LIMITATION OF RENTS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 107, 13 January 1912, Page 4

LIMITATION OF RENTS.

The Labor Council in Sydney lately approached Mr. Beeby asking him to introduce a Limitation of Rent Bill. The facts are admitted. Both in Australia and New Zealand rentals are too high. It is impossible, however, to conceive any Parliament passing a Bill which would limit the profit to be made by a landlord. The fact that a tenant occupies a hired house is proof that he has agreed with the landlord as to the rental. He is not bound to use the house. If any Government could limit the profit of a trader by making a law naming the maximum addition that could be added to a wholesale price, the trader would possibly say unkind things and would agree to disobey the law, combining to this, effect. There is no essential difference between the man who lets a house and a man who sells bacon., If the State settles the price of house rent it should obviously settle the price of bacon or anything else. Labor is rather peculiar in these matters. It organises, with perfect justification, to increase .wages, but it fights the natural increases in the price of necessities following concession of demands. The price of house hire is regulated by the number of houses available for occupancy. A landlords' union, which was able to make it impossible for a non-union landlord to let his house, would be regarded as a cruel 'organisation, but the labor union which prevents a-man fronf getting a job for a like reason cannot see that it might be restrained with equal justice. State opposition to landlords by building workers' residences is geod as far us it goes, but it cannot go far. All the houses the State is likely to build in Sydney, for instance, in the next ten years will scarcely affect the situation, for the worker is not partial to living at a distance from his work, and the State can't spoon-feed every one of him. No one who ponders the matter at all deeply sees any chance of diminution of rent charges through State enterprise, and no one could possibly contemplate reduction of rent by Act of Parliament any more than reduction of the price of cabbages by similar means.