There has been a clear failure in the smaller local governing bodies in putting in force even such legislation as exists for the betterment of the district. The Rivers Pollution Acts are a standing instance of the neglect of duty by local councils. For years nothing was done to put the Acts in force, because the smaller polluters were the mill owners, who were members of the local council, and the biggest polluter of all was the council itself pouring crude sewage into the river to relieve the rates. Parliament lacked a sense of humour when it expected mill owners and sewage boards to prosecute themselves for river pollution. Good work in housing will never, I think, be really effectively done until it is left to the initiative of a medical officer of health or a sanitary engineer, with judicial power to order things to be done and force behind him to have them done. The idea that a medical officer of health should be a servant of the casual butchers and bakers of the Town Council is, on the face of it, an absurd one. He should be as permanent and independent as are the stipendiary, the judge, or the coroner, for he requires even more than common fearlessness to deal roundly with the jerry builders and slum owners who are his aldermen and councillors, and who at present sit on a committee of appeal from his decisions. As long as these matters are left solely to local bodies the real burden of financial consideration, the lack of personal knowledge of hygiene and sanitation among the members themselves, and the shrinking from enforcing legal hardships on the poor owners of bad property, will alone prevent effective reform. To these natural and honest forces must also be added the weight of vested interests, which deliberately obtain power on local bodies for the purpose of preventing housing reform being put into thorough operation. Never was there a greater and louder demand by the people for a fair share of the land they live in. The countryman wants his plot and his cottage, and the town dweller a decent house at a reasonable rent. This is the "condition of England question" to-day as it was eighty years ago. Never were there more earnest and sincere people discussing what is to be done and how it is possible to transform slums into decent dwellings by Act of Parliament. We have a willing legislature, a desire to make laws for the benefit of the poor, and after many efforts the result has to be written down as failure and stagnation. It would almost seem as though voluntary effort in this affair had pronounced itself impossible, and it remains undealt with until those who are the real sufferers by the system feel strong enough to put it right.