[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—To one travelling in America, who is at the present moment living in a comfortable wooden house, some of the arguments that are used in England against the cheap wooden houses that would so largely solve the problem of housing the labouring classes in the country seem little less than ludicrous. "You can tell your English friends that outside the cities of ten thousand inhabitants practically no American lives in anything but a wooden house." The words are those of an American Bishop with exceptional opportunities of knowing the facts. He claims for the American system that the wooden houses and cottages are far cheaper than similar houses of brick or stone; that they are more sanitary, owing to the facility for adding w.c.'s and bath-rooms as annexes to the main building; that provided the buildings are limited to one story above the ground floor, the danger of loss of life by fire is inconsiderable ; and that the experience of a whole continent is available for the rest of the world to prove that wooden houses •can be made comfortable in a temperature ranging from 80 deg. above to 10 deg. below zero. I have found it really difficult to get Americans to believe that in our country local by-laws can be so behind the times as to forbid a labourer's cottage in the country to be constructed of wood, or that in a land of liberty men of the type of Mr. W. S. Blunt (see your issue of September 10th) can be fined for trying to meet in a reasonable way one of the greatest problems of our time.—I am, Sir, &c., Bar Harbor, Maine, U.S.A. JOHN H. ELLISON.
[We are very glad to get this evidence in favour of the wooden house derived from the Vicar of Windsor's experiences in America, but in truth we can learn the same lesson much nearer home. Surrey is full of old wooden houses which are dry and comfortable, though they are fifty or sixty, or even a hundred, years old. Nothing keeps out the wet and cold better than a weather-boarded house well tarred. We know of a newly built weather-boarded cottage in Surrey which in the searching wet of last year kept out the storms much better than many brick-built houses.—En. Spectator.]
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