256 Timehri. 
Something may be said in defence of each of these modes of laying 
out. The lots along the estate fronts provide a community dependent 
more or less directly on the estate and yet not bound to the service of 
the estate as are the residents on the estate itself. Such communities 
should be thriving. With factory and field work nearby putting into 
circulation anything between one and several thousand dollars per week, 
there must be something radically wrong if they do not thrive. From 
the estates’ point of view, however, opinion is divided as to the wisdom 
of establishing them. In the case of the village adjoining the estate 
the housing of the people in a laid-out village community has more to 
commend it than has the same system in a community separated from 
the estate. A large number of people will be finding employment on the 
estate while others will be engaged in various forms of service arising 
from the immediate proximity of the estate. In all the cases, however, 
the main considerations are drainage and facility of access to the homes. 
It is claimed that in a land without stones the cost of making and keeping 
up roads would be prohibitive, while sanitation would suffer under the 
present and only practicable system of drainage. [ admit cost and some 
difficulty in regard to the roads but I set up the very opposite claim in 
regard to sanitation. It is also claimed that the locating of the houses 
together is desirable from the social poimt of view and helpful from an 
administrative point of view. The latter may be dismissed as receiving 
undue weight. As to the former it might not be amiss to inquire some- 
what into the question. In all countries there are and ever have been 
wide differences between urban and rural life, born partly of differences in 
occupation and partly of differences in conditions and associations of 
residence. And while it is acknowledged that the characters developed 
under these respective conditions are mutually helpful and both necessary 
to the full life of the community, it is also recognised that the inflow of 
the influences born of rural life are essential to the moral toning up and 
physical improvement of city life. There is a conventionality and an 
almost slavish submission to fashion and custom which are a prominent 
feature of city life. To this conventionality and submission our towns 
present no exception. The proximity of residences to each other is no 
negligible factor in bringing about this condition and as it acts in the city 
so will it act in the village. Whatever little advantage then is gained by 
the grouping together of the houses, city-like, it is more than outweighed 
by the loss of rural influences. 
The distance, too, of the “ Provision beds” from the houses in the 
village proper cannot but be a drawback. In some cases several miles 
each way must be travelled before half an hour’s work can be done. 
Added to the drawback of distance is the inconvenience of ingress and 
egress from and to the ‘ beds,” the side-line trench, with anywhere between 
two and four feet of water, having to be crossed each way. 
The class of houses built by the early villagers differed much from 
those now put up. I am not bringing into comparison the large and 
expensive house sometimes erected by a villager of means. Those early 
