As for housing, a return to the policy of 1924
is promised in the Labour Programme, plus a complete scheme of slum clearance. Farmers are offered security of tenure, fair rents, capital-and credit assistance, organized market- ing, and stability in prices. The agricultural labourers are offered a minimum wage, unemployment insurance, holdings, and untied cottages. Labour does not appear to understand that unless there is to be a surplus of cottages certain cottages are necessarily tied. Otherwise horsemen and cowmen might have to come considerable distances to their work: ' If those who tend animals are not an the shot it is the animals which will suffer. Nation. alization of the land is not proposed except in the vague statement that " the land must pass under public control." The fiery 'declarations 'Which Labour was accustomed to make two years ago about the instant repeal of the Trades Union Act when Labour came into office are watered down in the programme to an amendment of the Trade Union • law."' There are to be inquiries into the cotton and iron and steel industries " with a view to their reorganization." Railways and transport, similarly, are not to be nationalized, for the present at all events, but only " reorganized." In a speech a few days -ago Mr. MacDonald made much of his plan for a National EOnoinic Committee, composed partly of Ministers and partly of - expert assessors ; a body which would have the enormously important function of directing the flow of credit and the use of capital. But we search the Labour Programme in vain for any reference to it. Among the many omissions this is perhaps the strangest.
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