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.