210	ENGLISH    SAGA
and parliamentary elections and controlled by salaried public
servants, had spiling into existence in the island dedicated to the
sanctity of private wealth. Parliamentary powers of collective
control and ownership, and sometimes of monopoly, were sought
and obtained, at first by the greater cities, later by the counties
and smaller urban areas. The Local Government Act of 1888
established elective County Councils with control of local affairs
and taxation. In that year London achieved its County Council—
presently to revolutionise the life of its poorer inhabitants. The
services of communal life which individual effort had failed to
give to the vast urban agglomerations it .had created, were
supplied step by step by local authorities. They were paid for out
of rates and loans charged on rates. The first successful flotation
of municipal stock was made in 1880 by the Liverpool Corpora-
tion. By 1896 the local government debt of the country was
already 200 million pounds. Only fourteen years later it was
three times greater.
The first services performed by the new local authorities were
lighting, paving, and cheap transport. By far the most important
were education and housing. In nothing had laissez-faire
achieved so much and so badly as in housing. It had built homes
for millions of new factory workers, and not to endure but to
perish. The vital attribute of a home is that it should be per-
manent. The principle of the jerry builder was to make as quick
a profit as possible on as large a turnover for as little expendi-
ture of labour and money. The houses went up fast enough
but they did not last. They were not meant to.
They were built in rows and usually back to back—poky,
hideous, uncomfortable and insanitary. The last thing that
was thought of in making them was the convenience of the
occupant.^1 Except in the granite towns and villages of East
Lancashire and the West Riding they were so flimsy that they
swayed with the wind and their walls so thin that their inmates
were traditionally reputed to be able to hear their neighbours
making up their minds.
Frequently such houses were erected by the companies that
employed their occupants This was particularly so in iron and coal
districts where there was little alternative employment. A man
who lost his job lost his home. The rents were "kept back" from
^1 Jack Jones, the Labour M.P., said of one of them in the House of Commons that
when a man got up in the morning he had to put his legs through the window to get
his trousers on.