THE BY-LAWS 21 



day much nearer when agricultural labourers could pay 

 an economic rent, for the wages could be fixed without 

 regarding the rent of the cottage as part of the wage. 

 But the need for the smallest possible expenditure on 

 building will always remain. It will be perfectly useless 

 to raise a man's wages, and then rent him off the face 

 of the land altogether. 



The by-laws are commonly criticised as an obstacle 

 to rural building, and often their obstructiveness is 

 justly criticised. But there is this to be said for them, 

 that they do give an intending occupant a guarantee 

 that a new cottage is not jerry-built. This point is 

 generally overlooked. Yet when a husband and wife 

 who have lived in a town, or who have knowledge of 

 what decent conditions of housing are anywhere, con- 

 template moving on to the land, one of the first ques- 

 tions they ask is, whether the house they have in view 

 is fit for the class to which they belong. The by-laws 

 give them the kind of warranty they want. Such 

 people may think beautiful things are ugly, and ugly 

 things beautiful, but their pride or their prejudices 

 must be as far as possible consulted. If the wife is too 

 proud to have a cooking stove in a combined parlour 

 and kitchen, by all means let her have one of those 

 ingenious devices which can be either a kitchen range 

 or a drawing-room fire as you please. But it is im- 

 portant that all the manifold inventions which make 

 the latest model of country cottages a place of delight 

 should be fool-proof. Mechanism which yields its 

 secret only to the careful and the cunning is bound to 

 break down in a very short time. 



It is not proposed to say anything here about the 

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