38 THE RURAL PROBLEM 



building, aud these it is well to clear out of the way before 

 investigating the question as to what a cottage costs. 

 Some people, especially politicians, speak as if the landlord, 

 by withholding land altogether, or by asking too high a 

 price for it, rendered cottage building impossible. There 

 are doubtless cases in which, for his own selfish purposes, 

 the landlord refuses to sell land for cottages altogether, but 

 they are certainly not very frequent where the land is 

 wanted for agricultural labourers' cottages only, and they 

 could, and should, be met by powers of compulsion. 



Speaking generally, the high price of land cannot prevent 

 cottage building. Let us take an extreme case. Let us 

 suppose £100 an acre be asked for land that is only worth 

 £25, and let us assume that only 4 cottages are built on that 

 acre, £18 15s. will be added thereby to the cost of each 

 cottage, a sum which would only add a few pence to the rent 

 per week. The addition of £10, or even £20, to the price per 

 acre would make less than a penny difference to the rent. 



The same argument applies to the extra expense involved 

 by rather stupid and inelastic bye-laws, and again to the 

 high wages in the building trade. The difference in the 

 cost of a cottage if you pay a trade union rate of wage to 

 the men is very small, seeing that the wages bill is not more 

 than 30 per cent, of the whole cost of the cottage, and the 

 difference between high and low wages only a fraction of 

 that again. 



It is evident, then, that all the causes to which is popu- 

 larly ascribed the lack of cottages, high price of land, expen- 

 sive bye-laws, and trade union rate of wages, cannot, if 

 taken together, involve Od. a week addition to the rent, and, 

 as a matter of fact, in most eases they simply do not exist. 

 The dearth of cottages is due simply and solely to the low 

 wages of agricultural labourers, who cannot afford to pay 

 for them ; aggravated perhaps by our rating system. 



What, then, is the actual cost of cottage building at the 

 present time ? 



The Select Committee, previously quoted, stated in their 

 Report that they " felt justified in laying down the general 

 proposition that cottages built in a pair can be erected at 

 something between £150 and £175 each to meet all the 



