COUNTRY LIFE
Country Housing
When a man get; a sizeable be in his bonnet there comes a time when the bee must buzz out or himself bust. One of my sizeable bees is the question of country slums, to which I have often referred on this page. It is a bee which, I am glad to say, does not buzz in my bonnet alone. It pleases me, and it ought to please all country lovers, to hear it buzzing in no less a bonnet than that of the editor of The Countryman, who has let out the bee into the editorial columns of this quarter's number, and with considerable effect. " When the Ministry of Health's proposed subsidy of from Do to Liz a year for forty years for new cottages becomes law there ought to be no difficulty in getting all the building done that is needed for the agricultural population. What that will mean to farming and to rural life only those of us know who live all the year round in the country." As he goes on to point out, to rely on the renovation of old cottages under the Housing, Rural Workers Act is not enough. Young and intelligent farm-workers' wives cry out, and very naturally, for decent standards of light, dryness and sanitation. They cry out for council houses, at the mention of which superior persons hold up inittened hands, talking of the ruin of rural beauty, agitated at the prospect of spoiling the view. My comment is that it is hard to, admire the best view in England from a cottage with fungus growing like velvet under the parlour carpet, prehistoric sanitation and curtains down the middle of the bedrooms to segregate the sexes.
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