HOUSING THE PEOPLE-AN ALTERNATIVE TO HIGH RENTS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 85, 19 July 1910, Page 6

HOUSING THE PEOPLE-AN ALTERNATIVE TO HIGH RENTS.

To the Editor. Sir, —I have read your leader in Thurs- , day's issue upon the subject of "Housing 'j; the People," and crave space for a reply. , You state the problem clearly enough— 1 that rents are exorbitant. "The general average in most fairly thickly populated districts of New Zealand is that ; l YvOl'l'- J er pays one-third, of his wages to his ] landlord, , , , Xlie tenant buys the liouse flhd land for his landlord," not - for himself. This deplorable state of you attribute to tlueo causes, viz.j dearness of land, of timber, and of laiioi'. Here we must part company, for 1 think you go far, far astray from truth. "Tile first and chief cause of high rents," you say, "is the exorbitant and utterly false price of all land." Is rt, Sir? "Verily this is a case of putting the cart beiore the horse. High land values are not the cause, 'but the effect of high rents. That this is so is patent from the fact that, whenever part of the rent of a piece of land is appropriated by the community in the form of an in- . crease of rates, the market price of that land falls proportionately. The right and ability to take rent which the own- | ership of land confers is the only factor I : which gives to that land any market 1 ! value at all. As to the second of your j causes, the dearness of timber relative | to other commodities, is itself an efrect y of the high rents (i.e., royalties) borne | *by forest lands, and so is a result, not a | cause of high rents. Thirdly, dearness; g of labor is not a cause of high rents—(l) 3 Because rent is burdensome only in the I proportion which it bears to wages ot B labor, irrespective of the monetary value of those wages; thus a rent of onethird of the worker's weekly earnings is high, while a rent of one-sixth is low, without regard to the question whether the average wage is £5 or £1; and (2) because rents are highest in the countries where wages are lowest. Further, is it not one of the clearest principles of economics that rent is fixed by the action of demand and supply,, quite independently of what wages amount to? Being thus in hopeless confusion when! you' attempt to discover the cause of the evil that is to be remedied, it is not strange that you should be vague and J futile when you set forth to find what i that remedy'shall be. The utmost yoiij can do is to revile feebly the "exorbitant! and false price," and "the fictitious value" of all land in the country. Apparently there reaches you not one glimpse of the real truth, that land values everywhere are based, lilce commodity values, not on "fiction," but on sound economic law. The problem must be solved without your assistance. First, what is the cause of high rents? "The Tent of H land is a price paid for a natural I agency." "The reason why the use of land bears a price is simply the limitation of the quantity. If air, heat and the others powers of Nature were spar- * ingiv supplied, and could, like land, be | engrossed and appropriated, a rent could be exacted from them also." (Mill, Principles of Political Economy; p. 17). Town lands in New Plymouth, then, hear high rents because those lands are "appropriated," that is to say, are taken as private property by individuals, and' because the quantity of land equally ad-1 vantageous for the use of man is limit- j ed. Taranaki farm lands are high in l price, not because of ''fiction," but because Xature has blessed the province with more fertile soil, finer climate, steadier rainfall than other districts. Marl'what follows.- Situation, fertility,; climate, rainfall are ''natural .agencies." j Rent, therefore, cannot be abolished, j The most that can be done is to divert it I from one pocket to another —say froinj the pocket, of Brown the landlord to the) pocket of the municipality of New Ply-1 mouth. Further, whatever social move- j ments add to the demand for land (e.g.,! the increase and concentration of popula-! tion), or to the advantages of the land: (e.g.. scientific discovery, increase in the 1 energy, thrift and sobriety of the peo-«"° pie) merely adds rent to rent, and leave the non-owning classes of the community < in as evil a plight as before, and lucky if not worse. Rents, I repeat, are not) " exorbitant," »r "false," or "fictitious," j but the lawful result of the cirenm-1 stances of the time. What remedy, then? Simply this: Rent cannot 'bei abolished. The people must pay, pay, pay; must continue to work two whole days out of every six for their landlords, so long as land remains "appropriated" by private owners. It is utterly impossible to maintain landlordism, and vet lighten the burden. Landlordism as a system must be stricken down, and rent I paid, not to maintain a landlord class | in idleness, but to the community (State, j municipality or county), which will re- j ■ store it in the shape of public conveniences to the public which paid it. One J remedy alone there is for the vent-racked i ' workers, the public ownership of land. . One remedy for this, as for most other ! social problems of the time, the applica- ! tion of Socialist principles. I know not 1 whence you, Sir, derive your assertion that in England "private philanthropy" is solving the housing question. All ini formation available for me is that both [in England and Germany private enter,l prise, as a solution of this or any other ! social problem, is bankrupt. The best • j that private enterprise has done, as at I New Landok, Port Sunlight and Bourn,j ville, is not to indicate atjy means to clear slums where they exist, hut merely . to show what social conditions might . prevail if no slums were created. Such efforts must be spasmodic and local, for most men are not philanthropists. Never- . theless, good work is being done in Great . Britain and Germany in the clearing of ; slums, not by private effort, but by colt lective effort. Drastic laws have been passed whereby local bodies are empowered to acquire land compulsorily, to build dwellings, and to devise schemes of ' town planning to which private landlords are bound to conform. Generally the principles of Socialism, that is to say, are being applied. The workers of New Zealand, if weary of Lord Raekrent and ' 1 slumdom. imist go the same course. Tlicv liive the remedy already in their hands. Let them in every town and city in the land unite to demand of their council?, and legislatures the transfer of land into public owner-hip. and Ihe pro-j vision by local bodies of dwellings cheap, | convenient and beautiful.—l am. >'tc„ SOCIALIST, j