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THE  HOUSING  QUESTION

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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
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