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