Housing : the facts & the future / by Harry Barnes.

  • Barnes, Harry, 1870-1935.
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Housing : the facts & the future / by Harry Barnes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/464 page 10
    IO The state of things then was a prototype of all such exigencies that have followed. Private efforts had failed, voluntary and charitable contributions were inadequate, public effort and public provision had to be made. The parallel between the provision of food for the body in the seventeenth century and food for the mind in the nineteenth century is exact and complete. What the Act of Elizabeth did for the one the Act of 1870 did for the other, and the two together have embarked us on a course responsible for adding to our national expenditure out of rates and taxes, in the year 1923-24, a sum not far short of one hundred and twenty-five million pounds. The process has not stopped at that, for the twentieth century has seen collective provision made for Old Age, Sickness, and Unemployment, which has added a further fifty millions at least to the sum already named. These are the positive Acts passed by Parliament for the purpose of removing by public and collective means the deficiencies of private and individual effort, but in addition action of a negative character has also been taken. This was the case in the ’forties, in regard to food and the general cost of living, the legislative action in respect of which was directed to the abolition of Protection and the introduction of Free Trade. That Housing should now be engaging the attention of Parliament is, therefore, but the con¬ tinuation of a process which has been in operation since the seventeenth century. Its application to this particular question, it will be found, must be both of a positive and negative character. The war has doubtless given more prominence to the facts of Housing and intensified their
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