrial villages and towns, occupation of one-room houses by large families, groups of lightless and unventilated houses in the older burghs, clotted masses of slums in the great cities. To these add the special problems symbolised by the farmed-out houses, the model lodging-houses, congested back-lands, and ancient closes. To these, again, add the cottages a hundred years old in some of the rural villages, ramshackle brick survivals of the mining outbursts of seventy years ago in the mining fields, monotonous miners’ rows flung down without a vestige of townplan or any effort to secure modem conditions of sanitation, ill-planned houses that must become slums in a few years, old houses converted without necessary sanitary appliances and 8o THE HOUSING QUESTION proper adaptation into tenements for many families, thus intensifying ­ existing evils, streets of new tenements in the towns developed with the minimum regard for amenity. ; . This account of Scottish slums can be matched all over England and Wales. Here is Sir Robert Newman, H.P., a Conservative Coalitionist, speaking in the House of Commons, 2 ist July, 1921:— " I feel that possibly I may be more unfortunately situated than some Members in that I openly admit that at the last General Election one of the chief planks of my platform was that I would do all in my power to remove slums and bad dwellings. If I had not taken up that position, I should have felt happier than I do to-night. Although I am fully aware of the vast importance of economy, I am bound to admit that when we come to the question of the housing of the people, we have got something to consider as well as economy. It is a matter of life and death. Some Members have spoken as though they had not seen any slums. I venture to think there are not many Members of this House who have not visited slums in their constituencies, and become aware of the state of affairs in these districts. “ I have visited houses which have impressed me most deeply with the fact that I cannot imagine how people live in them at all, with their rickety stairs and wretched conditions. But I know they do, and I have wondered how they get people downstairs ­ when they die in these houses. I have also had the advantage ­ of a chart very carefully got out by a medical officer. Some Hon. Gentlemen may laugh at these facts, but they are very serious and impressive. I look at the chart which this medical officer has drawn up with little black marks for tuberculosis cases. I have seen in the better-class districts very few of these black marks, but when you examine the slums you find the marks practically jostling each other, so closely are they packed. Under these circumstances, I do say that we have a question of THE HOUSING QUESTION 81 life a»d death, of decency and indecency, because you cannot have decent people without decent houses. I do say we must approach this question, not from the point of view of pounds, shillings and pence merely, but from the point of view of humanity also." In August, 1921, a woman left her miserable temporary shack on the mountain-side at Pontypool to throw herself and her baby into a pond, saying she was tired to death of the struggle for life in such wretched surroundings. Near Newquay, a man with six children had to house his wife in a canvas-covered dug-out in a wild and deserted valley while she brought forth her seventhborn. There was no room for her even at the inn. The Minister was appealed to with a view to allowing the Local Authority to put up an Army hut for their dwelling, but he refused. The Medical Officer of Health recently reported that at Kemerton in the Rural District of Tewkesbury, a woman, who was being confined, had to have an umbrella held over her all the time, owing to the terrible condition of the cottage. She cannot get another house, as the Minister refuses further houses for any rural area. But why multiply instances ? We house human beings in England as we would not house animals or even machines. Every elector knows the terrible circumstances in which so many of our fellow-creatures live, in town and country alike. The Government in 1919 solemnly undertook to sweep away the slums and F 82 THE HOUSING QUESTION unfit houses and to abolish all this misery by providing reasonable dwellings. Their failure has been deliberate, definite, and deadly. The electors and the electors alone can dismiss those who have so misused their office and reinstate an adequate programme of slum clearance, extending over an adequate period of time. Part III » 85 PART III The Gorernment’s Record for Truth and Justice An account will be given in this chapter of a variety of important matters relating to Housing, wherein the Government and more particularly its present Minister of Health, have, either by evasion or deliberately, deceived the House of Commons and the country ; and wherein they have shewn wilful bias. (i) The purchase of existing houses as dwellings for the working classes. Section 12 (1) of the Housing and Town Planning Act, 1919, gives powers to a Local Authority to acquire existing houses for the use of the working classes, and to alter, enlarge, repair or improve them so as to render them in all respects fit for habitation. There were three main classes of dwellings which this section had in view. In the first place large empty houses, which could be turned into working-class flats. In the second place, smaller houses which were being deliberately kept empty by landlords to obtain a high purchase price. In the third place, “ week-end cottages " by the seaside or in attractive rural scenery, which were tenanted and occasionally occupied by well-to-do people for week-ends, and were kept empty between whiles. 86 THE HOUSING QUESTION The following quotations shew what the Government have said about these questions. We will see directly what they have done : From the official journal of the Ministry of Health Housing, dated 16th August, 1919. " Conversion of Houses into Flats. " The Ministry are prepared to sanction loans to Local Authorities ­ to enable them to carry out schemes of conversion, and if it is found impracticable to render the Scheme self-supporting, the scheme will rank for financial assistance from the Government as part of the Housing Scheme of the Local Authority.” Extract from a reply by the Minister of Health in the House of Commons, 3rd August, 1921. " Where houses are being kept empty by owners for advantageous ­ sale in the future. Local Authorities have power to purchase compulsorily, and I have urged thousands of Authorities all over the country to acquire these properties wherever they can.” On 13th March, 1922, Mr. J. Jones, M.P., asked the Minister the following question as to empty houses :— “ Is the Right Hon. Gentleman aware of the fact that we have a number of empty houses in various parts of London, and the only way we can get occupancy is by buying them, and the great mass of people cannot afford to buy them ? ” Sir Alfred Mond, in his reply, stated that Local Authorities have power to purchase these houses. Similarly, when the House of Commons was, so lately as May nth, 1921, considering the clause of a Bill to authorise Local Authorities compulsorily to rent houses, which were deliberately being kept empty THE HOUSING QUESTION 87 by owners, Sir Alfred Mond argued against such a course on the explicit ground that Local Authorities under Section 12 (1) of the 19x9 Act, could purchase such houses compulsorily. He remarked :—“ None of the Members have dealt with the question that under Section 12 of the Housing Act, 1919, a Local Authority can buy and retain houses compulsorily.” Actions, however, speak louder than words. Conversion ­ of large houses into flats has practically everywhere ­ been a failure. Many