The most unfortunate kindness that can be done to a
small- holder at his setting out...is to burden him with one penny of avoidable debt. He needs, for the first few years, to be able to put back into his land as much as possible of what he takes out of it. It is a revelation, what has been done in Cornwall, Oxfordshire, the Fens and other parts of the country in the not distant past by men who had nothing to start with but access to a piece of land. Their taste in architecture ran to a startling decorativeness, once they had got established, but it is something that they thrived. This form of independent settle- ment is still going on, frequently as a part-time occupation. The allotment, in association with a job in the town, will probably prove to be the right solution wherever there is a concentration of manufacturing and mining population, as in the Midlands and North-East. The increased leisure which the evolution of industry is making inevitable,. will be less of a problem if it is associated with a growing provision of allotments.
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