268 AWAKENING OF ENGLAND. 



the rustic does not know what he wants, but that 

 the town legislator never seems to know how 

 to fulfil that want. Our countryside remains 

 silent ; it is only in towns, where votes are 

 plentiful, that one hears the clatter of tongues. 



The Housing of the Working Classes Act 

 1890 has proved a momentous failure as 

 applied to rural districts. Though not formu- 

 lated as a Housing Act, there have been more 

 cottages built in twenty months, under the 

 Small Holding Act 1908, than in the twenty 

 years since the passing of the Working 

 Classes Act. So hedged about by obstacles 

 was it, and apparently drafted by lawyers 

 purposely to run an obstacle-race, that the 

 Housing Act became almost a dead-letter. It 

 has now been supplanted by the Housing and 

 Town Planning Act of 1909. 



In this there has been an honest attempt 

 to obtain direct appeal from the poor cottager 

 who wants a cottage, to the highest admini- 

 strative authority — the Local Government 

 Board. There is to be no more of the old 

 wrecking procedure of getting the Parish 

 Council to apply to the Rural District Council, 

 and for that body to apply to the County 

 Council, which should again apply to the 