Local Authorities must take their share of blame for this, as the policy has been widely resisted by them on the grounds that the neighbouring middle-class residents would object to the working classes coming to live near them, and that the value of the adjacent property would be depreciated. But the Government had the powers given to them by Parliament of compelling the conversion ­ of these innumerable empty houses and have done nothing in the matter. The houses are there and the poor are homeless. But the Government’s record has been worse than this. When Local Authorities requested the Ministry to be allowed to buy and convert such empty houses or week-end cottages, the Ministry have replied that they would only allow this course to be adopted if the Local Authority paid out of its rates the net cost of purchase and conversion. This is a direct contradiction ­ of the promise given in the quotation at the beginning of this account, and, indeed, of the provisions ­ of the Act, which in Section 7 states that all 88 THE HOUSING QUESTION Re-housing Schemes shall be fully subsidised by the h Treasury. A The Minister of Health has thus by his administrative s action defied the Act, and to all intents and purposes o entirely stopped the possibility of the use of small u empty houses by Local Authorities for their working 1 classes. The breach of faith is gross. q (2) The reduction of amenities and of the size of rooms. ^ The following reply was given in the House of Commons on nth May, 1921 :— I Mr. Gillis asked the Minister of Health whether the Ministry r are now obtaining tenders for houses on housing schemes at ^300 L less per house than in September last by cutting out all Type “ B " parlour houses and substituting Class “A” non-parlour ( houses ; omitting all dressers, cupboards, etc., reducing the size of rooms ; and cutting out upstairs bath-rooms and lavatory basins and placing bath in scullery, to be fed from washing copper, C thus doing away with all hot-water service. g Sir A. Mono : “ The reductions which have been made in r tenders have in general been due to lower costs of production and not to the substitution of one type of house for another, and have not averaged so much as £300 per house. Modifications t in design have been advised where necessary to secure economy, ] but these have not been of such a character as is suggested.” j The last twelve words of the reply were definitely and categorically false. All the kinds of modification 1 suggested in Mr. Gillis’ question had been taking £ place constantly at the express instance of the Minister ^ of Health in his dealings with all Local Authorities. The utmost pressure was continuously brought to bear by the Regional Officials of the Ministry upon the THE HOUSING QUESTION 89 housing committees and technical officers of Local Authorities, to compel them to lower their housing standards, and on innumerable occasions approval of tenders and contracts was refused by the Ministry until modifications of the precise kind adverted to by Mr. Gillis had been made. The only inaccuracy in the question was the employment of the word “ all ” in respect of Type B houses and of dressers, cupboards, etc. The correct word he should have employed was " many." There is not a Councillor or official of a Local Authority throughout the kingdom who does not know well that Sir Alfred Mond's reply was a gross untruth. (3) Has the demand for houses recently lessened ? On 4th May, 1921, Sir Alfred Mond told the House of Commons that Local Authorities were in many cases seriously reducing their own previous estimates of need. Dr. Addison, when Minister, at the close of his tenure of office, had told the House of Commons, on 10th March, 1921, that only a few Authorities were reducing their schemes. The National Housing and Town Planning Council, which is in as close touch with the Local Authorities as is the Ministry, and through unofficial channels in far closer touch, stated in its fortnightly Record oi 19th November, 1921, that from its information very few Authorities were reducing their requirements. The question arises : Was Sir Alfred Mond on 4th 90 THE HOUSING QUESTION May once again deceiving Parliament ? An indication of the true reply to this question can be gained by considering what Sir Alfred Mond has recently (on 13th March, 1922) told the House of Commons. He said:— " No Local Authority is stopped to-day building houses from financial considerations under the guaranteed subsidy scheme." An unblushing inexactitude, considering that for months he has been refusing approval to almost all Local Authorities to build further houses. He went on to say a little later :—" The demand to get married does not exist to-day because among other reasons many people have gone on living with their friends.” Lord Robert Cecil interrupted :— " They have not got married because they cannot get houses.” Sir Alfred Mond replied :— " A large number have not got married because they cannot afford it.” The public and pathetic outcry against the Minister’s attempt to put forward the idea that the need for houses has lately lessened is too recent to need referring to. It may be well, however, to quote the following remarks by Dr. Buchan, Medical Officer of Health for Bradford, on April 1st, 1922 :— “ Dr. Buchan said Bradford is not decadent. Its population is virile and increasing, and the last census return was not correct. Yet there were fewer inhabitable houses in the city now than fifteen years ago. Men had come back from the war to young wives and could not get houses, and came to him and asked permission to live in some den which they had found. The THE HOUSING QUESTION 9i position was grave in the extreme. And,” continued the lecturer, ­ " 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. Gentleman ­ made one point which must be explained or I will challenge it as wrong. He said that there were 450,000 empty houses 92 THE1H0USING QUESTION before the war, as if this were a great discovery made by hie Department, and that therefore you had got a huge provision for two and a half million people. That is a cheap arm-chair suggestion. ­ “ Anyone who knows anything about the real needs in connection ­ with the housing of the working-classes knows that those 450,000 empty houses are an absolute essential, not only for the working classes themselves, but also for industry. Where you have got, as you have at present, every single house bound up and full you cannot possibly have any movement of people, and thus industry is clogged. You cannot start a new industry in any particular district without bringing people from other districts. You have to bring your artificers and special tradesmen probably from other towns, and that is one of the many things which has been clogging industry since the war. . . (4) The attitude of the Government towards the deliberate restriction of output by the Association of Manufacturers ­ of Light Castings. This case, more perhaps than any other, indicates the grave partiality of the Coalition Government towards employers and manufacturers, as compared with its censorious attitude towards Labour. The Government in 1919, under great pressure appointed Board of Trade Sub-Committees to go carefully into the conduct of the businesses of manufacturers producing ­ the various kinds of building materials. The feeling in the country was that house building was being impeded, partly by the high prices, and also by restriction of output. The reports of the Sub-Committees differed, some acquitting the manufacturers, and others to a varying extent condemning them. But there was no doubt A THE HOUSING QUESTION 93\ / <.i> \ j - t-.r ^ 1 about the report of the Committee on Light Castings. It was unhesitating in its condemnation. It reported