RENT PROFITEERS.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 July 1920, Page 9

RENT PROFITEERS.

NEW YORK'S CRUSADE. * VIOLENT SCENES. Amazing scenes took place before the Senate and Assembly Committees of the New York State Legislature at Albany on May 14, wlien tlxe landlords and tenants, amid groans, hisses, curses, and cat calls, and often nearing actual blows, fought for "their rights." Both factions, in special trains, arrived from the New York headquarters of rack-renting and the most shameless profiteering in the United States, in order to give evidence either for or ' against the numerous anti-rent profiteering Bilis now before the State Parliament. Landlords and real estate speculators and teilants were present in almost equal strength, and for five hours the audience chamber resembled a bear garden, with turbulence •and disorder unexampled in the experience of the oldest legislator. No political contests at Albany have ever given rise to such heat and passion, and there was a burst of cheering when the spokesmen of the tenants declared that the middle-classes and working men of New York would positively refuse to pay any rent at all unless the Legislature provided for a rapid and fair revision of the existing rate-., coupled with safeguard? for the future. "No police force in the world," it was declared, "could fight a united body of citizens banded together to seeuro decent living conditions." Another advocate of the tenants expressed his opinion tl»at "there is not an honest landlord O! New York."

Major Laguardia, President of the Board of Aldermen of New York, said they had come to Albany, not to praise the landlord, butrto "bury him." This was greeted by prolonged and rapturous applause, and the landlords were equally vociferous. Onf of the latter narrowly escaped lynching- when he said that a house was like any other commodity, and a landlord was justified in getting "every cent he could." ,v You'H get yours," said Major Laguardia, amid cheers. It ia admitted that the tenants have won in the first round of the battle, and the prospect is that a law will be i passed regulating rents", care being "taken not to over-legislate, thus driving capital from the building trade.