Last Saturday what we can only describe as a deliberate
attempt to confuse the issue was made by Mr. Robertson, one of the Scottish miners' leaders, who gave the Commission a lecture on the evils of housing in Scotland, and especially in Lanarkshire. It is unfortunately true that the housing condi- tions in Scotland are extremely bad. We remember to have been told by an American expert who knew the slums of London, Paris, and Berlin that he had never seen any houses so bad as the worst tenements in Glasgow. But it is equally tree that low wages are not the predisposing cause of this evil. Lack of public interest, a fear of increasing the rates, and primitive social habits account to a large extent for the tardiness of housing reform in the Scottish mining and manufacturing districts, especially in Lanarkshire, where the numerous Polish immi- grants have not helped matters. Things are very different in most English mining districts, such as Lancashire. But the miners' leaders count on the credulity of the public in their presentation of the worst Lanarkshire towns as typical of the conditions under which miners live.
