Proposals for a new Labourers' Bill: an attempt to solve the rural housing question in Ireland

Abstract

We have now had more than 20 years experience of the attempt to provide habitable houses for labourers in country districts in Ireland, by means of an elaborate code of seven Statutes, beginning with the Labourers' Act of 1883, and ending with the Land Purchase Act of 1903; and are in a position to judge of the success of this legislation by its tendencies and results. The casual visitor who, from a railway carriage or a country road, observes the new District Council cottages sprinkled over the country, and compares them in his mind with the thatched mud cabins they have replaced, may hastily judge that the problem is in a fair way to be solved and, indeed, there have not been wanting English economists and philanthropists who have taken, what I must call a superficial view, and urged that these methods should also be applied to rural housing in England.