THE DISPARITY IN RENTS 157 



organisation to the employment of soldiers, there are 

 two subjects of direct and urgent importance — 

 Housing and Village Life. 



B. Housing 



Imagine a village with twenty old cottages let at 

 Is. 6d. and twenty new cottages to be let at 85. Is 

 the farmer to pay Smith, who is to live in an 8s. 

 cottage, 6s. 6d. a week more wages than Jones, who 

 lives in a Is. 6d. cottage ? If so, economic forces 

 won't encourage the occupation of the new cottages 

 by agricultural labourers. Naturally more and more 

 farmers would get the old cottages into their own 

 hands, and make them " tied " ; and the new cottages 

 would be occupied by the non-agricultural classes — 

 by men employed by Government or County Councils, 

 or Railways. The returned soldiers who had wanted 

 to take up agricultural employment — ^for whom 

 ex hypothesi the new cottages were built — ^would find 

 themselves unemployed unless they could get room 

 in the old cottages at the low rents. 



This is the problem — ^this disparity of rents — ^with 

 which we have to deal, and of which we hope to suggest 

 a solution. 



There is general agreement that in order to meet 

 the inflation of building cost, due to the war, there 

 must be a State bonus or similar financial easement 

 of some sort. To burden the already difficult problems 

 of rural housing with the additional difficulty of full 

 war prices would be simply to make them insoluble. 

 Even before the war a five-roomed cottage rarely 

 could be built to let at less than 4$. Qd. a week, as 



