The New Zealand Times. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2, 1920. HOUSES

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 10605, 2 June 1920, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2, 1920. HOUSES

The Hon. J. G. Coates was perfectly right when he flatly refused the request of the Epsom people. In the midst of the house famine, when no one dares to leave hia house for fear of being shelterless, and many families crowd into tenements that arc as incapablo of standing up as they are of giving breathing space to the lungs or covering to modesty—in the midst of these,horrors these precious persons beset the Postmaster-General with clamour for not merely a newpost office, but for a post offico building scheme; ' in which a new office for Epsom is to bo one of. many unfita. To such blind (selfishness only one reply was possible." The Minister made it. He did not beat about the bush, as is 60 often done before deputations, with promises to see about it in one or other of the many forms of that insincerity. He just 6aid "No," and virtually told the deputation that they ought, considering the general circumstances, to be ashamed of themselves. They "ill not bo anything of the kind, of course, because they are the sort that would not blush if caught taking the shirt off a man dying of cold. It is pleasant to know that, nevertheless, they will not get their post offices.

The Government has in this matter really defended its own housing scheme against most unwarrantable attack. If it would only push that scheme with th 0 thoroughness of tho Paitmaster-Genernl's "No,''' tho housing problem would soon disappear. But in'the direction of thoroughness the Government goes no further than the statement that it has let contracts for a couple of hundred houses. This is as far abort of reassurance as of thoroughness, for in the face of a responsible report that 16,000 houses at least are wanted, no one can be reassured by hearing of a contract for two hundred. But tho statement was made with an actually ostentatious air of final reassurance! It belongs to the great Order of Bluff, which certainly will not build tho houses that are wanted.

The bluff is backed up by all the excuses proper to the occasion, the excuses that strew tho floor of chaos ready to the eager hand of "How not to do it." There is no timber; Lahour is scarce; skilled Labour comparatively unknown; for bricks there is no straw; there is not enough mortar to make a mortar-board cap for an unAerßraduate; concrete has disappeared in the abstract; the machinery that makes things necessary has been bewitched by machinations; exchange, has become fatal to interchange. Out of these distressing circumstances the idea is laboriously and unsteadily presented that wo "ought to rejoice greatly in the 200 houses of the honest bluff. More! Tmj mere hint would be sacrilege.

All these excuses spell but one formula —"We are up against it I" The formula is tho limit which always stops the road for the man who jibs on a journey. Having no initiative, ho sits down in the dust. That dust ho will never disturb by journeying; but he may throw it over his own head in lament about his own powerlessness; as a repentant Samson struggling out of the arms of a perfidious Delilsjh who has just cut his hair; and tho scene usually ends with "Wait and sec." Initiative, on tho other hand, would reflect that as thero is enough various material in the Dominion to build a hundred Babylons, temples and palaces included, there , must bo a way to build IG,OOO houses promptly; that standardisation docs wonders for the builder; that bricks, are not mysteries to bo revered, but things to be obtained by average enterprise and judiciously-managed combustion of fuel; that .labour can be made tho most of by finding work for skilled and unskilled alike; that whatever friction there may bo between Labour and Capital must be eliminated for the common good in tin's time of great crisis; that good organisation of cooperative effort, with only a email door for tho intrusion of tho Almighty and fluctuating Dollar, is tho mother of success; that tho line must be drawn between the buildings that are immediately necessary and the buildings that can wait; and not only drawn but enforced. Of all this abundance of initiative the Government has, it must be said in justice, managed to accomplish half the last

item. It has drawn tho line between the necessary and the unnecessary, and Mr Coates has refused to put post offices into the list of the former. But when will they go further and find the great balance of the 16,000 houses? Have they exhausted their initiative by drawing the line? Must they build up their backbones before they can build .any more houses? Hero an echo of "Wait and r,ee" strikes us—and. darkness falls on the scone.