Above these stricken ones comes the ordinary farm labourer, who is unfortunately migrating to the towns. Him Mr. Ruskin hoped to settle on land. Such a scheme of small holdings, if backed by sufficient capital, worked by experts, and favourably situated for a market, might even in the seventies have succeeded. Of course it would not have had about it all the moral excellences, the grace of character and the charm of nature and art, which delight us so in the St. George’s lands of the future which we read about in _Fors_. However, Ruskin never concentrated upon it, but spent most of his time and of the resources of the Guild on the Sheffield Museum instead. He did what he found he could do the best. He knew he was leaving great gaps for others to fill up. He says, touchingly, in the Preface to _Love’s Meinie_ in 1881: “It has been, throughout, my trust that if Death should write on these plans of mine ‘What this man began to build he was not able to finish,’ God may also write on them, not in anger, but in aid, ‘A stronger than he cometh.’”
But with labour and patience and against strong hostile political forces, the Small Holdings Act has been for some years at work. The obstruction of the squires still renders it useless in many counties, and there can be no more true task for St. George than to support agencies such as the Small Holdings Association. By its means, as a matter of fact, the peasantry is being restored to the land on a proper business basis. Tasks of this magnitude require organization on a large scale, and the payment of proper returns. No social benefit is given by letting some individual hold land at less than its value. The County Councils since the war are engaged upon it. We are now again on the eve of a large settlement of returned soldiers on the land, and of an attempt to brighten the villages.
St. George, again, ordered that the homes of workpeople should be cheerful, that they should have gardens and flowers and sunshine, that the long miserable rows of uniform cottages should be of the past. These things, largely under the inspiration of Ruskin, are being done, in First Garden City at Letchworth, and in such model villages as Bournville, New Earswick, Port Sunlight, the Hampstead suburb, and similar suburbs at Manchester and Hull. But it is all on far too small a scale. The true task of St. George to-day is to strengthen these progressive movements. The growth of the towns since 1871 has made this urban problem the most urgent of all. How many rows of dreadful box homes have been built. The country is being choked by the spreading towns. Purely agricultural colonies are good, but towns cannot be founded without the help of the manufacturers who make a town.