'Early in June Chamberlain came a good deal to the Local Government Board to consider the evidence which he was to give before my Commission. His view was mine--that in the Metropolis the housing of the working classes could only be dealt with by imposing the most stringent obligations on the owners of property on which artisans' dwellings already existed; and Chamberlain was willing to go so far as to reserve such property permanently for the object, with State interference to secure fair rents. I argued with him that a strong case could be made against him on such points as extension of trade from the City into Whitechapel, extension of fashionable dwellings from Mayfair into Chelsea, and so forth. He then fell back upon a proposal for exchange, and said that at all events there was no practical alternative to his view, an opinion in which I agreed. On a later day in June the Cardinal wrote to me expressing his regret for absence from the Commission, "at which I should like to have seen Lord Salisbury examine Mr. Chamberlain." But the Commission kept up its character for dulness, and nothing noteworthy occurred.' The Commission on Housing, to which so much of Sir Charles's time was devoted, had an importance, now forgotten, in the modern development of Social Reform. 'Up to five-and-twenty years ago,' said a writer in a daily newspaper on Social Reform in 1910, 'when the living Sir Charles Dilke was the President of the Local Government Board, no one cared how the poor lived or fared. They could reside in the most ramshackle tenements in insanitary slums, for which, by the way, they were charged exorbitant rents, far higher than what they would now pay for the well-ventilated and well-equipped self-contained houses of the London County Council and building companies which provide accommodation for the industrial classes. Sir Charles saw the abject and helpless condition of the people of London, and resolved, when he succeeded to office, to try and remedy the evils under which they laboured. His enthusiasm in the cause of the poor caught on, and in a short time "slumming" became a fashionable craze. Committees were formed--the premier one being that which had its headquarters at the Mansion House--to improve the dwellings of the poor. In a short time the movement became a great success, and, that there should be no falling back, medical officers of health, whose sole time was to be devoted to their duties, and battalions of sanitary inspectors, were appointed in every district in the Metropolis.'