CRUMBLING HERITAGE -305

perity as synonymous and to suspect all would-be protectiontofof
log-rolling, was still not ready for the hour of economic reh<£;
gression and repentance which Disraeli had foreseen as inevitable.
The Conservatives, themselves far from unanimous about their
untried chief's impetuous lead, were defeated at the polls, and the
Socialists, now the second largest Party, took office for the first
time in December, 1923.

The newcomers, still in a minority, did not remain in power
for long. Their foreign policy was unpopular, and their domestic
reforms did nothing to solve the problem of unemployment.
After nine months their Liberal allies withdrew their hesitant
support. An appeal to the country did not help the Socialists.
Despite their hold on the distressed areas and mining districts,
they went down heavily. In November, 1924, Baldwin again
took office.

During the next four years there was a slight improvement
in trade, unemployment fell by nearly half a million and there
was a reduction of fid. in the £ in income tax. An attempt at a
general strike, which for a dramatic week in the spring of 1926
created a revolutionary situation, was defeated by the refusal
of ordinary Englishmen—most of whom sympathised with the
miners on whose behalf the strike was ordered—to permit an
outside body to dictate to an elected and lawful government.
The coal strike was subsequently allowed to drag on for six
miserable months to its dismal, inevitable end; thereafter
industrial conditions became temporarily more normal. There
was a good deal of slum clearance carried out by the joint efforts
of private enterprise and local authorities with the aid of govern*
ment grants: in the four and a half years of the administra-
tion 8,000,000 houses were built. Workmen's savings increased
by £170,000,000, and there was a steady, if unspectacular,
improvement in the extent and quality of the Social Services,
whose cost, only £63,000,000 in 1911, rose by 1929 to £341,000,000.
The general achievement was not inspiring and fell far short of
the soldiers' dream* Yet it was the nearest post-war Britain ever
came to prosperity.

But there still remained over 1,000,000 unemployed. There were
still millions of English men and women living ugly, under-
nourished, uncertain lives, in cramped, mean, verminous dwell-
ings, and bringing up their children in dirt and degradation*
When the Baldwin government, in the summer of 1929, relying