Such an arrangement was not without its disadvantages even as regards
the Congested Districts Board itself: its adoption in the case of the
Authority to be created under the Agriculture and Industries Bill would
have been open to yet greater objection.
A further point was this. The Congested Districts Board was an unpaid
body. An unpaid body consisting of busy men cannot be in perpetual
session. The Congested Districts Board, as a matter of fact, met only
once a month; and in the intervals of its meeting there was no one with
full authority to act on its behalf.
The problem, then, in connection with the expenditure of the Endowment
Fund was to provide for its administration by an efficient and
promptly-acting executive, responsible to Parliament on the one hand,
and on the other hand brought by the very nature of its administrative
machinery into the closest possible touch with the new local
Authorities, as well as with the voluntary organisations which were now
springing up all over the country.
In order to satisfy these requirements, the Bill provided that the
control of the Endowment Fund should be vested not in a Board attached
to the new Department, but in the Department itself; that is to say, in
a Minister appointed by the Government of the day.
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