2 PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE 



promises unfulfilled the labourers' interest 

 is still aroused by the cry of the land in any 

 Parliamentary contest. How well I remember 

 the autumn of 1908, when I held fifty meetings 

 in Oxfordshire to explain the Small Holdings 

 Act in the belief that now at length " land for 

 the labourer " meant something more than the 

 cruel delays and feeble achievements of the 

 Small Holdings Act. The village school- 

 rooms were filled with audiences as big as 

 those which came together at the General 

 Election, and labourers, young and old alike, 

 with their wives trudged through the dark 

 and muddy lanes to hear of an Act which 

 might help to make their lives better worth 

 living. 



This golden opportunity of real land reform 

 has been lost, and the younger men are 

 emigrating in hundreds, exchanging the elusive 

 hopes of land in the country of their birth for 

 the certainties of Canada or Australia. The 

 returns of recent emigration are startling, 

 and according to Mr. Chiozza Money's careful 

 figures it would appear that this has almost 

 passed the limits of healthy expansion and 

 become a dangerous drain on our national 

 resources at home. No less than 33,000 

 persons have left our ports for the Colonies 

 during the year 1911, and complaints of scarce 



