Still, need did at least awaken prodigious effort, ingenuity, and enterprise—all co-ordinated and concentrated on the business of making good a hundred paralysing deficiencies.
The House Famine
In this present matter of National Housing the shortage of all the generally recognised building materials as well as of actual houses is extreme and grave. Effort, ingenuity, and enterprise in overcoming these insufficiencies are as urgently and vitally necessary to England in Peace as ever they were to Germany in war. Little will be said here of the direct and intimate connection between good houses and good citizens.
It is assumed that those who go to the pains of reading this book have at least glanced at the Housing Reports, and drawn certain disquieting conclusions from the criminal and vital statistics with which the case for reform is reinforced.
In a recent speech the Registrar-General said: “War does not only fill the graves, it also empties the cradles.” This is no less true of bad and inadequate housing.
Only the most reckless and thick-skinned of the poorer population will adventure on marriage and the bringing up of a family whilst the odds against decent and reasonable housing persist as at present.
True, “Housing” is very properly being given considerable prominence in the press, and scarcely a day passes but there appears an article or letter dealing with this question.
Usually we are left but little wiser than we were, whilst if we chance to know something about the subject, the general tone of vague cheerfulness that pervades them all fills us with misgiving.
Nothing is easier or pleasanter or more popular than to make airy promises or predictions about the “Homes for Happy Human Beings” that, somehow, are to be prepared for our returned soldiers, and for all those others who are housed miserably or not at all. It is very easy to predict and promise, but without adequate materials performance is not merely difficult, it is impossible.
There is a world-shortage of almost every manufactured or cultivated product; there is also a labour famine, a money famine, and a transport famine.