GROWTH UNDER STORMY SKIES. 187 



What are the results ? In the first place, a number of houses 

 are allowed to survive which beyond all question ought to be 

 condemned as unfit for human habitation. The second result is 

 that many deserving men and women who want to find a home in 

 the village are wholly unable to find it. The third result is that 

 where you have barely enough cottages to go round, the man who 

 has got a cottage, particularly if the cottage is let with the farm, 

 has an uneasy feeling that he is too much at the mercy of his 

 employer, and if he loses his job he stands a very good chance of 

 losing his home into the bargain. That is not a desirable frame 

 of mind." 1 



A different kind of Enquiry to the one at Foxham was held 

 in the adjoining county of Somerset a year later. Here the 

 laxity of the Rural District Council was being tried by the 

 County Council. The atmosphere was quite different from 

 that of Foxham, and the reason not far to seek. The four 

 who made the requisition to the County Council were not lab- 

 ourers this time, but four influential middle-class Quakers ; 

 and the Medical Officer of Health for the County, Dr. Savage, 

 was, fortunately, one who possessed a moral passion for 

 sanitation. 



I happened to be present at the Enquiry 2 and was struck 

 by the independence of a workman, who needless, to say 

 was not an agricultural labourer. It was when the Chair- 

 man of the County Council (who conducted the Enquiry in 

 a most admirable manner) asked the workman if he would 

 like a cottage with three bedrooms, a Rural . District 

 Councillor sneeringly interjected : " And a bathroom, too, 

 I suppose ? " 



" Yes," retorted the workman sharply, " can't we be clean 

 as well as you ? " 



The Enquiry was held both at Shipham and at Wins- 

 combe. The conditions of affairs at Shipham were illuminat- 

 ing. Many years ago lead mines were worked here by 

 squatters, who built their cottages on what appears to have 

 been No-man's land. It would be difficult to find a fairer 

 spot in England than this, where between the escarpments 



1 The Times, June 23, 1913. 



* A Citizens' League had been formed at Winscombe after reading The 

 Awakening of England. I had been asked to lecture to it. 



