PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE 

 LIFE 



CHAPTER I 



THE STORY OF THE ENGLISH LAND 



THE conditions of rural life in England 

 are to a large extent unique. Nowhere in 

 Europe is so large a proportion of the popula- 

 tion permanently divorced from the land, 

 nowhere else is farming carried on by such 

 loose and careless methods or is the land so 

 much the " pleasure ground of the few " 

 rather than the " treasure house of the 

 many," nowhere else do you find a large 

 class of men existing on similar lines to those 

 of our agricultural labourers. The present 

 system, with all its attendant problems, 

 forms, perhaps, the clearest example of social 

 and political evolution met with in history. 

 So monotonous have been the annals of rural 

 England, so powerful the small minority of 

 its population, so helpless the large majority, 

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