18 OCTOBER 1913, Page 2

We have said something elsewhere about the specific pro- posals

made by Mr. Lloyd George's Land Inquiry Committee, and especially as to the scheme for a minimum wage, and to those proposals we shall return again. We may, however, note the suggestion that there are to be no more tied-house cottages, that is, cottages which go with farms. Yet in the same breath there is held up to us the terrible evil, and it is a terrible evil, of a man having to walk two or three miles from his cottage to his work. The only effective way of preventing this is that cottages required by the men who work for the farmer should go with the farm, just as the rich man's gardener's cottage goes with his house. Would not Mr. Lloyd George think it a gross oppression if, when his gardener or chauffeur left him for any reason, his late employee did not leave the cottage near the house, thus causing the new gardener or engineer to live a couple of miles off and walk in every day to his work ? Yet that is the kind of situation which Mr. Lloyd George and his friends are preparing for the labourer when they forbid farmers to take cottages and sublet them.