_Photo: Moyse, Putney._]

As far as rural England is concerned, county councils, district councils,
and parish councils are, generally speaking, very reluctant to put into
operation the wide powers they possess. The average county council, though
popularly elected, is composed in agricultural England of landowners and
the bigger farmers, who, as a common rule, do not favour a land programme
for labourers, and are anxious to keep down the rates. The rural district
council and board of guardians are equally averse from any display of
public enterprise, and the parish council, which often consists mainly of
labourers, rarely accomplishes anything except at the prompting, or with
the sanction, of the parochial landowner. The result is that allotments,
rural housing, village baths and washhouses, an adequate water supply,
public halls and libraries, are not regarded as the concern of rural
elected authorities, but are left to the private enterprise of landowners.
Civic pride, which glories in the public proprietorship of lands and
libraries, tramways and lodging-houses, waterworks and workmen's dwellings,
art galleries and swimming baths, and is a living influence in the
municipalities of, let us say, London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford,
Manchester, Birmingham, West Ham, and many a smaller borough, does not
exist in rural councils. To the farmer and the peasant public ownership is
a new and alien thing. The common lands and all the old village communal
life have gone out of the memory of rural England; but the feudal tradition
that the landowner is the real centre of authority has survived, and it is
the benevolent landowner who is expected to build cottages, grant
allotments, and see to the water supply, as fifty years ago he built and
managed the village school. Political organisation could break through this
tradition, but farmers and agricultural labourers are without this
organisation; and so the authority of the landowner remains, in spite of
the democratic constitution of local government. The people can allow their
power to remain in the hands of others, just as a king can be content to
reign without ruling, and the local government of rural England is an
oligarchy elected by a popular franchise.

In the factory towns and the mining districts it is a very different
matter. Here the people are organised, and take their share in local
government. In the county of Durham, for instance, the working class
pred