beginning of the nineteenth centuries, were coming under the sway of the economic doctrine of laissez faire, and mistrusted all checks on social freedom and individual action. Hence there was a general reluctance to interfere with the details of a process which, in its broad sense, was rightly seen to be inevitable. The protests and risings of the last of the peasants were ignored and put down, amid the melancholy accompaniments of righteous self-satisfaction and the slow agony of foiled endeavour. The country settled down to estimate, during the course of the succeeding fifty years, the advantages of unrestricted economic competition and the unchecked power of financial and industrial capital. The dispossessed cottagers crowded into the undrained, ill-planned, fever-haunted towns, and supplied that cheap labour which was so much to the advantage of the rising class of industrial capitalists. The degradation of urban labour, the final destruction of craftsmanship, the elimination of human relations between men and masters, completed the first stage of the industrial revolution, until the gloom was at last relieved by the early Factory Acts.

As applied to agriculture the broad result of the industrial revolution was an undoubted and immense economic gain to the nation; while, during the years of prosperity and war prices, it also brought increased wealth to farmer and landowner. But the landless labourer, who had now replaced the feudal peasant, received little share in the increase of rural wealth. Deprived of his customary rights, forced, by the pressure of circumstances he could not understand, to sell his allotted bit of land, the labourer was faced first by the great rise in prices consequent on the Napoleonic wars, and then by the depression and disorganisation of the agricultural world that followed the fall of prices coincident with the peace.

The period from 1814 till the reform of the Poor Law in 1834 was one of the most disastrous ever known in rural England. And yet another consequence of those years of agricultural depression must not be overlooked. Many landowning families of long standing were temporarily crippled or forced to sell their estates owing to the rapid fall of prices and to a series of financial crises. This process recurs at intervals throughout the centuries, and each time a new class of landowners replaces those who are dispossessed. The new men

have usually a less instinctive knowledge of rural life, and a lower standard of public duty, and tend to regard the old acres either as a purely commercial investment or, on the other hand, as a means merely of personal gratification and social display. On the whole, the years from 1836 to 1870 were prosperous. The reform in the Poor Law gave a sounder basis for improvement in the lot of the labourer, while new agricultural methods and new breeds of stock increased the productivity of the land and the profits of farmers. More slowly, as farms fell in, landowners benefited by an increase in the rents offered, and, more slowly still, agricultural wages began to rise.

But these brighter prospects were eclipsed in the terrible time beginning with the disastrous season of 1879, which coincided with the first rush of the flood of foreign imports of food to supply from outside sources the needs of the cities whose insistent demands had been responsible for the changed economy of the countryside. With one short and slight break, the years of acute depression lasted well into the present century. Once more, farmers' profits fell, often to less than nothing, landowners were straitened or parted with their estates, and wages were perforce lowered and labourers dismissed.

Simultaneously and subsequently a series of Acts of Parliament, directed, partly for political motives, against the landowning class, and designed outwardly to protect the interests of the tenant farmer, who seemed to be the chief sufferer, greatly strengthened a position which, from economic causes, was already becoming over strong. No doubt farmers had passed through bad years, though the majority had received a substantial reduction of rent. But, in other ways, the tenant farmer was yearly becoming more powerful in the social structure of the country. As against his landlord, he held the strong weapon of a notice to quit a farm that it might be difficult or impossible to re-let, and a formidable array of newly enacted compensation clauses gave a sharper edge to his weapon. As against his men, he held the power, not only of discharge into an overstocked labour market, but also of eviction from their homes, which, though for the most part the property of the same landowner, it had become a general custom to regard as part of the farm equipment, and to place with the other buildings in the unrestrained control of the occupying farmer.

Thus, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, while a slow rise in money wages and in their real value was lightening the pressure of want on the labourer, and a reformed judicial system took the place of the menacing administration of savage justice which had beset his father's early years, his position in other respects showed little or no improvement. In fact, it is possible that the labourer was passing more and more into the hands of the farmer, who was also becoming less amenable to the moderating influence of an impoverished landowner, and to the criticism of the fast dwindling class of the smaller rural gentry. The balance of three forces, which is the idea of stability whether in mechanical problems, constitutional government, or social conditions, was grievously upset.

The history of rural housing has yet to be written; it is hardly touched upon by recent writers on other aspects of rural history; only the barest outline of the subject can here be attempted.

