PUBLIC HEALTH 55 



The inclusion of these conditions puts the 

 question of agricultural housing in a false 

 light. But the confusion between two 

 different objects is still more misleading. 

 The primary concern of public health is to 

 prevent people from living in insanitary 

 conditions, and consequently it seeks to 

 abolish them, even at the cost of abolishing 

 the people as well. It begins by pulling down, 

 and is much less concerned with the far more 

 difficult task of building up, as the record of 

 proceedings under the Housing Acts abund- 

 antly proves. Still less is it concerned with 

 the occupation of the people who are the 

 object of its care. It has nothing whatever 

 to do with the prosperity or adversity of any 

 particular industry, or indeed of industry in 

 general. So long as people do not live in 

 insanitary dwellings they may cease to live 

 altogether, for all that the public health 

 service cares about it. The medical officer 

 and the surveyor say : " These cottages are 

 unfit to live in — they must come down." 

 What becomes of the people or of the industry 

 that depends on them is not their affair. In 

 fact, the ideal of public health is compatible 

 with the total extinction of agriculture or 

 any other industry. 



But the land question is concerned prima- 

 rily with the prosperity of agriculture, and 

 from this point of view the only relevant 



