Science in Public Affairs 



and to persuade Local Authorities to frame less 

 prohibitive building bye-laws, since there is no 

 need to insist in country cottages on all the strict 

 conditions necessary in a crowded city. It is, 

 however, doubtful if the present system of linking 

 cottages with farms, and letting them to labourers 

 at less than the cost of maintenance, will ever 

 afford a sufficient supply of cottages. Wages will 

 have to go up till the labourer is able to pay a 

 full competitive rent. Rents will be higher all 

 round, and builders or landlords will be able to 

 build freely, and obtain a fair return on the capital 

 expended. But rural things move slowly, and we 

 may wait long. 



The first garden city is an interesting experiment 

 which, if successful, may in time help to stop the 

 rural exodus. More might be done in a somewhat 

 similar direction if the Local Authorities were given 

 the power, and had the courage, to forestall the 

 growth of great and dreary suburbs by laying out 

 the land with a view to its development on rational 

 and health-giving lines. In this task they could 

 learn from Germany, where the thing that seems 

 to us so hard is actually being done. 



Moreover, the Education Act of 1902 gave 

 powers to Local Authorities, which, if properly used 

 in rural schools, might keep in the country many 

 of those who, to again quote the Committee, " are 

 tempted to incur the competition of town life with 

 no better prospect than to swell the ranks of un- 

 skilled labour, owing to lack of interest in their 

 home surroundings, and to no effort being made 



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