casual workers, would still be unable to afford a sanitary and satisfactory house. It is impossible really to solve the housing problem till this condition of things has been altered, and a wide extension of the policy of the Trade Boards Act, placing an increasing number of trades under it, and fixing a minimum wage for them, is essential to true housing reform. I am convinced that the principle is thoroughly sound. It is disastrous to the nation as a whole, that many of its workers should be unable to pay for proper accommodation, nor can it ultimately benefit the employer. We must not only cheapen housing and decasualise labour, but we must raise wages, and then we can definitely compel the municipalities to carry out the law which says "Every house in this locality shall be reasonably fit for habitation." At present it is not enforced, for the simple reason that it imposes too great a burden upon the local authorities. If the central authority were to enforce it, the local authorities would have to turn thousands of people into the
