LORD LYTTON'S SCITRIFE
[TO THE EDITOR or THE "Spam...To/L.1 SIR,—I have read Lord Lytton's letter on this subject in your last issue with considerable interest, and also your comment upon the same. I only wish it were possible for the ordinary agricultural labourer to pay the 3s. a week rent which the scheme of his lordship involves—a rent, moreover, which would be much higher if the cottage cost a larger sum than £150. As it is, I do not think the scheme Lord Lytton has alluded to stands the slightest chance of solving the rural cottage problem so far as the ordinary agricultural labourer is concerned. What it would do would be to provide cottages for the class of people who cycle to the villages from the neighbouring towns, and who live in those villages. I refer to the better-paid labourers and artisans. No doubt these in many cases could pay 3s. or a little more per week, and to that extent relieve the situation; but may I point out that the cottages they would vacate in order to occupy the better pr•oper•ties are by no means always of so excellent a character that we should desire to transfer the ordinary agricultural labourers into them. To my mind—as one who has had a very considerable experience extending over a great number• of years — I think the most practical plan for the provision of cottages in our village districts is that
brought before Parliament by Mr. Beville Stanier in his Rural Cottages Bill. Under this measure it would be possible to build three-bedroom cottages (with an eighth of an acre of garden ground) at 2s. a week rent if owners built, or at 2s. 6d. a week if Rural District Councils built. It may be said that this involves the advancing of money to those who own land. It does. This, however, is no sufficient objection except in the eyes of politicians out merely for votes; although, even in that case, the electors ought to know that both parties in the State have for the last generation or two been advancing money to owners of land for the development of their properties—so that the objection alluded to has really no moral force behind it. The owners of land are normally the most interested in cottage-building; and, in my judgment, the State ought to take them into hearty co-operation in the solution of one of the most serious problems of our time. Whether the State will do so under such Ministers as at present control it may be doubtful; but that is no reason why Unionists should be deterred from advocating a policy which, after all, is sound, and which, I can say, is very popular among the agricultural labourers themselves.—I am, Sir, Ste.,
//0-/// Strand, London, W.C. J. L. GREEN,
Secretary, The Rural League.
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