Page:Lectures on Housing.djvu/42

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30
SATISFACTORY HOUSES FOR WORKING CLASSES

streets. The fact is that until we have dealt with low-paid and casual labour, such a law is largely a dead letter. But that once dealt with, nothing is left but the residuum of the population—the aged, the infirm, the vicious, and so forth—who must be provided for by methods of public relief.

In conclusion, let us first of all make a survey of housing conditions, and let every locality know exactly what problem it has to face. Let us, as rapidly as possible, expand the minimum wage policy, which we have already adopted in our mines, our confectionery, our tailoring, our shirt-making, our chain-making, and other industries. Let us press forward measures for the decasualisation of labour. Let us make town-planning compulsory, with a restriction on the number of houses per acre, provide all towns with adequate transit facilities, and give improved powers for the acquisition of land. Let us lend money more freely to Public Utility Societies, and lessen the burden of rates on small houses. Let us make it the statutory