I will here add one other argument which goes to the root of the matter by showing that the alleged owners of minerals have not even a legal title to them. It is, I believe, a maxim of law that public rights cannot be lost by disuse. Landed estates were, in our country, created by the Norman Conqueror to be held subject to the performance of feudal duties. Deep-seated minerals were then not known to exist, and were not (I believe) specifically included in the original grants. Except,
therefore, where they have since been made private property by Act of Parliament, they still remain public property. I submit, therefore, that they may be both legally and equitably resumed by the Government as public property, and worked for the good of the public and of posterity. Compensation to the supposed present owners would be a matter of favour, not of right.
CHAPTER IX
INSANITARY DWELLINGS AND LIFE-DESTROYING TRADES
The enormous difference between town and country dwellers as regards duration of life and the prevalence of zymotic diseases has been known statistically since the era of registration, and a body of Health Officers have been set up to report upon the worst cases. The local authorities have power to compel the owners of unhealthy dwellings to put them into a sanitary condition, or even order them to be entirely rebuilt. But as many of the members of Corporations and other Local Boards are often themselves owners of such property, or have intimate friends who are so, very little has been done to remedy the evil. Again and again, in all parts of the country, the Health Officers have duly reported, but their reports have been ignored. In some cases where the Health Officer has been too persistent, he has been asked to resign
or has been discharged. A few general facts may be here given.
By the last complete Census returns (1901), there are in England and Wales 7,036,868 tenements, and of these 3,286,526, or nearly half, have from one to four rooms only. In London, out of a total of 1,019,646 tenements, 672,030, or considerably more than half, have from one to four rooms; while there are about 150,000 tenements of only one room, in which are living 313,298 persons, or about two and a quarter persons in each room on the average. There are, however, about 20,000 persons living five in a room, and 20,000 more who have six, seven, or eight in a room. As most of these one-roomed tenements are either the cellars or attics of houses in the most crowded parts of large towns, where there is impure air, little light, and scanty water supply, the condition of those who dwell in them may be imagined—or rather cannot be imagined, except by those who have explored them.
Equally inhuman, immoral, and even criminal, is the neglect of all adequate measures to check the loss of infant life through the overwork, poverty, or starvation of the mother, together with
overcrowded and insanitary dwellings. In the mad race for wealth by capitalists and employers most of our towns and cities have been allowed to develop into veritable death-traps for the poor. This has been known for the greater part of a century, yet nothing really effective has been done, notwithstanding abundant health legislation—again made useless by the dread of diminishing the excessive profits of manufacturers and slum-owners. One of the Labour newspapers calls our attention to the following facts for 1911 as to Infant mortality per 1,000 born: