Mr. Rider Haggard made a speech last Saturday at Letch-
worth, in Hertfordshire, on the condition of the agricultural
labourers, a subject upon which he is a considerable authority. After commenting on the modern want of cottages and its causes, he declared his opinion that the only way to bring back the country folk to the land was to encourage small holdings, an opinion in which we are glad to see Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, a landowner with an immense acreage, quite concurs. With such holdings, some co-operation—which the landlord who lets the holdings can ensure—people's banks to make advances to agriculturists, and an agricul- tural parcel post, the cultivators would be tempted to return. We believe that view is correct, and have heard some curious evidence in its favour from thirty-acre farmers. There remains, however, the housing difficulty for the labourers. The labourer cannot build a house, and the landlord will not unless he can see his way to a cheaper kind of cottage architecture than is as yet attempted. The rural depopulation problem, in truth, resolves itself into th3 possibility of building, by use of cheaper materials, cottages for 8100 apiece. Unless cottages can be built for something about that price, they cannot be let at a rent which the labourer can pay. The average landowner is not in a position to play the part of a rural Peabody.
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