rom the _Daily News_ of Jan. 1, 1907; and its assertions have never
been contradicted. It fills one with only the mildest enthusiasm for
the return of our degenerate townsmen "back to the land." I came upon
it as I read that morning's paper after drafting this chapter.

"Our attention has been called to a sordid Herefordshire
tragedy recently revealed at an inquest on a child aged one
year and nine months, who died in Weobly Workhouse of
pneumonia. She entered the institution emaciated to half the
proper weight of her age and with a broken arm--till then
undiscovered--that the doctors found to be of about three
weeks' standing. Her mother was shown to be in an advanced
stage of consumption; one child had died at the age of seven
months, and seven now remain. The father, whose work consists
in tending eighty-nine head of cattle and ten pigs, is in
receipt of eleven shillings a week, three pints of skim milk a
day, and a cottage that has been condemned by the sanitary
inspector and described as having no bedroom windows. We are
not surprised to learn that the coroner, before taking the
verdict, asked the house surgeon, who gave evidence, whether
he could say that death 'was accelerated by anything.' Our
wonder is that the reply was in the negative. The cottage is
in the possession of the farmer who employs the man, but his
landlord is said to be liable for repairs. That landlord is a
clergyman of the Church of England, a J.P., a preserver of
game, and owner of three or four thousand acres of land."

And here, again, is the _Times_, by no means a Socialist organ,
generalizing from official statements:--

"Houses unfit for human habitation, rooms destitute of light
and ventilation, overcrowding in rural cottages, contaminated
water supplies, accumulations of every description of filth
and refuse, a total absence of drainage, a reign of
unbelievable dirt in milk-shops and slaughter-houses, a total
neglect of bye-laws, and an inadequate supervision by
officials who are frequently incompetent; such, in a general
way, is the picture that is commonly presented in the reports
of inquiries in certain rural districts made by medical
officers of the Local Government Board."

And even of such homes as this there is an insufficiency. In 1891-95,
more than a quarter of the deaths in London occurred in workhou