HARDSHIPS ON WORKERS.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 March 1919, Page 4

HARDSHIPS ON WORKERS.

The advocates of changing the system of rating in New Plymouth maintain that rating on capital values operates unjustly towards the man who has the enterprise to improve his section, plays into the hands 5 of the speculator, penalises industry, and keeps back the development of a town. They are plausible, arguments, but there are other aspects to a change to rating on unimproved values that should be steadily in view by ratepayers. In our opinion no greater harm could be done New Plymouth than the adoption of rating on unimproved values, which system, we admit, has merits under conditions different from those obtaining in this town. New Plymouth is a large borough, its area beiiur increased before the tram-

ways were started from approximately 800 to 4000 acres. There is no scarcity of suitable building land, if people are prepared to go to the healthier parts of the town, such as Westown, Frankleigh Park, Vogeltown, Avenue Road, etc. If there were a scarcity and the prices asked for were unreasonable, there might be some reason for effecting a change in the system of rating. We have all along contended that the interests of the working man would be better promoted did he as a class seek better facilities and opportunities for obtaining suburban land on which he could run a cow or two, a pig, poultry, grow his own vegetables and fruit, instead of battling for higher wages, which have not improved, and will not alone improve, his actual position. Proof of this is found in the fact that the average working man to-day is not as well off with the higher wages he is receiving as he was ten years ago. The only way the cost of living can he lessened is by increased production, and the worker must be given the opportunity to help himself more in this direction. The past few governments have never been wholehearted in their efforts to help the worker, or they would have formulated schemes of founding further suburban settlements. The worker should be helped to secure near the towns a reasonable area 6f land, to build his house, and stock his place. Many workers, it must be admitted, do not care to live away from the tram route, and evince no desire to work about their homes in their spare time, but there is quite a considerable number who would be glad to avail themselves of any chanco offering to found a suburban home, and so make themselves in the course of a brief period semi-independent. These man the Government should give ungrudging help, for the more producers there are the less consumers, with resulting advantage to the families concerned and the country generally. If unimproved value rating is in force, however, it would be quite impossible for the worker to secure two or three acres in the suburbs. The rates would block him absolutely. That is one way in which the worker would be injured. There is another. The ordinary worker who has any ambition at all desires, if he can, to have his own property. He is unable to pay cash for it, and 'often buys a section on the instalment system, and when he has it clear he is able to finance the building of a house. Under the unimproved values rating his rates would be considerably increased, and his chance of ever being able to build correspondingly reduced. The votaries of the unimproved values system might say: "Oh, but the land will come down in price, and the would-be purchaser would not have to pay so mucli for the section." Experience shows that it does not operate that way; rather the reverse, for the owner, generally in a better position than the worker, can afford to hold on to his section. These are only two aspects of the question that we commend to the consideration of workers. There are others that- we will take another opportunity of discussing to prove that the suggested change is but a delusion and a snare, and calculated to inflict on a town that is now on the threshold of a most promising future the greatest injury.