that the Light Castings Association was restricting its output, and retarding efficiency, in order to keep up prices, to such an extent that not more than 4,000 houses a month could be finished, a number which was, of course, totally inadequate. The Committee described the course taken by the Association as contrary to the public interest. The Government, which has always been indiscriminating in its blame of working men and which forced upon them a measure of dilution of operatives, has taken no action whatever against its friends the manufacturers, whom its own Committee has so gravely censured. The following reply in the House of Commons ­ is a good instance of a Minister defending his allies:— Mr. Robert Young asked the Minister ot Health Whether during the latter part of 1920 the supply of rain-water spouting, ranges and other ironwork necessary for the equipment of dwellings was insufficient, and, as a result, houses almost ready for use were kept standing empty, entailing loss to local authorities and the Treasury ; whether this was due in large measure to the action of the Light Castings Association ; whether the present supply of light castings is deemed sufficient for the housing work in progress, and, if not, what steps will be taken to increase the quantity ­ of light castings so that house building will be expedited ? Sir A. Mond : " There has been, and still is, a shortage of rainwater ­ and soil goods, and baths, available for housing schemes. The output of light castings has been investigated by a Committee appointed under the Profiteering Act, and that Committee has recently issued a Report which deals amongst other things with ; . . m-94 THE HOUSING QUESTION the operations of the National Light Castings Association. Efforts have been made to encourage other makers to undertake the production of the materials of which there has been a shortage, and of substitutes for these materials, and there are indications that output is now improving.” Not a word of blame : not a word of undertaking to deal with the refractory Association. The Government ­ is true to its masters. (5) The history of an officially promulgated untruth. When Dr. Addison was forced to leave the Ministry of Health, the Government having decided to restrict its housing programme, the new Minister, Sir Alfred Mond, brought with him as Director-General his friend from South Wales, Sir Charles Ruthen. That gentleman, eager to find favour in the eyes of his Chief, gave an interview in the Press on July 16th, 1921, of which the following is an extract :— “. . . The position is this. In the early days of the State housing proposals it was considered that about 500,000 houses would be required, on which a loss to the State of about £io per house per annum was anticipated. The general attitude of the Ministry was to proceed to approve site plans, house plans, etc., for these houses. “ Passing over the period occupied by the preliminaries in connection with this big undertaking, we find, when the change from Dr. Addison to Sir Alfred Mond took place, there were approximately 176,000 approved tenders for houses, and prices soaring higher and higher almost weekly. “ There was a constant soaring from the commencement of the receipt of the tenders till about four or five months ago. The THE HOUSING QUESTION 95 sudden stop in the rise of prices synchronises with the change of Ministry and the determination not to load the industry with more work than it can undertake. . . The facts were, as set forth on page 41, that the fall of prices was brought about by Dr. Addison himself, who at the end of February, 1921, by a single administrative ­ order lowered the price of houses from £950 to £800, and, by further administrative action before he retired, lowered that price about £50 more. On 27th July, Mr. Trevelyan Thomson, H.P., forced from the Minister an admission that his subordinate had misrepresented the facts. Dr. Addison also, in a letter to the Press, challenged the Minister to prove Sir Charles Ruthen’s statement, or to withdraw it with a suitable apology. No apology has been given for an untruth which was so laudatory of the present Minister. (6) The attitude of the Government to the various classes of Society. The Housing Act of 1919 authorised Local Authorities ­ to purchase land for housing compulsorily by making and publishing a “ compulsory order.” Such an Order had, however, to be confirmed by the Minister of Health before the Authority could gain possession of the land. Now the land, especially in rural parts, is usually in possession of various important people, whose wont it often was, when they found that the Local Authority were determined to get their land, to 9 6 THE HOUSING QUESTION write, or get a still more influential friend to write, a pleading and private letter to the Minister or one of his higher officials. The success of these efforts was usually remarkable. Very rarely in such cases was the Local Authority’s compulsory order confirmed. In other ways too the present Government and its Ministers of Health have proved respecters of persons. There is a well-known member of the House of Lords, a considerable political personage, who built a house at the time when the Government was giving a subsidy to private builders. Unfortunately, this house was not large enough to comply with the Ministry’s schedule of requirements as to size of rooms, etc., and the Local Authority’s surveyor was unable to grant the certificate, without which the subsidy was not payable. So the noble owner, who had already begun the house without notifying the Council as required by their by-laws, called upon the Minister, who directed the Local Authority to grant the certificate. The Local Authority ­ naturally asked what was to be done in the case of other less aristocratic house-builders whose certificates had been refused on similar grounds. No reply was given to this, but the Minister proceeded to reduce the requirements of his Department’s schedule in order, one must suppose, to meet the case of the impoverished nobleman. Even then difficulties arose, as the new schedule was not retrospective and therefore did not cover the case of the unhappy peer; nor were the bedrooms large enough to comply with the reduced schedule. However, a little thing like that does not . - ^VV >->- - • v , . , ■ . *->#•* THE HOUSING QUESTION 97 defeat a member of the Coalition Government, and the great man got his subsidy, the Minister justifying the payment by saying that the house in question was an interesting experiment, and his Department gave instructions that the application of the reduced schedule be antedated, no doubt to meet the convenience of the nobleman. Compare the above with the following, which illustrates the attitude of the Ministry of Health, as at present directed respectively to the working classes and to their employers. In a certain Rural District the Local Authority, with the approval of the Ministry, had signed a contract for a few houses with a local builder. This contract was on the Ministry’s standard form which provides that a schedule of the wages paid by the contractor should form part of the contract, and that, if the wages actually paid differed from the schedule, the total amount payable on the contract ­ would be increased or diminished accordingly as the wages paid exceeded or fell short of the schedule. This particular builder, with the knowledge of the Local Authority, paid wages both to skilled and to unskilled men, much below his contract schedule. He said they were " Ex-Service improvers,” though in reality they were as skilled as anyone in the countryside ­ (a fact which the rapid progress of the building proved). The excuse was particularly absurd as applied to unskilled men. The local Trade