ards (afterwards M.P.), Miss
Constance Cochrane, Alderman Thompson, and others, were first discussed
at a preliminary private meeting in December, and then submitted to the
Conference, which was held on March 1st, the day following the
Conference at which the Labour Party was established. By choosing this
date we secured a large number of delegates from Trade Unions, and these
were reinforced by numerous delegates from Vestries and other local
authorities, altogether numbering about 400. At the close of the
proceedings a National Committee was formed with headquarters at the
Fabian Office, which had however only a short career. The Conference
papers were printed as a bulky penny tract, "The House Famine and How to
Relieve It," which rapidly went through two editions. We also published
"Cottage Plans and Common Sense," by Raymond Unwin, which describes how
cottages should be built--an anticipation of garden suburbs and
town-planning--and a compilation of everything which Parish Councils had
done and could do, including housing, prepared by Sidney Webb and
called "Five Years' Fruits of the Parish Councils Act," which in 1908
was revised and reissued as "Parish Councils and Village Life." A speech
by W.C. Steadman, M.P., who was a member of the Society, was printed
under the title "Overcrowding and Its Remedy." Our agitation was not
without results. The amending Acts of 1900, 1903, and 1909 have done
much to remove the unnecessary administrative complexities of the Act of
1890, but in fact the problem is still unsolved, and the scandalous
character of our housing, both urban and rural, remains perhaps the
blackest blot in the record of British civilisation.

* * * * *

The Society had always been concerned in public education. Its first
electoral success was when Mrs. Besant and the Rev. Stewart Headlam were
elected to the London School Board in 1888, and except for one interval
of three years Mr. Headlam has sat on the School Board and its
successor, the London County Council, ever since. Sidney Webb was
Chairman or Vice-Chairman of the L.C.C. Technical Education Board from
its foundation in 1893, almost continuously until the Board came to an
end in 1904, after the London Education Act. Graham Wallas was elected
to the School Board in 1894, and from 1897 onwards was Chairman of the
School Management Committee; he had been re-elected in 1900, and was
therefore filling the most important adm