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 to all our minimum standards. This fact is of great importance. Bearing it in mind, I propose to devote the remainder of this lecture to a discussion of the three principal methods, which, as it seems to me, are at present available for helping forward the establishment of the desired minimum standard of housing accommodation.

I ask your attention first to a policy that is relevant to many forms of minimum standard, and the beneficial influence of which is open to no dispute. The failure of poor persons to attain the level we deem to be satisfactory in the matter of nourishment, of education and of insurance, is frequently the result, not so much of poverty as of ignorance and mismanagement. Sympathy, guidance and instruction by Health visitors and others may often enable them, without any additional expense, greatly to improve their lot. A like statement is true in a pre-eminent degree of certain elements of satisfactory housing. The point to be made is this. A great part of the squalor and discomfort of certain