THE RURAL EXODUS 73 



settle down in their native villages are driven 

 to migrate because no home is available- 

 The Daily Mail of September 25, 1911, con- 

 tained an account of a respectable Chelmsford 

 labourer who had been driven to take shelter 

 in the workhouse because he could find no 

 house in his parish. The dearth of houses is 

 very marked in Essex, and long engagements, 

 sometimes extending to ten years, are often the 

 necessary prelude to marriage. The whole 

 social system of rural England seems to form 

 indeed, unconsciously as it were and unin- 

 tentionally, one vast conspiracy for expelling 

 the people from the country. More pheasants 

 are bred every year, more gamekeepers 

 employed, more motor-cars bring down the 

 week-end guests, while men and women drift 

 citywards, in order to find a shelter for 

 their heads. 



There is another salient evil in our rural 

 housing. More and more the cottages have 

 become " tied " to the farms. Such dwellings 

 are occupied on the most precarious tenure, 

 and if a man displeases his master he runs the 

 grievous risk of losing not only his job but his 

 home. A young man, honest, sober and 

 industrious, came to me on one occasion hi 

 sore distress. He had, after tedious delays, 

 secured a small holding in a Midland parish,. 



