The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1918 THE HOUSING PROBLEM.

Taihape Daily Times, 16 December 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1918 THE HOUSING PROBLEM.

(With which is Incorporated The T&J* h&pe Pont Ltid Walemil-ao News).,

The housing problem is spoken of by the greatest statesmen in the world to-day as being paramount; it is regarded by them as a question really of immense importance, spurious statesmen and legislators drawn from profiteering and the millions making class pass it by with summary contempt. Dickens and others have devoted their lives and talents in trying to shame the nation into some recognition of its duty. J. S. Mill points out that One of the chief factors in keeping down is starvation. One man in every seven in Britain is a pauper; six people between them have to keep one who produces nothing and contributes nothing to the public money chest. This does not disclose a happy social state, or a /condition of veracity and justice. The revelations of military imlediehl boards .has 'dieloiscd some peculiarly startling figures, and yet they reveal but little of the actual misery and deformity of our present social condition. It is stated by econoists that as many men become physical wrecks from the fear of starvation as these men who die of actual starvation. It is well-known that our criminals arc better housed, better fed, better educated and have more indulgence than the poor amongst us. While crime is indulged, poverty is crushed, disregarded, trampled upon and left uncared for, and it is only the great arbiters of war ;and pestilence that discover to ns the disastrousnoss of our tryanny and social dogmatism. There is an insane spirit of -girded abroad that would consume the racial candle from both ends; by its acts it creates poverty at one cud, while at the other it is striving to live without labour by amassing wealth quickly. The prodigious, the inexhaustible wealth seen throughout New Zealand has a sorry background; beneath the pomp and show of wealth is its resultant under-structure of poverty, broken physique, the underfed, the ill-housed and the debilitated from overwork. The search for soldiers 1 to pdem threatened invasion by a ruthless, remorseless enemy discovered the country’s poverty of health; men who should be in the prime of life wore rejected as physically unfit to enter into the struggle for which they were needed. Then follows 'the pestilence that threatened both rich and poor; from the disease-breeding grounds in the slums which greed have allowed to accumulate came the germs of death slaying and destroying regardless of whether victims could command thousands or nothing. The State and local governments were electrified into action, unseemly quarrels arose by one throwing the blame upon the other for permitting such a calamity to spread. Simmered right down it means that if a healthly community is honestly desired, if soldiers are to be forthcoming in times of national peril, and disease is to have no breeding grounds, people must be better housed, better fed and none must become physical wrecks from overwork. Labour circles have long urged that the right to work, a condition in which all must do something towards providing the wherewithal to establish better housing and living conditions, but labour has met with little success. There is a prevailing greed that will neither concede the right to work or favour a wage that is essential to keep the man wd:o docs work in health. It is worthy of note that in this respect we are to-day many centuries behind; in the sixteenth century, the famous Act of the 43rd Elizabeth provided that work and wages should be available for all who were able to work, and John Stuart Mill says there is little doubt that if it had been. honestly administered it would have resulted in no poor rate being struck as it would have absorbed the whole of the net produce of land and labour. Here we have undeniable evidence that the in Queen Elizabeth’s days was supeiioi to the State in this much vaunted present. The Sovereign gave her signature in those days to a law that a democratic body of legislators to-day refuse to submit to the sovereign. Insatiable greed must have the right and legislative power to go on accumulating itsmillions, even though its devotees create menace of uars and invite terrifying pestilences by their refusal to provide

work, and decent, sanitary dwellings for those who can work. Greed in Elizabeth’s time with its truly brutish views of life preferred to breed hereditary paupers, father ihan administer a law that gave the right for every person to work. The views of greed to-day are precisely similar to those of four hundred years ago, and Miii states with emphasis that “Posterity will one day ask w r ith astonishment what sort of people it could bo among whom such preachers could find proselytes. That question is being asked to-day, and it is time profiteers and land-grabbers reflected upon what is taking place. Sparta of old had three hundred thousand slaves to thirty thousand freemen; docs not our situation somewhat resemble hers, or is it not even worse? Is not the social structure in danger? Is the Government, Parliament or State that shuts its eyes to the approaching storm, and refuses to sec tlio imminent evil, a true guardian of the State’s social structure? True democratic boldness is already on the surface of general thought and discreet civic communities, despite the laggardness of the State, have realised that society must be saved from such mercy as it would receive from compatriots of Bolshevism. Civic authorities in Auckland have commenced to deal practically with the housclessness of its people, but had the State the courage and justice to enact that all men should have the right to work at a minimum living wage the housing question might never have become so acute and extreme. The housing problem has be- ] come supreme owing to its being a factor in the social health. Why, continue, in face of slumbering revolution, a course of intreped stupidity, w'hen by furnishing healthful conditions of life and an undeniable right to a minimum living wage the ground could be taken from under the feet of the waiting apostles of Bolshevism and revolution? Auckland City has broken the ice leading to the destruction of slums and hotbeds of pestilence, and Taihape might well take its cue therefrom. We can truthfully say that not a week passes without one or more married men informing us that they are compelled to leave Taihape from inability to find a place to live in. Will not some public-spirited resident champion the cause of workers and the interests of the town by commencing a campaign fdk more, houses and bettor sanitation? The town community cannot increase for lack of houses and the country community is suffering numerically from the Government’s disastrous policy of land aggregation. Lloyd George has undeniably disclosed that Britain has treated her sons ungratefully if not disgracefully, and he neons to hare sot hismelf the task of solving Lie problem of their destiny; what is the lit ad of our GovernmeP doing to sc've the problem in New Zealand? All eyes are wondering.