20 THE POLICY OF THE PLOUGH 



that there would be no appreciable shortage of houses 

 if men employed by the State and by local authorities, 

 railway men, and so forth, were housed by their em- 

 ployers instead of occupying houses originally intended 

 for agricultural labourers.^ But here the conditions 

 must be considered as they are, not as they ought 

 to be. 



Agricultural labourers, or at all events those who 

 speak for them, beheve that they endure a hardship in 

 the fact that many rural cottages are " tied " — ^that is 

 to say, are rented or bought by a farmer together with 

 the other farm buildings. The farmer has an unfair 

 hold, it is said, upon a labourer, since by dismissing 

 him he also deprives him of his home. Certainly in a 

 perfect world this could not happen. At the same 

 time men can easily talk themselves into a kind of 

 hypnotic state in which a sinister suggestion has the 

 value of reahty. After all, a man does not cease to be 

 free because a particular job has a particular cottage 

 attached to it. A coachman, a groom, a chauffeur, or 

 a gardener puts up with a tied house without a thought 

 that things could be managed otherwise — as indeed 

 they could not be. Many cottages are built very near 

 farms expressly for the service of those farms. If a 

 man occupies such a farm cottage though he is not 

 working for the farm, he may be a free man, but he is 

 putting somebody else to outrageous inconvenience. 

 Let us clear our minds of cant in this as in other matters. 

 The Prime Minister, the Speaker, and the Archbishop 

 of Canterbury all live in tied houses. 



A minimum wage would unquestionably bring the 

 1 Facts about Land (John Murray), p. 47. 



