The reason why there should be such a deep-rooted antipathy to concrete for house-building purposes in these islands is somewhat inscrutable. Probably it is due to the experiments which were made many years ago, and which owing to our limited knowledge were construed by the quidnuncs into a failure. But because Brunel’s _Great Eastern_ did not succeed we do not laugh at the mammoth steamship of to-day. Brunel’s conception suffered merely from being premature. So were the first attempts to use concrete in the house-building industry. During the past few years we have acquired further knowledge which should enable us to steer clear of the blunders of the past, but instead of grappling with the problem along the lines which science is vividly blazing we prefer to waste time in the idle discussion of quaint theories and fantastic notions. Many are the reasons why concrete should be employed. In the first place it is difficult to excel for simplicity. It comprises essentially two materials--cement, sand and rubble, the two last-named being generically described as the aggregate. The term is wide in its meaning, comprising virtually any and every inorganic material capable of being crushed to a pre-determined size, and the character of which may be as varied as the number of days in the year or more, while recent investigation has indicated that even the conventional sand may be eliminated, provided a sharp and gritty substitute in a similar powdered form be forthcoming. Think what this means and the many possibilities it opens up! In the first place it enables material on site--waste--to be turned to economic account, and the term waste in this instance is extremely elastic. There is no need to disfigure the countryside with yawning craters in the form of pits for the excavation of the special clay suited to the making of bricks. Again we must not forget that by the employment of the conventional building materials a demand is made upon transport, which to-day is as acute as the scarcity of houses. With concrete the only constituent calling for transport from a producing point is cement, and this only involves the movement of one-seventh of the load which would otherwise be involved were bricks to be used. In other words, if seven tons of bricks were required to build a house it would only be requisite to move one ton of cement to yield a similar house in concrete--the other six tons of essential materials could be acquired on the site. The avoidance of superfluous expenditure as well as the economy in time and labour is obvious.