As long as the old social structure of the manor lasted, enough cottages seem to have been forthcoming. The solidarity of the group prevailed and the men of the manor were housed somehow within its bounds. Standards were low; building bye-laws were an impediment yet to be devised, and, with the security of copyhold or other customary tenure, a man could even build his own house or make sacrifices to get one built. At that time, society was not organised on a purely financial basis, and custom was stronger than some of the economic tendencies of the day. The passing of the old system was accompanied in parts of the country by an access of prosperity which made it possible to build, and in others by a process of rural depopulation which diminished the need for houses. For many years the existing cottages often proved adequate to shelter the families that remained. Thus the housing problem first declared itself in the urban districts, and, during the years of agricultural depression which followed 1879, the lessened demand for cottages spread over nearly the whole country.

But, with the turn in the tide which followed the close of the nineteenth century, we meet a new state of affairs. The food supplies of the Western world became less superabundant with the growth of American cities, and with rising prices and

the experience gained in difficult times, English agriculture once more showed signs of revival. The demand for labour ceased to fall, in places began even to increase. The plough was again cheerfully at work on the stiffer clay soils and the light chalk lands, which it had not paid to cultivate during the years of depression.

Simultaneously motor-cars began to fill deserted or halfoccupied country houses, and a fashion for 'week-end' cottages, with orchard, paddock, and garden-the typical holding of the cottar-spread over the home counties. Thus the demand for cottages, instead of falling with the diminishing supply, began once more to grow. Yet the old buildings that still remained consecrated to their natural uses continued to fall down or become uninhabitable, while new cottages, suitable for the agricultural labourer, were far to seek and hard to find. Schemes of land nationalisation, and wild suggestions for placing all local burdens on the already over-taxed land, produced a feeling of disastrous insecurity, and made landowners unwilling to sink more capital in building cottages on estates which in some cases for thirty years had hardly paid the cost of their upkeep and management, and were now threatened with practical confiscation. Meanwhile, standards had risen, and many of the remaining cottages were rightly condemned as unfit for human habitation, while some were actually closed, with, perhaps, an insufficient appreciation of the fact that a bad roof over one's head is better than no roof at all.

In considering the present condition of affairs in rural England, its sociological structure in general, and the housing of agricultural labour in particular, with a view of finding directions in which improvement is possible, it is, of course, idle to contemplate a return to the old ways. The wasteful and inefficient methods of open field cultivation and overstocked common pasture are as dead as military land-tenure, the parochial ducking-stool, or the rest of the feudal system. They were each and all excellent institutions in their day, and may have been abandoned with undue precipitation. But, in order to re-establish the nice balance of forces which requires a sound class of peasantry, with a proper measure of economic and social security and independence, a new system,

suited to modern needs, must be devised. Yet it would be unwise to fall into the old mistake of ignoring the antecedent conditions, and to shut our eyes to the lessons which history can unfold.

When we analyse the advantages shown by the older systems of rural economy in their best days, as regards the condition of the labouring population, we find that the essential features were the large proportion of labourers who possessed a secure and recognised hold on the land, and the strength of custom in maintaining a standard of rights and duties for the different classes in rural life.

The modern equivalent of custom is public opinion, supported and stiffened where necessary and possible by careful legislation commending itself to the good sense of the community, and by the efficient administration of such wellconsidered laws. To that question we shall return; let us first deal with the problem of the labourer and the land.

With present facilities of transport, local needs are not dependent on local supplies, and thus land only fit for one type of agriculture cannot be forced into use for another as in medieval times. Where the soil is favourable, or where suitable markets are near at hand, the small holding of a few acres or the small farm of thirty to fifty acres may prove an economic success and supply a family with a complete living. But all those with an adequate knowledge of the conditions agree that, over large areas of the country, the small holding, as a sole means of support, is doomed to failure. The large or medium-sized farm is often the only way of cultivating the land with economy and success, and the problem of labour on large or medium farms must remain the predominant consideration.

The modern farm needs almost constant labour, and, in the interest both of the land and the men, it is well that, as far as possible, employment should be steady throughout the year. The present system of a low wage as a kind of retaining fee, with larger earnings at harvest and other seasons of pressure, is a recognition of this need. On well-managed estates, the regular labourers, kept on by the farmer throughout the year, have an adequate garden of fifteen or twenty perches attached to their cottages, and receive from the farmer another twenty perches of prepared and manured potato ground some