THE RURAL HOUSING QUESTION.
- [To rug korroa or rim "Ersor.troo.7]
Sea,--.The landowners' joint letter which you published laat week is perhaps the moat valuable contribution to a solution of this problem which has ever been made. Surely it deserves appreciative recognition from. those Cabinet Ministers and kerb-ranters who for the past seven years and more have been denouncing landlordism as the malignant cancer in our social system, responsible for overcrowding, high death-rate, low birth-rate, disease, • and drunkenness with its attendant poverty. We have most of us come to regard rent as con- fiscation and have joined cheerfully in the hunt of the tyrant, bringing him to ground by means of Budgets. And with what result ? The statement made by Mr. Pete- in the House last week that in 1911, the first clear year after the increment duty came into force, only 10,461 houses of not more than £20 annual wage were built, whereas the average yearly number of 1904-6 was 121,000, is entitled to wider publication than the Liberal press has given it. In your editorial note you make some remarks on the desirability of caution in the financial arrangements. If the landowners' offer is to be of any practical use it must be followed by an equally bold bid by. Labour. By that I mean that the great building trades unions shall allow their members to fix their own wages with builders for two years, irrespective of prevailing rates, if engaged in the construction of houses of, say, £25 annual
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