Page:The agricultural labourer (Denton).djvu/12

 to those cottages which, under the influence of sanitary reform and sound estate economy, are taking the place of these miserable hovels, we shall find that their average cost with outbuildings, and fencing, and water supply, is 160l. each, or 320l. the pair, exclusive of the site on which they stand. This site, which would cost 15l. more, would make the fee-simple value of the whole 175l. We all know that every speculator employing capital in house building, looks for something like seven per cent, if he is to replace his capital and make five per cent. net after paying insurance and doing repairs.

It, therefore, a farm labourer paid for his occupation the rent in money which a speculator would demand, the payment, instead of 4l. or 5l.—which he still continues to pay for a good cottage as he did for a bad one—would be 12l. 5s., which closely approximates the rateable value fixed as the qualification of a county voter, while it exceeds that of the lodger in boroughs. But it is not in money wholly that the farm labourer pays for the improved cottage, if it forms part of the farm on which he works, or is so connected with it that the farmer has command of the services of the cottager. A farmer having good cottages at his disposal can select the best workmen as his daily labourers. Moreover, as good labourers cling to comfortable homes, he can keep them, which is not the case with the occupiers of the miserable hovels that generally exist; and as newly-built cottages are now usually placed so as to reduce to a minimum the distance the labourer has to walk, whereby time and sinew are saved, the advantages to the employer are, in the aggregate, equal to the difference between the return due to the condemned hovel that due to the improved cottage, and thus, in