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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 per 
manently 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 country 
side, 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