STUPID BUILDING BY-LAWS.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—Why should the jerry-builder be discouraged P A bad cottage is better than no cottage at all. You would have realised this if you had known, as I have more than once, labourers actually earning from 20s. to 40s. a week obliged to enter the Union-house with their`famffies, and throw up their work, for want of a roof to cover them; and on one occasion the employer actually waiting on Board-day at the Union in order to snap the man up in case the Board turned him and his family out Of course an ugly jerry-built house is detestable. So is a picture that is out of drawing, and a coat that does not fit, and a bonnet with ribbons that swear, and a beefsteak that is tough. But you do not make by-laws for suppressing bad pictures, or ill-fitting clothes, or Ophelia bonnets, or tough meat. You are content with penal laws proscribing improper pictures, insufficient dress, and putrid unwholesome meat. For the rest, caveat envptor. Why should the jerry-builder be an exception P. If his house is for sanitary reasons unwholesome and unfit for habitation, there is a penal law to condemn it and render it valueless. In the present scarcity of cottages he is just the man you ought to encourage, whereas by arbitrary by-laws you are driving him away. As to beauty or appropriateness, by-laws are about as useful to help a builder to build a picturesque, well- proportioned house as they would be to help a painter to paint a pretty picture. What is wanted is to educate the workman to demand a better dwelling, and to be prepared to pay a little more rent, which, being much better off than he used to be, he can very well afford : and the jelly-builder, like other caterers for the public, will have to follow snit and comply. This education should be the business of big landowners, who can afford to build cottages which may act as models in com- fort, sanitation, and artistic effect without any reference to a return for their outlay. Thus the standard may be gradually raised. A decent, tidy labourer's wife, who has once lived in a comfortable, well-arranged cottage, will simply refuse to live in a tumble-down, damp hovel, and will persuade her husband to migrate to the ends of the earth rather than do so. No one can hate a bad, ugly cottage in a pretty country more cor- dially—not to say more savagely—than I do ; but I count it not the least of the blessings I enjoy that I live in a rural district in which we have no by-laws to "crib, cabin, and con- fute " our bnilaing aspirations and designs.—I am, Sir, (t.e., Park Corner, Heckfieicl. JonN
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