Union representative appealed to the 6 9 8 THE HOUSING QUESTION Ministry that they should enforce their own clause in the contract, which laid down that the workmen should be paid neither more nor less than the standard building-trade wages in the district. The fact that these men were being paid much less than the standard rates could not be disputed, nor could it be disputed that the builder was making a great deal more profit (all out of the pocket of the taxpayer) than his contract and its schedule entitled him to. In spite of repeated representations, the Ministry have refused to interfere and have allowed, firstly, the workmen to be paid all the time a sweated wage, directly contrary to the terms of the contract, and, secondly, have allowed this builder to obtain from the Treasury a sum far in excess of that to which he was entitled under his contract. This scandalous case is typical of the attitude of the officials of the Ministries of Health and of Labour during the last three years towards working men. There is a Government Committee, known as the Building Labour Committee, composed principally of representatives of these Ministries. This Committee adjudicates on claims by local operatives to obtain standard rates of wages, which of course vary from district to district. The decisions of the Building Labour Committee have been all along unfavourable to the claims of working men. Even in cases where an Award by the Local Conciliation Board has gone in favour of the men, the Ministry of Health have refused to be bound THE HOUSING QUESTION 99 by it, if the result were likely to bring a heavier charge on the Exchequer. This solicitude for the taxpayer is often absent when the Ministry are dealing with the claims of employers. ML Part IV PART IV The Main Indictment against the Government The working classes, the men who fought and worked for their country in the war, and every elector of Great Britain, should concentrate their forces in order to drive home the main indictment against this Coalition Government. That indictment is that they have stopped housing, left the poor in their slums and misery, increased to an intense degree the unemployment ­ and suffering in the country, and have broken faith with the voters who, on the strength of their promises of homes for heroes, returned them to power in 1918. The Government say they are not guilty of these things. What then are the facts ? The 1919 Housing Act laid a statutory duty upon each Local Authority to investigate and report its housing needs, and to carry into effect a housing scheme equal to meeting those needs. It is written in black and white in the Act. It is also written in black and white in the Act and in its financial regulations (which were drawn up by the Ministry of Health and approved by the Treasury and the House of Commons) that any “ loss" on these schemes, new houses and slum clearance alike, should be paid for out of the taxes, after the Local Authority had contributed a penny 103 io4 THE HOUSING QUESTION rate, and further, if the re-housing could not be completed in 3 years or the slum clearance in 6 years, owing to the shortage of labour, materials or other such cause, that the time might be extended by the Minister. It is true that all schemes and all extensions of time had to be approved by the Minister, but this condition was inserted in the Act, as in all similar cases, where the taxes are drawn upon by Local Councils, to prevent extravagance in detail. It was never intended by Parliament when it passed the Act, or by the Electors, that the Minister should use this power of withholding approval (at a period, be it borne in mind, far short even of the three-year period) in order to reverse in toto the whole Housing policy and stop the programme. That is what Sir Alfred Mond has done with the consent of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet The Government ­ have definitely refused since 14th July, 1921, to approve contracts for more than 176,000 houses. That is why Dr. Addison, the late Minister, resigned. The Prime Minister stated in the House of Commons on 21st July, 1921, that the withholding of approval of the further contracts would not reduce by a single house the number to be built. It was a grotesque and scandalous misrepresentation. To-day, there are 175,000 men of the building trades unemployed. That is the kind of statement the Prime Minister thinks good enough for the House of Commons and the people of England. That is why the question, “ Did the Government ever really mean business ? " admits of but one answer —they never did. ■ ■ I a a - Wv * * " VWv »> ' ' >> xS-X-t - THE HOUSING QUESTION 105 Listen to the sort of thing that electors used to be told by the present Coalition Government:— Minister of Reconstruction, 1918 : " One of our greatest and most urgent tasks after the war will be to secure good and healthy homes for all.” Mr. Lloyd George : “ At least 500,000 houses are needed to supply the legitimate demands for housing in this country, quite apart from the great question of dealing with slum areas.” Mr. Lloyd George, May, 1920, to the City of London:— ” The interests of public health and humanity are at stake. . . . Adequate housing will ensure happy homes, which are the surest guarantee any country can provide against agitation and unrest." Mr. Bonar Law, on the same occasion:— “ If we did not make every effort to improve the condition of the people we would have a sullen, discontented and perhaps angry nation, which would be fatal in the last degree to trade, industry and credit.” Here, then, by the Government’s own confession, is a principal cause of the disaster which has overtaken our trade. It is the failure of the Government to keep faith with the people in housing. Here is an extract from a Ministry of Health paper advocating Housing Bonds, in March, 1920 :— “ Do You Want to Feel that Your Money is Doing Good ? “ The proceeds of Local Bonds will be used for construction of dwellings to remedy the appalling social conditions due to the overcrowding caused by the present shortage of houses for the working-classes.'' io6 THE HOUSING QUESTION Or read this extract from a Ministry of Health circular to employers on Labour in October, 1920 :— “ It is a recognised fact that inadequate housing is one of the most fruitful causes of industrial unrest. " Discontent amongst the working-classes, resulting in inefficiency, ­ and the waste and misery of strikes, vitally affect commercial enterprise. " if each employee were in possession of a comfortable home, discontent would undoubtedly be decreased. . . . “ Local Authorities are working to satisfy local housing demands by means of their State-aided schemes, but the demand still far exceeds the supply." And lastly the famous pronouncement of Mr. Walter Long (now Lord Long) in 1916, when he was President of the Local Government Board (now the Ministry of Health):— “ It would be a black crime indeed if we were to sit still and do nothing by way of preparation to ensure that when these men come back they shall be provided with homes with as little delay as possible. To let them come back from the horrible water-logged trenches to something little better than a pigsty here would indeed be criminal on the part of ourselves, and would be a negation of all that has been said during this war that we could never repay these men for what they have done for us.” The Government has totally stopped further rural housing probably because they do not think the sufferers ­ command many votes. Read, then, what men who live in the country have to say:— Mr. Maurice Hewlett, the Vice-Chairman of a Rural Council in Wiltshire, than whom no man knows better the life of the agricultural worker, wrote to the Times on July 10th, 1921 :— THE