The general weekly rent for a room containing a family is 5_s_., or if it is furnished, 7_s_. 6_d_.  The Sister described to me the furniture of one for the use of which this extra half-crown is charged.  It consisted of a rickety bed, two chairs, one without a back and one without a seat, and a little shaky table.  The floor was bare, and she estimated the total value of these articles at about their weekly rent of 2_s_. 6_d_., if, indeed, they were worth carrying away.  In this chamber dwelt a coachman who was out of place, his wife, and three or four children, I wonder what arrangement these poor folk make as to the use of the one chair that has a bottom.  To occupy the other must be an empty honour.  With reference to this man the Sister remarked that as a result of the introduction of motor vehicles, busmen, cabmen, and blacksmiths were joining the ranks of her melancholy clientele in numbers.

This and some similar stories caused me to reflect on the remarkable contrast between rents in the country and in town.  For instance, I own about a dozen cottages in this village in which I write, and the highest rent that I receive is 2_s_. 5_d_. a week.  This is paid for a large double dwelling, on which I had to spend over L100 quite recently to convert two cottages into one.  Also, there is a large double garden thrown in, so large that a man can scarcely manage it in his spare time, a pigsty, fruit trees, etc.  All this for 1_d_. a week less than is charged for the two broken chairs, the rickety bed, and the shaky table!  Again, for L10 a year, I let a comfortable farmhouse; that is, L3 a year less than the out-of-work coachman pays for his single room without the furniture.  And yet, as the Sister said, people continue to rush from the country to the towns!

Nor, it seems, do they always make the best of things when they get there.  Thus the Sister mentioned that the education which the girls receive in the schools causes them to desire a more exalted lot in life than that of a servant.  So they try to find places in shops, or jam factories, etc.  Some get them, but many fail; and of those who fail, a large proportion go to swell the mass of the unemployed, or to recruit the ranks of an undesirable profession.  She went so far as to say that most of the domestic servants in London are not Cockneys at all, but come from the country; adding, that the sad part of it was that thousands of these poor girls, after proper training, could find comfortable and remunerative employment without displacing others, as the demand for domestic servants is much greater than the supply.  These are cold facts which seem to suggest that our system of free education is capable of improvement.