Welsh Journals

but disease, driven back on the other hand by the impossibility of paying double or treble his present rental, the position of the agricultural labourer is fast becoming intolerable. The coal mine is once more the escape and refuge. The dilemma is further sharpened by the fact that rising standards of housing have coincided with an alarming rise in the cost of building. Materials have greatly increased in price-cast iron goods 60 per cent. in two years-wages are steadily advancing. The cost of a house to-day is probably 25 per cent. more than it would have been five years ago. Between the rental an agricultural labourer can afford to pay, and that at which the commercial cottage builder can now afford to let, is an unspanned gulf. This virtually is the Rural Housing Problem. To bridge the gulf several alternatives are suggested (1) To do nothing, but to allow the need to be solved by the slow adjustment of economic supply to demand. This is to complete the degradation of such labour as may remain in the country side. (2) To build the necessary cottages through a central department of the State, or through Local Authorities. (3) To establish a minimum wage suffi- cient to allow of the commercial rent required. (4) To encourage co-operative and other Public Utility housing societies by liberal terms of State financial support. Whatever means of solution are finally approved by the country must come soon or they will come too late. By contrast with the condition of the rural labourer, the migration of his more enterprising brother to the industrial dis- tricts might appear a happy emancipation. Let us see what happens'to him There is here no!room to dwell upon his loss, the contact of earth, the changes of sky and seasons, the tranquillity of life. The measure of this loss has yet to be plumbed, and can never be fully estimated. Take-almost at random-any recent official reports on the housing conditions in a Welsh industrial district, in North and in South Wales. Rhos has an estimated population of 11,221. The present admittedly unsatisfactory and insanitary condition of a large portion of Rhos is a heritage from the past due mainly to the extremely crude and haphazard manner in which the land was originally mapped out for building plots, and the purchase of such sites by persons who, prompted by a laudable ambition to own their dwellings, but crippled with insufficient or borrowed capital and unhampered by restrictive building bye-laws, erected houses thereon only too frequently faulty in design, material, and construction. The inevitable result is what we see in the oldest portions of Rhos to-day, its long, narrow, tortuous, irregular thoroughfares, with houses abbutting thereon, its confusing network of side streets, lanes, courts and a grouping of houses in such haphazard fashion, that the tenants derive the minimum advantages of light and pure air and enjoy the maximum of discomfort. A striking feature in the housing conditions of Rhos is the very large number of houses of two rooms, that is, one living room and one bedroom, and of this type the chamber houses very largely pre- dominate. I have inspected and have notes in respect of 631 houses and of this number 568 possessed only 2 rooms. There are at present no empty habitable house at Rhos. Private building enterprise has hitherto failed to keep pace with the demands of a growing population, and there are no indications of any pro- spective building." County M.O.H.. Report on Housing in Wrexham district June. 1913. At the time of my inspection there were no unoccupied houses in the district. Many men are employed at night in the colliery who are obliged to rest and to sleep in the day. Consequently in such cases, bedrooms and beds are rarely vacated for many hours before they are again occupied by other members of the family. When it happens that rooms which are small, without through ventilation, and provided with low head- room and small windows, are thus occupied, the