HOUSING QUESTION 107 "The housing problem in the villages is aggravated rather than eased by anything which has been done. [He was writing two years after tie passing of the Housing Act, 1919. j Insanitary and ruinous cottages have gone further to decay. Overcrowding is insufferable. Public opinion has been roused and when the truth is known it will be exasperated.” Colonel Saltmarshe, a well-known Chairman of a Rural Council in Yorkshire, has said very much the same thing. So have hundreds of other Councillors in Rural Districts. As 1920 drew to a close the public began to distrust the Government’s intentions. They knew the malignant ­ forces at work to kill the housing schemes. But the Government continued to protest that it was not changing its policy. For instance, on December 9th, 1920, Mr. Chamberlain was speaking in the National Expenditure Debate. He stated that many reforms, in themselves desirable, would have to be stopped for lack of money, and that spending departments had been instructed that schemes involving expenditure were to be stopped. Mr. Pemberton Billing : " Does that mean that the municipal housing schemes are to be stopped ? " Mr. Chamberlain : " No, Sir.” On 6th April, 1921, Dr. Addison stated that in accepting ­ another office (Minister without Portfolio instead of Minister of Health) he had been assured that there would be no change of policy pursued by the Ministry. i©8 THE HOUSING QUESTION On 5th May, 1921, when Dr. Addison was still in the Cabinet as " Minister without Portfolio,” he was asked the following question :— Major Prescott asked the Minister without Portfolio on what grounds he warned the public to be on their guard as to a possible change of housing policy, as reported in the London Press on the 26th April ; whether his disquieting statement has unsettled many local authorities within the Metropolitan Police area in connection with the financial responsibilities they have incurred in the development of housing schemes ; and whether or not the Government contemplate a change of housing policy which will raise the financial liability of a local authority above the limit of a id. rate ? Dr. Addison : “ I can assure my Hon. and Gallant Friend that there was nothing in the speech in question, or in any reports of it that I have seen, to cause unsettlement, nor have I heard of any that has arisen in consequence. It was explicitly stated that the Government contemplated no change of policy or departure ­ from any obligations to local authorities and others that had been entered into, but it was pointed out that the redemption of slums in our towns would require sustained effort through a long series of years and that a vigilant and informed public opinion would be necessary if the work was to be persevered with.” Three weeks after he had said this the Government stopped practically all further approvals. On the 12th April, 1921, the following question was asked in the Commons :— Mr. T. Thomson asked the Prime Minister whether the recent change in the post of Minister of Health indicates any variation m the Government’s policy with regard to health and housing administration ; and can local authorities which have undertaken the erection of dwelling-houses under the Housing and Town Planning Act, 1919, rely upon the Government fulfilling in the THE HOUSING QUESTION 109 spirit as well as in the letter the promises made to them by the late Minister of Health with regard to their financial commitments ­ ? Mr. Chamberlain : " Undertakings given by the Government are not affected by changes of individual Ministers and the Government have no intention of departing from any pledges given to local authorities with respect to financial commitments entered into by them with the approval of the Ministry of Health.” Mr. Thomson : “ If local authorities are anxious to extend their health services, will the Right Hon. Gentleman see that they are not restricted and curtailed by the Government’s economical ­ policy ? ” Mr Chamberlain : " No pledge will be dishonoured because there has been a change of Ministers. That does not mean that the policy of the Government as explained in the circular issued in the Autumn will be altered. In view of the present financial situation the economical restrictions imposed by the Government must continue.” The form of the reply is significant. It is clearly an intimation that housing was to be curtailed by the economic policy of restrictions put forward by the Government in the Autumn of 1920. Mr. Chamberlain overlooked the fact that he had told Mr. Billing that Housing Schemes would not be affected by the new policy. The reader has perhaps had his fill of the sonorous insincerities emitted by the Coalition Government from 1918 to 1921 when they wished the electors to believe in their good faith. Let us contrast with these a few of their later utterances, which probably represent more faithfully their true souls : Hear first Sir Alfred Mond. He is speaking to a no THE HOUSING QUESTION deputation of the Association of Municipal Corporations in May, 1921, on the needs :— “ We find that in many cases the original estimates were rather more what the idealists conceived than what the practical man considered necessary." It is in this man’s eyes unpractical idealism to propose that the women and children of this country should be taken out of the slums which disgrace our towns and given healthy houses to live in. Contrast with Sir Alfred Mond’s sneer at idealism the following words of the National Housing and Town Planning Council: " . . . The present housing policy has been criticised as a scheme evolved in a ' mist of idealism,’ and it may be readily admitted that, in comparison with the shameful neglect which characterised the period preceding the war, the housing policy was one of fine idealism. But sneers at idealism are so profoundly ­ unworthy of the men who fought and died for England that it is difficult to understand why they are given any currency. Kitchener’s men went singing to France in 1915 in response to the call of a national duty, and with their heads doubtless filled with ideas evolved n the same ' mist of idealism.’ Men of narrow views and atrophied sympathies may regard as of little moment the fine enthusiasm of the war. But these same fine enthusiams saved England, and men now sleeping in Flanders would feel, if they could come to life again, their honour smirched, and their sacrifice made less noble by the assumption that the pledges given concerning the future homes of the poorer members of the community can now be cynically broken. . . .’ Next consider the proposal of the Geddes Committee—composed ­ of five rich men who appear somewhat ­ complaisant as to the extravagances of their own * THE HOUSING QUESTION in class—that the houses should be sold to the highest bidder. The Coalition Government has accepted this proposal, the inevitable result of which would be the ejection of the present working-class tenants and their replacement by better-off people. It is true that on 13th March, 1922, Sir Alfred Mond told the House of Commons that he would never be responsible for allowing their sale under conditions which would involve turning the tenants out. But how comes it that the Geddes Committee a month before reported as follows:— " The Minister of Health is in agreement with us as to the desirability of selling as many houses as possible'’ . . . but points out that the Minister has no power to make the sales effective.” When the Minister said this he knew well that no one would buy a house if the tenant was to be kept on at an uneconomic rent, and the payment of an economic rent for such houses is of course out of the question for the working classes. All he seemed to want was power to compel sale. It is fairly clear that by March 13th Sir Alfred Mond had realised which way the wind was blowing, and had set his sails accordingly, a fact which does more credit to his wisdom than to his courage. It is notable that on the 8th August, 1921, Sir Alfred Mond had told the House of Commons that he was giving every encouragement to Local Authorities to sell their houses. He added that this was subject to their maintenance as houses for the working classes. 