AN APPEAL FOR SUNLIGHT [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sit,---This week there comes into force, on July 1st, the Public Health (Smoke Abatement) Act, 1926, being the first piece of general legislation against the plague-cloud, as Ruskin rightly called it, since the abortive clauses in Disraeli's great Public Health Act of 1875. You have already allowed me to express my view of this Act, which totally fails to deal with the domestic chimneys, even of houses yet unbuilt, and which
allows loopholes for the peccant owner even of grossly smoking industrial chimneys. But no further legislation may be hoped for during many years to come. Two main duties now fall to the task of the Sunlight League. The first is to arouse and educate public opinion, so that, wherever there are smoking factory chimneys, there may be enough citizens, weary of being smoked to death, who will insist on obtaining from the new Act such abatement of indus- trial smoke as may be possible. Experience in many other instances shows that only such arousal of public opinion will avail against vested interest, inertia, and stupidity.
Secondly, the League must work for public education as to the value of sunlight, the ways of using it to conquer the
diseases of darkness, and especially the right equipment of our new houses so as not to eclipse the light of life. This we must do, knowing that further legislative help is beyond hope.
For these purposes we now appeal for sunlight. We want many new members (10s. lid. annually, including subscription
for Sunlight) and we want substantial donations to help us to carry on our educative work. We do not run clinics, nor lamps, nor send children into the country for a day in the year—lovely work, worthy of all help—but we aim at making our cities fit for children and adults to live in every day in the year. - Your readers were generous when last you allowed me
to appeal. They helped to make our work for the new Act possible and, such as it is, we must be grateful for it : but it closes the door to substantial legislation and therefore makes our propaganda work more necessary than ever. I pray that your readers may help towards this constructive, creative, fundamental work, designed to make unnecessary so much of the costly, endless palliation on which millions of pounds are spent yearly by the kind-hearted.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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