THE SLUM PROBLEM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22053, 8 September 1933, Page 7

THE SLUM PROBLEM

MR BALDWIN'S APPEAL "MORAL DEGRADATION." (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, July 27. Last Saturday Mr Stanley Baldwin addressed 15,000 Eastern Counties Conservatives in an open-air amphitheatre at Gog Magog Hills, near Cambridge, and appealed for support of the Government's crusade against the slums. " We want this to be the greatest effort within living memory—an effort similar to that this country made 100 years ago to abolish slavery," he said. "We want to abolish the slum dwelling, whether it be in town or country. Every crusade has behind it a simple, conviction, and •our simple conviction is that every man in this island is entitled to live in conditions that will provide comfort, health, and happiness, as far as we can afford it. " It is an appalling thing to think that there are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who are condemned to live in conditions in which ill-health and discontent must be chronic. We cannot afford the moral and physical degradation that accompany our slum dwellings, and while I admit that this is, and must be, an age of economy, let us at least economise in our slums aud have no more of theui. " We want the support of public opinion behind the local authorities in this work, and I am confident that the country will respond. It needs no miracles. It needs only good will and hard work. Once we get rid of the slums they will be gone for good. It is not true, as people sometimes say, that they will be recreated an fast as they are abolished. Planning by-laws and modern development will prevent that." In a reference to unemployment, Mr Baldwin said: At the end of June there were 354,000 more people in work than' there were two years ago, and 461,000 move than a year ago. If we can go on making solid and steady progress of that nature we shall have no need to be ashamed of our record when we have to render an account of our stewardship to> the country in about three years' time."