112 THE HOUSING QUESTION Such maintenance after sale is, of course, impossible and he must have known it. In 1920, the Government proposed to increase the erection of working-class houses by giving a subsidy to private builders. What was the result ? By the Minister’s admission at least 70 per cent, of these houses are now occupied by well-to-do people. The pressure put on Local Authorities by the Treasury ­ to increase rent has, where it has been given way to, had just the same effect. The working classes go out and the middle classes take the houses. If the present Government can bring it about, the great Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1919 will have had as its result a subsidy to the middle classes or to speculative builders who can buy back the subsidised house at half the price for which they or their friends built them. On 20th July, 1921, the Minister told the House of Commons that 27,000 acres had been acquired throughout ­ England and Wales for housing schemes, of which only 20,000 were needed for the schemes he was prepared ­ to approve. Much of the remaining 7,000 acres have been fully developed with roads and sewers and are now to be left derelict, the grass growing over the land and roads alike. Hardly a policy for a Government professing economy to follow. While members of the Government were making the protestations of innocence which we have recorded above, their Minister of Health was hard at work “ stopping the train.” In January, 1921, further MW THE HOUSING QUESTION 113 purchase of land was practically forbidden, and sale of bought land was urged upon Councils. By June, power to approve further contracts was taken away from Regional Housing Commissioners and reserved to Whitehall, whence very few more approvals were to issue. By the same date all rural housing was definitely and finally stopped. Mr. Lloyd George, in his Radical days, appointed a Land Inquiry Commission, which told him how deplorable were housing conditions in rural England. He has many and many a time asserted how essential it is to give healthy and happy homes to agricultural workers if the nation is to pull itself out of the slough of a C3 health status and if we are to place on a permanently ­ prosperous footing the agricultural industry which feeds us. But he has for nine months stopped all rural housing, though he and his colleagues knew well that there were builders and workmen in the countryside, ­ available for erecting rural houses, men who would never go to the towns to build urban dwellings. “ Not one house less will be built,” the Prime Minister said in the Commons on 21st July, 1921. What a travesty of truth ! The sudden stoppage of all further contracts at Midsummer, 1921, especially penalised those far-seeing and careful Local Authorities who—in spite of pressure to the contrary from the Ministry of Health in earlier days—had refused to enter into more contracts for houses (at the extravagant prices of 19x9-1920) than the local builders could at once undertake. Such H ii4 THE HOUSING QUESTION authorities now find that they are refused leave to build further houses, while their less provident neighbours ­ are allowed to complete houses at the high contract prices which obtained many months before. No wonder Councils are suspicious of Whitehall. Similarly with regard to the treatment of England and Wales, Scotland is to be allowed Z years to complete ­ ; even the Dagenham scheme in London has been given 5 years. But the rest of England and Wales has been stopped dead. And on nth August, 1921, in the House of Commons, the Minister refused definitely to allow to England and Wales the same privileges of extension as had been secured by Scotland. It is constantly stated that the Nation cannot afford the money for these houses. This fallacy has been dealt with on page 36, but it is worth while contrasting the amount spent on housing last year with that spent on armaments and on our new Oriental lands ( and militant policy. Dr. Addison, the late Minister of Health, said in August, 1921 :— " As an Englishman, I am ashamed that it should be necessary to give addresses of this kind in order to stir up the British Government ­ to keep its promises. " Is the Government of this country to be based on principle and on the fulfilment of its pledges solemnly given to the people ? ' he asked. " This is the third year of a victorious peace. And the Government ­ are proposing to spend in the year 1921-1922 £204,000,000 on war services and £200,000 on the reduction of slums. " in other words, they are proposing to spend a thousand times more on war services than on the improvement of slums. THE HOUSING QUESTION 115 “ That," said Dr. Addison, with indignation, “is why I resigned." " On the basis of the last Census returns, I calculated that our expenditure during the present year, on Army services alone, excluding Mesopotamia and Palestine, is costing each man, woman, and child in the country £i 19s. yd. ; the Navy services are costing £1 19s. zd. per head, and the Air Service 8s. 3d. “ These three together represent a contribution from the taxpayers, if the taxation were equally distributed, of £4 7s. 3d. Mesopotamia and Palestine add another ns. 2d. The subsidy on oats, all of which was used for animal food, represents a taxation per head of 5s. “ But the expenditure on new houses is 5s. 3d.—just 3d. more than horse oats—and the expenditure on slums works out at i£d. per head.” In the latest Housing debate in the House of Commons, on March 13th, 1922, the Minister, assailed by critics from both sides of the House, took refuge in a statement that the Government had never promised the houses ! Sir Alfred Mond : “ One of the largest parts of this Debate has been occupied with the question of housing. We have had many discussions on this subject since I have had the honour of holding my present position, and they have all run on somewhat similar lines, and to some extent have been subject to the same misconception. My attention has been called to what was stated in His Majesty’s Speech from the Throne upon the housing question. I have looked up that speech. It had been stated that the Government recommended that there was a need for 500,000 houses, but the Government did not pledge themselves in that Speech to build that number of houses under the present scheme or under any other scheme. When the Hon. Member argues that the Government said that they would build 500,000 houses at the taxpayers’ expense, I say that there is nothing in THE HOUSING QUESTION u6 that Speech to warrant any statement of that kind. I defy anybody to find anywhere a statement that the Government said that they would, regardless of expense and regardless of national finance, build 500,000 houses. . . Let us refer to the Second Reading debate of the Housing Bill, 1919. Dr. Addison, the then Minister of Health, speaking for the Coalition Government, of which Sir Alfred Mond was a member, and therefore equally responsible with Dr. Addison himself, said:— “ . . . We propose that our financial assistance, to which I will refer in detail, shall extend not only to the provision of new houses on cleared ground, but to schemes undertaken in slum areas, or with regard to unsatisfactory houses. “ The power is asked where a local authority defaults to either prepare a scheme or build the houses ourselves, and if that were the conduct of an Oriental potentate, I daresay we should have less trouble in the East. Let us come to the proceedings of the Industrial Conference the other day and what did they say ? In the Report signed by both employers and employed, that conference, on page 9, contains the following :—' In order to meet the present crisis, the Committee recommend that the Government should without delay proceed with a comprehensive housing programme. . . . The Committee urge that where the local authorities fail to utilise their powers to provide suitable housing accommodation the Local Government Board should take the necessary steps for the erection of suitable houses in the area of the authority, and special powers if necessary to compel authorities to act in accordance with the housing needs of the district.’ That is exactly what is in the Bill.” “ That is exactly what is in the Bill ! " There is the whole thing in a nutshell. The Bill, said Dr. Addison and the Government, proposed to carry out a “ com- THE HOUSING QUESTION 117 prehensive housing scheme "—“ in accordance with the housing needs of the district "—" to extend their financial assistance [i.e., to pay out of the taxes all loss beyond a penny rate] not only to the provision of new houses but to schemes undertaken in slum areas.” The Government went further. The above extract shews that they promised to build the houses themselves ­ if the Local Authority failed to do their duty. They have not done so in a single case. In the same debate. Major Astor (now Lord Astor), Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health, said with all the authority of the Government behind him :— " It is quite obvious it would be impossible to ask the occupiers of half a million new houses, which it is proposed to erect, to pay in 1927 an economic rent based on the present cost of erecting houses, charged as from that date.” And let us recall again what the Prime Minister said in 1918 :— “ At least 500,000 houses are needed to supply the legitimate demands for housing in this country, quite apart from the great question of dealing with slum areas." Who, after reading these extracts, can doubt that the Government in 1918 and 1919, meant the electors to understand that these 500,000 houses would at all costs be built and the loss borne by the Government ? Lord Robert Cecil said in the debate on 13th March, 1922 :— n8 THE HOUSING QUESTION "... I listened to the Right Hon. Gentleman’s [Sir Alfred Mond] speech with great interest and a considerable degree of gj admiration. But does he not think, on reflection, that he put the case for the Government a little too high ? He denied emqhatically that the Government had ever made a promise 111 to puild 500,000 houses. I have not the actual statement, but I am sure he would not deceive the House as to the actual words that were used. But the broad fact was that at the beginning of that year the Government went to the country and said, ' We are going to regenerate this country. We are going to make it quite a different place.’ There were all sorts of phrases used. They then called particular attention to the housing difficulty as one of the main things they were going to deal with. They put the lack of houses at 500,000—some put it higher—and undoubtedly they held out to the country—no one can doubt it—the expectation, whether it was a promise or not, that they were going to provide 500,000 houses, because they thought that was the number necessary. . . Mr. Inskip, a Conservative Coalitionist, a Member for Bristol, said in the same debate :— . I hardly like to go into some parts of my own constituency, ­ not because I am afraid, but because of the hopes that I held out in my speeches during the election. My Right Hon. Friend may say that I should not have held them out, but I was 8 encouraged by my leaders to hold them out. . . And again in the same speech :— " If the housing problem is urgent now it will be far more urgent when the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restriction) ­ Act has disappeared.” And again:— . . What we do want is to see that the promise is being redeemed which was made in 1918, and, until that promise is redeemed, ­ some of us will not rest content.” THE HOUSING QUESTION 119 Those are the words of an honest man. No wonder Sir Alfred Mond fails to understand them. Mr. Trevelyan Thomson hit the nail full on the head in the same debate, when he said :— . . Why cannot we afford it ? ” Sir F. Banbury : " Because we have not the money.” Mr. Thomson : " Did we tell that to the bondholders ? Surely we are as much pledged to provide houses as we are to provide interest for those who found the funds for War Savings Certificates and War Loans. When, a few weeks ago, it was suggested from these benches that economy might be effected by cutting down the rate of interest which was being paid on War Stock, a tremendous ­ howl went up from the economists on the other side, and I agree with them. But I ask that the same fairness and justice of treatment in redeeming promises which it is desired to give to those who invested in War Stock, in response to pledges given to them, shall be given in respect of the promises to the men who went overseas, and who were told that when they came back they should not suffer, that houses fit for heroes should be found for them. . . .” Sir Frederick Banbury, replying to Mr. Thomson, gave the true Coalition reply :— "... I am glad the Hon. Member for Middlesborough (Mr. Thomson) is in his place, because he commenced his rather unbusinesslike speech, if he will allow me to say so, by stating that we had made promises to pay interest to people who had invested their savings in war stock and that when people suggested that that interest should be cut down the answer was that promises had been made, and I understood the Hon. Member to say that he agreed with the people who objected to the interest being cut down, but he thought that because promises had been made to build houses the State should carry out those promises. 120 THE HOUSING QUESTION " me point out to him that there was no promise with regard to War Savings. It was a contract, which is a very difierent thing from a promise. There have been no contracts with regard to houses, and the only promises that I know of in regard to houses were made on election platforms. . . Sir F. Banbury was of course wrong. The promises were not merely made on election platforms. They were made in the House of Commons by Ministers when the Housing Act of 1919 was passed, as has been shewn above. But what a strange thing it is that undertakings given to property owners are “ contracts " and " debts of honour," but when given to the working classes and the general mass of electors are mere “ promises " which can be broken as easily as pie-crust and with equal impunity. The Nation can find £60,000,000 to compensate railway companies, and £50,000 to give to Sir Eric Geddes, the great axeman, to honour an alleged undertaking ­ made to that champion of the taxpayer, by his former employer, the North Eastern Railway; but if asked to build the houses to deliver the men who won the war from the pigsties to which they have returned*—well it is only a promise and not a contract. Why trouble any more about it ? * "To let them come back from the horrible water-logged trenches to something little better than a pigsty here would be criminal and a negation of all that has been said during this war." —Lord Long, when President of the Local Government Board, 1916. THE HOUSING QUESTION 121 What the Government are going to do is pretty clear. To bring in a new Housing Bills or new financial regulations which will throw so much extra burden on the ratepayer and on the Local