And if he allowed his property to become a danger to his tenants, and through them to the community at large, the community had an absolute right to protect itself by insisting that he should be prevented from so doing. The only way in which, in the interests of the public, abuses can be prevented is by holding the person responsible for them who has the power of preventing them. And that was just what in this case the "owners" did not like. Building constituted an important part of the housing problem. The Medical Officer of Health for Lambeth, in his report for 1887, gave an interesting account of the process of building in London which shows how even the amended Building Acts had failed to secure those conditions of air and space which are essential for health. "In proximity to the centres of business every available plot of garden or recreation ground has been converted into building sites. Houses constructed from materials of the poorest quality and by workmen employed only for the cheapness of their labour, have been hurried into occupation. "The system of close building, at first confined in its application to the consolidation of the inner zone, has been adopted in the outer, and with the demand for shelter, which increases in a progressive ratio with the growth of the population, the once open suburbs must ere long become indistinguishable in the monotony of house row and pavement. "The art of close building appears a progressive one. In its infancy, twenty years ago, the art has now arrived at a stage nearly approaching perfection. In the earlier examples the space allotted to garden land was larger than that built on. Then the size of the two quantities reached an equality--then the covered ground becomes a larger quantity than the uncovered land, until the final stage of development is attained when the extreme limit of encroachment permitted by the Building Act is reached, and garden land is represented by a yard 100 superficial feet in area." Extraordinary loopholes in the sanitary laws, moreover, were constantly being discovered which almost neutralised the original enactment. Thus the Medical Officer of Health for Camberwell remarked in his report for 1888:--