HOUSING IN SCOTLAND.
[To TEE EDITOR OP TEE SPECTATOR29 Sui,—For the last fortnight the pages of the newspapers have been full of the statements made to the Commission inquiring into the demands of the men employed in the collieries of this country. A large part of the statements made by the men's representatives related to the bad condition of their housing accommodation, including overcrowding, especially in Scotland. Now I am not in any way interested in collieries in Scotland, but I am a Scottish landowner, and thoroughly familiar with the housing question in both the colliery and rural districts of that country. I fail to see-what the housing queetion istaereally to do with the demands at present put forward by the miners. Their demands are threefold—first, that there should be ass advance of thirty per cent. in their standard rate of wage; second, that their maximum hours of working should by law be reduced from eight to six; and third, that the collieries of this country should 'be nationalized. What these have to do with housing I fail to see. I do not say for a 'moment that even the bulk of miners' houses, either in Scotland or Wales, are such as I should consider suitable; but assuming that all their three demands were granted, we should not be any nearer an improvement in their housing condition.
There are many cases, no doubt, where overcrowding has taken place, but the fault there rests with the Local Authority, who ought to have taken steps to prevent it; and my -experi- ence both as a proprietor and a member of a Local Authority is that overcrowding is one of the most difficult things possible to prevent in working-aloes houses. Some six years ego I restored and improved a pair of cottages in an agricultural district; they each consisted of a large kitchen, one large bed- room, a scullery, and a pantry—the usual accommodation provided in the rural districts in Scotland. The Local Authority asked to be allowed to rent one of these cottages for themes of a roadman, and I let it to theta for that purpose He was a married man but had DO 'family; the house was, therefore, sufficiiently large for -his requirements. Calling ut the house some six.months afterwards. I was astonished .to find that the roadman and his wife were living in the kitchen and had taken a lodger, who occupied the bedroom and had his meals with them in the kitchen. I was exceedingly annoyed at this, but powerless to do anything, as the roadman was not my tenant, but that of the County Council, who had taken'the cottage on a lease from me.
Now it would be quite as just to hold me responsible for that case as to hold the colliery.proprietors of Scotland respon- sible for the overcrowding in colliery villages. That over- crowding is due to the habits of the people themselves, and in most cases to the desire on the part of the woman of the house to obtain more money than her husband is prepared to give her out of -his wages; and were you to increase the wages of the men tenfold, in all probability it -would have no appreciable effect on the cases of overcrowding. My experience is that in the rural districts workmen are keen to own their own houses, but in the colliery districts it is not so. The collier does not wish'to own his house. And while I agree that it is desirable that a better and healthier type of house should -be provided for the men to live in, there is no connexion whatever 'between
that and their present demands.—I am,:Siv, J.
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