Page:Lectures on Housing.djvu/35

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AT RENTS THEY CAN AFFORD TO PAY
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substitute. Or he may work for a neighbouring farmer. It would make the position of both the regular man and the casual very much better than it is at the present time.

Moreover, it is remarkable what a man can get out of a little plot of land. For three years I very exhaustively examined the returns of 24 plots of land. I had every bit of produce from them weighed and measured, and valued. I got working people to tell me exactly what they paid for produce bought in the market—often last thing on Saturday night when prices were at their lowest—a fruiterer in a small shop gave me week by week his prices for three years for similar produce, and I took whichever was the lower—the fruiterer's, or the market price, and I valued the produce of the 24 plots, and I found that in those little gardens, cultivated by men working some in a factory, others on the railway, they were getting on the average a net £31 worth off every acre—£53 gross and £31 net. If a man had only an eighth of an acre, he could get 1s. 4d. a week from it.