THE SOCIAL WORK OF LOCAL AUTHORITIES 295

proper houses for a rent of seven or eight shillings a week and
successive Governments have tried to meet this situation by
assisting private enterprise, and by granting subsidies to local
authorities in respect of new houses built. Conservative Govern-
ments have put their faith chiefly in private, and Labour
Governments in public enterprise; the alternations of policy have
increased the difficulties. Skilled workers in the building industry
will be naturally reluctant to agree to any increase in their
numbers by relaxation of trade, union, rules, unless there is an
assured policy of continuous building to provide employment.
Throughout the country to-day, there are houses built by local
authorities in accordance with the provisions of the 19191 Addison
Act, the 1923 Chamberlain Act, the 1924 Wheatley Act, and the
1930 Greenwood Act. Each of these Acts made grants to local
authorities, and the 1935 Act provided up to £5 for twenty years,
in respect to every house built to relieve overcrowding. In the
countryside the grant wgs from £2 to £8, while the difficulties
of large towns, where land is expensive, were met by special
grants for flats. Since this last Act came into force, the local
authorities have not been obliged to keep separate accounts for the
houses built under successive Acts, but pay all the subsidies into
a Housing Revenue Account. The authorities are now required
to consider housing conditions from time to time, and frame
such schemes of house building as they think necessary. These
schemes have to be submitted for the approval of the Minister
of Heakh, and the local authority then proceeds to build and to
make rules concerning rent, conditions of tenancy, and the
management of the property. There is much ^variety in, and
argument about the type of accommodation provided. Flats are
open to criticism because they do not secure as much privacy
for the individual family as houses; not all the tenants can have
a garden of their own; those on the top floor of a five storey block
find the climb laborious, particularly if there are young children
and perambulators. A crowded city, however, has to choose
between flats near the centre and houses on the outskirts, where