Welsh Journals

HOVELS AND HOUSES IN WALES. The conditions (in Wales) are bad. What you want to do first is to flood the country with a pamphlet describing the state of affairs which should be lurid. If I had the writing of it I would bring a blush of shame to every Welshman's face at the state of their housing. It would have purple patches, and I would write it myself but for the office I hold." (Rt. Hon. John Bums) those who have been gently nurtured I in the faith of Cymru Ian gwlad y gan," and who picture to themselves a Wales of mountain and moorland, and an old world peasantry, it savours almost of disloyalty to accept, without demur, such an indictment as that of Mr. Bums. Disillusionment is a cold business at best. Responsibility and duty may call unheeded without, so long as the embers of illusion are aglow on the hearth within. It would indeed be heartless to extinguish them, were it not that the apathy they foster makes possible the tragedies of the outer darkness. What are the broad features of an out- look upon the homes of the people in Wales to-day ? Until the forties' the bulk of the population was rural, generation succeeding generation in the same county, often in the same parish, sometimes in the very dwelling that had been the home of ancestors three centuries back. Since then all has changed the industrial riches of England, the coal and iron of South and North-east Wales, have slowly but surely depleted the country side. As of old, the fat lands of the alien "have drawn many an adventurous foray, but now, the adventurers no longer return to the hills with their plunder. An examination of the Census returns shows that in 1851 the purely rural population in Wales was 49.8 per cent. of the whole In 1911 it had fallen to 21.9 per cent. In 1881 the number of farm workers of all kinds was 82,846; in 1901, 72,452. The figures for 1911 are not yet available, but there is no reason to suppose that the process of exhaustion has ceased. Seven of the least populated Counties of England and Wales, are in Wales. All this, despite the fact that during the last seventy years the total population has increased from one million to two and a half millions, of which one and a quarter millions live in the County of Glamorgan alone. In a word, the centre of gravity has shifted. Wales to-day is industrial. The environ- ment of its children, for centuries past, the upland farm, the mountain cottage, the sleepy town, is now the coal pit, the roaring tinplate works, or the mean monotonous street of the industrial village. For a tangible advantage in wages, an age- long association with the soil has been exchanged, and in a generation are oblit- erated the immemorial tradition, the simple lore, and the varied craft of the country side. Meanwhile, what of the rural dis- tricts themselves and their remaining population ? To the more enterprising of the farmers' sons, Manchester, Liver- pool, Cardiff, and London have long been Meccas for material advancement. The labourers have thronged for economic emancipation to the coal mines of East Denbighshire and Glamorgan. Denuded of its most vigorous sons and under- cultivated, the country fails to afford a wage sufficient to enable the labourer to rent a satisfactory modem cottage. The actual result is that rural cottage building has almost ceased. Gross overcrowding and the habitation of old insanitary hovels are the result. Pressed on the one hand by Medical Officers of Health, eager to demolish the foul dwelling where nothing flourishes