CHAPTER XIII. 



COTTAGE ACCOMMODATION. 



ITie men who pay wages ought not to be the political 

 masters of those who earn them (because laws should be adapted 

 to those who have the heaviest stake in the country, for whom 

 misgovernment means not mortified pride or stinted luxury, but 

 want, and pain, and degradation, and risk to their own lives and 

 to their children's souls). — Lord Acton. 



Rural housing, perhaps more than the question 

 of getting people back to the land, has baffled 

 reformers for the last three decades. Mr. 

 John 15urns, as President of the Local Govern- 

 ment Board, has failed to touch even the 

 fringe of the problem. Will Mr. Walter 

 Runciman, as President of the Board of 

 Agriculture, reconstruct our decaying villages 

 from his Cottage Bureau ? 



As cottages decay there are practically 

 no new ones to take their places, so that 

 not only is there no provision in many districts 

 for young couples who wish to get married, 



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