54 City Homes on Country Lanes 



more and more imperiled by the conditions of urban 

 life. 



Almost everybody lives in rented premises, paying 

 tribute to a landlord, and becoming the victim rather 

 than the beneficiary of the increment in land values 

 their presence creates. The widest possible diffusion 

 of home-ownership is one of the essentials of a whole- 

 some national existence. City life, as now organized, 

 holds out no hope in this respect. Already, in some of 

 the greater cities, 95 per cent of the population is 

 utterly landless; and, in the sense of any security of 

 tenure, utterly homeless. It is a condition that strikes 

 at the roots of human freedom. 



Almost everybody works for wages, and is thus de- 

 pendent on the enterprise, the life, the fortune even 

 the whim of some one else, for a means of livelihood. 

 This also is a condition which makes against freedom, 

 even in the days of youth and strength. When middle 

 age is passed, and old age begins to loom upon the 

 horizon, the carking thought of uncertainty for the 

 future becomes like "the pestilence that walketh in dark- 

 ness; the destruction that wasteth at noonday'*; a 

 veritable "terror by night." 



There can be no true freedom, no abiding happiness 

 and content, without some measure of security of life. 

 The family that does not own the roof over its head; 

 that has no control of the occupation, or employment 

 on which it depends for daily bread, is living in a state 

 of insecurity, and facing an unknown future. Such 

 is the condition of a very large proportion of all of the 

 millions that have been absorbed by the resistless forces 

 of city life. Let the cup of their daily enjoyment be 



