Page:Lectures on Housing.djvu/62

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50
SOME ASPECTS OF THE HOUSING PROBLEM

let them beware lest, through the widely prevailing system of sub-letting, this power ultimately abides with those who have neither the will nor the knowledge to use it beneficially. … Where are the owners, or lords, or ladies, of most courts like those in which I stood with my two fellow-workers? Who holds dominion there? Who heads the tenants there? If any among the nobly born or better educated own them, do they bear the mark of their hands? And if they do not own them, might they not do so?"[1]

The second remedial policy is a negative one. It consists in prohibition by the State of the sale of commodities unfit for human consumption. This method, as is well-known, is actively employed in England in the case of articles of food. Persons offering bad meat or bad fruit for sale are liable to prosecution, and the condemned goods to confiscation. In the case of housing accommodation an analogous policy has been adopted in England. Part II of the Hous-

  1. Loc, cit, pp. 51-2 and 39.