THE POVERTY BROBLEM

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 8, Issue 444, 24 January 1919, Page 4

THE POVERTY BROBLEM

(To the Editor.) Sib,—Following up my recent letter on " Land Monopoly " in your last paper I would point out that the City Corporation in ther housing scheme provide for a substantial loss. This will have to be met by taxation but put the worker in the suburbs under healthy conditions, give him his few acres his wherewithal to produce his food (eggs, milk and butter) and wealth, and the loss will he small if any. The revelations of the Medical Boards in this country during the war should urge our Government and Local Bodies to action.

This country is essentially a food producing country. Let us then cultivate our artisans in God's open country, and give the coming citizens even opportunity to love and follow country life as opposed to the factory. In infantile mortality the preservation of infant child life has become a matter of national importance. Infantile mortality is a poverty problem. It does not exist where the well-to-do reside, but it assumes big proportions where ill-paid workers herd By " ill-paid " I mean when taken in coojunction with the high price of living and the Government licensed facilities for spending. The poor, when they cease to be poor, will provide for their children and strive to keep death from the cradle, just as successfully as the rich whose riches they help to provide. Just think of it This glorious country with its hundreds and thousands of acres given over to noxious weeds and rabbits, which lands in our methods of cultivation are barely scratched. Yet we havo a corporation prepared to spend many thousands in an endeavour to provide (as their share of this portion of Empire) a few square feet of a slum area, with the freedom of the gutter.

If I were a citizen of Auckland I would certainly vote against the scheme. Many of the future tenants of " modified slum land " will bo citizens who have fought to keep New Zealand free.

No, the poverty problem will not be solved by any guilding of slum land. Our whole social system of land monoply, must ba overthrown. A healthy, happy and prosperous nation depends on our coming citizens. The right of the child bom in a slum cottage must bo recognised as equal to that of a child born iu a castle —equal opportunity to all. '• For the earth hath Ho given to the children of men."- Yours etc., ENOS S. PEGLER Manurewa, '2oth Jan. 1919.