134 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



Yet many cottages could have been built in semi- 

 suburban districts and in rural areas adjoining industrial 

 communities where wages were higher than in the depths of 

 the country, and the tenants would readily have paid the 

 economic rent of 45. or 55. a week. But they were not 

 built, save in extremely small numbers, and the succeeding 

 Housing Act of 1909, instead of creating a great many more 

 cottages in the country, had the effect of closing down far 

 more cottages than it built. 



I do not wish to convey the idea that Parish Councils 

 did no useful work in improving the conditions of village life 

 for the labourer. That they did many things I shall show ; 

 but there is no doubt that labourers were disillusioned over 

 the executive powers of Parish Councils, and through the pro- 

 cess of continual victimisation lost any enthusiasm they 

 had in 1894, and let those who had been in the habit of govern- 

 ing them continue to do so. I know a village in Sussex 

 where at this time six farm labourers managed to get 

 elected, and every one of these six labourers had eventually 

 to seek his living outside the parish. 



To briefly record some of the work done by Parish Coun- 

 cils between 1894 and 1907 besides getting the cottages 

 built in the villages I have mentioned, and recovering parish 

 land, Parish Halls or Rooms were built at Charing (Kent), 

 Boarhunt (Hants), Compton (Hants), Hessle (Yorks), 

 Dysarth (Flintshire), Hawkehurst (Kent), Trefriew (Carnar- 

 vonshire), Underskiddaw (Cumberland), Bovey Tracey 

 (Devonshire), South Stoke (Oxfordshire), Gunthorpe (Not- 

 tinghamshire), Cheddar (Somersetshire). 



Bathing places were established at Betch worth (Surrey), 

 Al vest on (Warwick), Snitterfield (Warwick), Ibstock (Leices- 

 ter), Snodland (Kent), Blaby (Leicestershire), Campden 

 (Gloucestershire) . 



Libraries and Reading Rooms were opened in several 

 parishes, the best known of which is at Middle Claydon, 

 which was established by the late Sir Edmund Verney, and 

 where I learn from Sir Harry Verney, fiction seems to be the 

 only kind of literature for which there is a constant demand. 



Curious political prejudices were discovered to rule in 



