278 AWAKENING OF ENGLAND. 



dividual but a national problem waiting for 

 solution. The commissioners should be men 

 who know how to elicit information from 

 country labourers, and the inquiry should not 

 be made publicly where the tenant has to 

 speak under the eye of his landlord, but held 

 privately between the commissioner and the 

 applicant. 



There still remains the supreme difficulty 

 to be settled of building cottages at a low 

 enough rent to meet the pocket of the country 

 labourer. I have often gone into this question, 

 and I have come to the conclusion that it is 

 quite impossible in any district to build new 

 cottages which shall compete in rent with the 

 old farm-tied cottages let at Is. 6d. or 2s. a 

 week. Either one or two things must happen. 

 Either wages must go up to meet the higher 

 rent (by the institution of a legal minimum 

 wage), or a subsidy must be made out of rates, 

 or the national exchequer, to meet the deficit 

 made on letting cottages say at 2s. a week, 

 which should really be let at 3s. 6d. a week to 

 cover all charges. The burden of the Sinking 

 Fund charge should be lifted off the shoulders 

 of the tenant of a cottage as off that of the 

 tenant of County Council land. 