Council as to ensure that very little more will be done. Before the war Local Authorities could always build houses. Although the burden on the rates was then negligible, few Councils did it. Will they do it in future if it means an increased rate ? The Government knows well that every such proposal—put forward as an alternative to their explicit national undertaking of 1919—will kill housing. That is why they will propose it. What they could have done from the start and what a Government which meant business would do to-day is this :— (1) Re-affirm the housing undertakings of 1919, viz., to ensure with or without the backing of each separate Local Authority— the building of a sufficient number of working-class houses in every district in Britain to give every man, woman, and child a decent home ; and to clear the slums. (2) Take as a basis the needs submitted by the Authorities in October, 1919, viz., 911,000 for Britain ; 800,000 for England and Wales, adjusting these figures as needed for houses built since then, and for any subsequent restrictions or additions which a further investigation may show to be necessary. (3) Let the Local Authorities choose the sites for the new houses and—subject to proof of need shewn—the number on each site. t For example, the unhappy "Economy" Bill introduced to Parliament, July, 1922. 122 THE HOUSING QUESTION (4) Institute a Central or Regional Building Department on the lines of the Ministry of Munition Building Departments in the war. Consult Local Authorities as to plans and amenities, but, wherever the Local Council are not putting their best foot foremost, let the Government carry out the actual building themselves. Houses would then be delivered as promptly and numerously as shells in the war. (5) Guard against the return of that rise of price, which nearly killed the schemes in 1920, by :— (a) Spread the period of building over a far longer period ; 10 years for new houses and 10 more years for slum clearance would not be too long. (6) Make use of building by Direct Labour of Local Authorities, ­ by Building Guilds, and by the Office of Works itself, in order to check any excessive tenders by local contractors, and to stimulate true competition. During 1919 and 1920 building contractors killed competition and raised prices by private agreements in their federations. (c) Stop local “ luxury ” building or repairs, where local housing schemes were not making proper progress. Such measures would shew that a Government meant business. There would occasionally be local friction and outcry. Councillors who were trying, for reasons of their own, to stop housing, would complain that officials from London or from the centre of a Region were dictating to them, but once the Nation saw that the houses were really going up and the slums really being removed, the Government would have all the support it required. Let us recall the words of the King on April nth, 1919, at Buckingham Palace, when he addressed the THE HOUSING QUESTION 123 Association of County Councils, Municipal Corporations and Urban and Rural District Councils :— . . But how much greater is the problem that confronts us now I For it is not only with the clearance of slums that we have to deal—great and urgent as is that aspect of the housing problem—but also with the provision of new houses on an unprecedented ­ scale, sufficient to make good both the shortage of houses that existed before the war and the vast aggravation of that shortage caused by the almost total cessation of building during the war. •' I am informed that the immediate need of working-class houses for England and Wales alone is estimated at approximately 500,000. To meet this need the same untiring energy and enthusiasm ­ will be required as that which enabled the country to meet the demand for munitions of war. . . . " . . The building of houses at the present time will necessarily ­ be a costly undertaking owing to the present high level of prices. But the money will be well spent; and we may look for a sure, even though deferred, return upon the expenditure in a healthier and more contented people. . . . “ While the housing of the working classes has always been a question of the greatest social importance, never has it been so important as now. It is not too much to say that an adequate solution of the housing question is the foundation of all social progress. Health and housing are indissolubly connected. If this country is to be the country which we desire to see it become, a great offensive must be undertaken against disease and crime, and the first point at which the attack must be delivered is the unhealthy, ugly, overcrowded houses in the mean street, which we all of us know too well. “ If a healthy race is to be reared it can be reared only in healthy homes ; if infant mortality is to be reduced and tuberculosis ­ to be stamped out, the first essential is the improvement 124 THE HOUSING QUESTION of housing conditions ; if drink and crime are to be successfully combated, decent, sanitary houses must be provided. If * unrest' is to be converted into contentment, the provision of good houses may prove one of the most potent agents in that conversion. . . For these words of the King, his Ministers, the present Coalition Government, were responsible. What kind of “ untiring energy and enthusiasm " have they shewn since ? An old rhyme runs :— " When war is raging and danger nigh, God and soldiers is their cry. When war is done and things are righted, God is forgotten : the soldiers slighted.” A fitting epitaph for the Coalition Government. But although the Coalition Government will doubtless ­ be buried by the verdict of History in the pit into which they have cast their avalanche of broken promises, the fight will continue, and it will need hard and continuing effort on the part of all who wish to help the working men and women of Britain to bring about a real betterment of their conditions. In spite of all the soothing, and often genuinely well-meant words of those who desire a union of feeling between classes, such union can never be brought about under the present grossly unfair economic conditions. The great struggle between the principle of aristocracy and the principle of democracy, which is going on all over the world, will never cease until the conditions which have brought about that struggle are overthrown. BRISTOL : BURLEIGH LTD., AT THE BURLEIGH PRESS THE HOUSING QUESTION 125 The hearts of men were touched after the war. The touch has vanished and again hearts have hardened. Is it not the duty of each one of us to do all we can to bring back a true sympathy, which more than any other thing can ameliorate the present unhappy conditions of the poor ? WWW 206$07566417 I HOUSING QUESTION 89 he ve es ill ig ts. of ry 00 pe ur tze ry er, in □n sr, ns ‘y. id m ig er :s. ar ie ees and technical officers of Local -ompel them to lower their housing ^Dn innumerable occasions approval mtracts was refused by the Ministry is of the precise kind adverted to by 1 :n made. The only inaccuracy in the employment of the word " all in Z houses and of dressers, cupboards, word he should have employed was is not a Councillor or official of a throughout the kingdom who does 8 i it Sir Alfred Mond’s reply was a gross ■ nd for houses recently lessened ? 921, Sir Alfred Mond told the House S Local Authorities were in many cases ■: g their own previous estimates of when Minister, at the close of his jad told the House of Commons, on "c, that only a few Authorities were iemes. lousing and Town Planning Council, )se touch with the Local Authorities r, and through unofficial channels in stated in its fortnightly Record of 1921, that from its information ties were reducing their requirements, rises : Was Sir Alfred Mond on 4th DO