VI - THE MASTER'S REPORT (1885)

Summary

1. The notices which I see in the leading journals of efforts now making for the establishment of Industrial villages, induce me to place before the members of the St. George's Guild, in my report for the past year, the reasons for their association in a form which may usefully be commended to the attention of the general public.

The St. George's Guild was instituted with a view of showing, in practice, the rational organization of country life, independent of that of cities.

All the efforts, whether of the Government or the landed proprietors of England, for the help or instruction of our rural population, have been made under two false suppositions: the first that country life was henceforward to be subordinate to that of towns, the second that the landlord was, for a great part of the year, to live in the town, and thence to direct the management of his estate. Whatever may be the destiny of London, Paris, or Rome in the future, I have always taught that the problem of right organization of country life was wholly independent of them; and that the interests of the rural population, now thought by the extension of parliamentary suffrage to be placed in their own keeping, had always been so, and to the same degree, if they had only known it.