150 PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE 



half-a-dozen houses at 4/6 a week the pressure 

 of overcrowding is relieved, and that while 

 the 3/6 people move up to the new and more 

 expensive houses, their cottages are occupied 

 by villagers hitherto paying only 2/-. This 

 of course sounds very well in theory, but the 

 stern fact remains that in the weekly budget 

 of the labourers' families in the badly-paid 

 counties there is really no margin whatever 

 from which to draw for any increase in the 

 re at of his dwelling. 



The position of the labourer as a rent-payer 

 is based on no sound economic principles, 

 but is simply part and parcel of the whole 

 slipshod system of our rural life. In the past, 

 from motives sometimes ethical, sometimes 

 aesthetic, landowners have built groups of 

 superior cottages and let them at quite unre- 

 munerative rents. The existence of these 

 model cottages at purely artificial rents has 

 really proved a hindrance to the general 

 advancement of rural housing. " If the money 

 and energy devoted by generous landlords 

 to this unhappy policy," says Mr. Nettlefold, 

 " had been devoted to showing farmers and 

 other employers that it is sound business to 

 pay good wages, and see to it that they are 

 earned, and bad business to pay the smallest 

 possible wages, good might have resulted 



