24 THE RURAL PROBLEM 



in this connection, but it must not be forgotten that he is 

 not the only instance of a property owner taking advantage 

 of the dearth of cottages to exploit the tenant. The village 

 publican who owns property will sometimes compel his 

 tenants to come regularly to his house ; the village butcher 

 will palm off upon them meat that he could not otherwise 

 easily get rid of ; no complaint can be made by the tenants, 

 or out they go. If there were more cottages, these things 

 could not be, and the village labourer w r ould be a freer man. 

 The lack of cottages is at the root of all the petty tyrannies 

 of village life. It is the most terrible symptom of the poverty 

 of the agricultural labourer, who cannot afford to pay out of 

 his pitiful wage a rent large enough to make the building 

 of new cottages a commercial undertaking. And so a whole 

 generation of young country folk are caught up in the 

 vicious circle which breeds out of present-day poverty further 

 poverty and degeneration in the future. Born of fathers 

 who are sweated and underpaid, whose hours of work are 

 too long, to whom no chance of advancement has ever come, 

 who are directly under the heel of others, and who are the 

 victims, more than any other portion of the community, of 

 petty tyranny and social wrong, the children of the country- 

 side not only lack food and milk and the barest necessaries 

 of life, but are poisoned in the fetid air of crowded rooms, 

 and are grudged the room to live.* 



* See Appendix E for description of a typical village in the West 

 of England by an investigator. 



