"A very wealthy man who owns a lot of small houses in Poplar had his attention called to the hardship inflicted by the heavy increase in rents. He was told that a widow whose rent had just been doubled would have to seek parish relief if the new demand were enforced. 'My dear good fellow,' said the owner, 'I leave these matters to my agent. I don't want the woman's money. Look here,' pulling a handful of sovereigns out of his pocket. 'Why should I care about the woman's rent? I leave these trifles to my agent, and never interfere.' "Can you wonder that so many of our people are driven to drink and immorality?" Crooks went on after telling this incident. "Sweated as they are for rent in this way, they begin to live in an unholy state of overcrowding. House speculators, Jewish and English, gamble with the people's homes. Nearly every time a house changes hands the rent is raised. The overcrowding is thus made worse than ever. The family living in three rooms takes two. The family in two rooms pushes its furniture closer together and goes into one. "Surely something should be done by the State to prevent this gambling with poor people's rents. I would like to see Fair Rent Courts, where the rents could be fixed in fair proportion to the value of the house. Something of the kind has been done in Ireland; why not in England? "One thing is certain: the more crowded the home is, the more convenient becomes the public-house, with its welcome light and deceptive cheerfulness tempting the wretched. Of course, in theory it is easy to argue that the poorer the man the more reason there is that he should not place in the publican's till the money that ought to be spent on food. I fear few of us would retain the moral courage to resist if we had to eat, live, and sleep in the same room, sometimes in the company of a corpse for several days." Property owners were not alone in their opposition to the Labour Mayor. The publicans almost in a body were ranged against him. Nor was this only because of his uncompromising attack on the drink interests as such. It was mainly because he insisted on public-houses being rated on the same principle as the grocer's shop or the working-man's dwelling-house. For several years before his mayoralty he had been Chairman of the Poplar Assessment Committee. He found that while small tradesmen and householders were rated to the full market value of their shops and dwellings, public-houses were very much under-assessed. He therefore persuaded the Committee, in face of all that the publicans said and threatened, to raise their assessments to the proper scale. The publicans brought the whole strength of their organisation against him, briefing counsel in appeals and subsidising opposition candidates at the local elections. This kind of thing had no fears for Crooks. His policy prevailed.