RURAL BRITAIN.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 1866, 10 March 1913, Page 7

RURAL BRITAIN.

SCARCITY OF HOUSES,

"What will and ought to astonish

the country will, I fancy, he the revelation of the housing of the British labourer," writes H. W. , Massingham, in the Nation, apropos iof the Government's Land Inquiry. | "The famine of houses in rural Brii tain has amazed everyone who has ! touched the problem; and not leas& those who, though they know >t in ; outline, or in this or that locality, j have realised for the lirst time how ! universal and how appalling is the j dearth. Here it is a business of [ awakening the national conscience, j and I know only one living man of ! affairs cut out for that particular kind of spade work.'' DRIVING THE YOUNGSTERS AWAY. "Two factors are driving the best of the youngsters away from the 1 farms; the lack of a chance to rise i to any sort of a position and the deficiency of cottages," says the Times ; in concluding a remarkable series of articles on British Farming. "We need not labour the former point, but the provision of more , cottages in many parts of the counj try the most pressing and also most j difficult of problems. By long cus- ! torn cottages, whether tied to the farms or not, are everywhere let at rents that will not pay a living interest on their cost, and the farmer takes it out by paying" lowergwages. If every landowner could be compelled to charge 4s or 5s a week for his cottages, and the farmers to raise wages by a corresponding 2s or 8s a week, it would then be possible to build cottages as an ordinary j business proposition; but any at- j tempt on the part of an individual to raise rents and wages together only results in his men pocketing the! higher rate and trying to live at a distance or to crowd in with some- ! one else as lodgers. To build assisted ! cottages by means of loans or grants to the local authority would only perpetuate a vicious system and a false standard of wages which needlessly enhances the existing glamours of the town. But we see no way at present of forcing people to face facts and ensuring that a cottage which costs 5s a week to build and [maintain shall be let at that figure.

There is very general complaint that the knowledge of the old crafts is dying out; draining, ditching, brushing and laying a hedge, thatching, are nowadays usually in the hands of quite old men, and no successors are in sight. In many countries attempts are being made to teach these arts by means of classes, but from all we have seen this seems to be a wrong method of going to work. The farmer ought to be the teaoher, either with his own hands or by ensuring that some of the lads are set to work with the skilled leader. In many cases the master ought to be taught to dispense with the craft rather than the men to practise it. For example, sheep shearers are scaice in many districts, but, instead of instructing men in the ule of the shears, it would be wiser to show the master the advantages of a machine. Similarly Dutch barns are more economical than the best of thatchers. "The technical education of the labourer can best be left to the farmer, and it is mostly nonsense to complain that it is our system of elementary education that is driving the men off the land. Fewer men are needed per acre with every introduction of machinery; and indeed it is the better ideal to be able to manage a farm with two msn per 100 acres minding machines and earning 30s a week each than with ten men digging or its equivalent at 10s a week each. Actually the contrast is not so bad"as that, but still many farmers waste manual labour because it is comparatively cheap."