WELLINGTON TOPICS. FAIR RENT.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 108, 8 May 1916, Page 3

WELLINGTON TOPICS. FAIR RENT.

SOLDIERS AND LABOUR.

(Special Correspondent)

WELLINGTON, May 5‘

Probably the deputation from the Labour sorgiaiiisations -‘which. Waited. upon the Prime Minister to—day to ask for his assistance in dealing with the house rent problem scarcely hoped to obtain more than the 11011-committal reply they received. The problem has puzzled a generation of statesmen even in this young country and Mr. Massey could not be expected to settle it out of hand at a molnent’s notice. It has become so acute in Welliiigtoxi, however, that the workers are compelled by the very force of circumstances to leave no stone unturned in their search for relief. Ten years ago the high rents prevailing here were attributed to the comparatively small area of building land available. They were, the unhappy tenants were told, the inevitable result of the demand for sites largely exceeding the supply. But the extension of the trainway system durinr: the last decade and the opening up of new suburbs have shown tliis to be a fallacy. There are as vpany vacant building sites within a five mile radius of Wellington as there are within a five mile radius of Auckland or Christchurch or Dunedin, and yet house rents in thefcapital city rule fifteen or twenty per cent. higher than they do in any of the other metrcjoolitan areas. All sorts-. 01? exp-lanations have been offered for this state of affairs and all kinds of remedies ha\'e ‘been suggested, but the most Mr. Massey would promise the deputation was that its represen+.atirm.s/xvould be carefully considered by the Cabinet.

PATRIOTISM’& COMPETITION. Another deputation that waited upTi the Prime Minister tc-day had to do with the recent. Order in Council suspending industrial awards and agreements so far as they concerned f he employment of discharged soldiers. The members of the deputaoffered no objection to the men ~'’h r > have been fighting the Empire’s

‘~°“"es being treated with the utmost ~rns’(le"ation, but incidentally they ~m'.r:erl the broad issue of the returned “""’.'7P*-"s nlar-e in the industrial life ~-" the country. The question‘ is not one of mere sentiment, but one of hard facts and ought to be discussed without any imputations of lack of papatriotism or of gratitude or of anything else every good citizen possesses in such abundant measure at the present time. Probably when the war is over there will be 60,000 or 70,000 ,soldiers.,‘return_ing to the dominion, nossibly 100,000, and if all these men are given in their civil capacity spe-

\ cial privileges denied to the rest of the community class feeling of a very embarrassing and pernicious character will be introduced into the social and industrial life of the country. If returned soldiers had preference of employment in all trades, for instance, or exemption from certain conditions in awards and agreements they easily might become a menace to industrial peace. The provision of land for soldiers on exceptionally favourable terms is a different matter. Here the country has a very real and substantial interest in the arrangement. The land is calling out for the men louder than the men ar e calling out for the land and so long as the requirements of the ordinary settler are not over-locked there can be no valid objection to particular attention being given to those of the soldiers. LAND SETTLEMENT. But even this question of settling soldiers on the land needs to be'approached with a sane and logical outlook. Some well-meaning folk, perhaps wholy unconscious of their own parochialism, are insisting that the men should be given sections as near as possible to their old homes and that the scheme should be carried out on a provincial basis, the Auckland men going to Auckland, the Canterbury men to Canterbury and so on till they all were accommodated amidst familiar surroundings. The obvious objection to this method of distribution is that suitable land is not available in each district in exact proportion to the number of men the district has sent to the war. There still is plenty of room for such settlement in Hawke’s Bay and Auckland and perhaps in Southland, but there is practically none in Canterbury and very little in Otago. The position would not be helped by reserving all the Crown leaseholds in these districts for returned soldiers, as that would mean simply pushing out by slow degrees the civilian settlers who might have played their part in winning the war just as valiantly as have the men who had gone to the front. What is wanted is a comprehensive scheme that will give every man an opportunity to settle on .the ■and best suited to his requirements without unnecessarily lessening the opportunities' of other people who ’ish to work out their destiny in the

same way. BOARD OP TRADE. The people who have been sneering at the Board of Trade lately for not having settled the cost of living question with a stroke of the pen must have forgotten how this body is constituted. Some of its critics appear to ' imagine that the Board has only to set its seal to a sheet of paper and immediately' the price of bread will drop to threepence the half loaf and the price of butter to a shilling a pound. But as a matter of plain fact the Board has no authority at all to meddle with prices. Its functions are to gather information for the Minister of Industries and Commerce and to assist that gentleman in ascertaining the meaning and significance of that information. The “unofficial” members of the Board, Mr. McDonald and Mr. Hart, have been discharging the first of these functions with quite commendable activity since their appointment only two months or so ago and presumably they have not been neglecting the second. Mr. Hally has not yet been relieved of his duties as Conciliation Commissioner and consequently he has been unable to give the whole of his attention to'his new office. The Bbard has made a fairly exhaustive investigation of the breadstuffs problem and ought to be able to offer some very valuable suggestions to the Minister on this subject. Mr. Massey himself was not particularly happy in his honest efforts to fix the price of wheat at the beginning of the war ,but this was largely due to the inaccuracy of information he had at his disposal. He will be much better advised by the Board of Trade than he was by the impotent Foodstuffs Commission and these is good ground for hoping he will be able to make more effective use of Sir Joseph Ward’s legislation 1 than he could of his own.