LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which Zl treble the space.]
THE CRY OF THE TAX-PAYER.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPEOTATOTC]
Eirs,—At a time when every penny of the national resources should be jealously conserved, and expenditure controlled within its narrowest limits, the people are oppressed by new taxation which owes its inception to those who, forsooth. pose as the guardians of the public purse! Their " Basher Educa- tion Act" is the latest instrument they employ to raise the rates to the crushing point they have now reached—in my
particular ease it has increased my rates, in one quarter alone, by not less than .6.38d. in the Z. At the same time they have enacted that I shall receive some 50 per cent, less than the fair price of the lettable value of my property if left to the only just test of value—an open market. They have graciously allowed me to raise my rents 30 per cent- this year, and by another 10 per cent, next year, the combined return of which may enable me to paint my houses outside, and leave nothing for inside decorations, nothing for increase of revenue, nothing to provide a sinking fund for my leasehold property. Pine. tiCHIly, ray capital has been confiscated for six years!
Having thus penalized individual enterprise, they, with unabated folly, render the unfortunate landlord's position still more hopeless by complacently raising the wages of any trade which takes the trouble to " bounce " them! Not content with this, they pay a bonus of X150 to anyone building a house of a certain value. Reduced to figures this means that I am fined .8150 for doing that for which another man receives £150 from the State as a reward! The Higher Education Act is a scandal and a disgrace. I believe it will prove to be, in relation to the results achieved, an utterly unprofitable waste of public money. But whether this is so or not, one thing is abundantly clear that no such expenditure should have been permitted at a time when the country is financially exhausted by the dissipation of its wealth during the war; and it is doubly cruel in the face of the terrific increase in the cost of living—which is the necessary result.
Concurrent with this educational "stunt," the embittered taxpayer is confronted by the spread of schools whose aim and object is to create and foster tendencies not only inimical to the State and debasing to the children who attend them, hut a scandal and a disgrace to any Christian or self- respecting community which allows for one moment such pests to exist in their midst. The men who run these hotbeds of evil and of sin should be brought within the scope of the law and be made to expiate their offence by a heavy term of im- prisonment. Again, there is a great outcry against the pro- fligate increase of municipal expenditure. Yet no paper that I have seen suggests the only remedy for this crying evil. Enact that all municipalities shall be compelled to throw open all their appointments and situations to public tender ;and that, other things being equal, they shall be empowered to accept the lowest wage obtainable in an open market for labour. Why will not the Press of this country face the obvious truth —that our present industrial and unemployment difficulties (and our still more threatening ones, already in the offing) are due to the fact that men are paid far more than the value of their work? Take the latest instance—the gross hypocrisy of the so-called settlement of the late coal strike Every one knows perfectly well that instead of getting an increase of wages at all the miners' wages should have been decreased by 30 per cent, upon their present output. Nor will industry revive as it should until this is brought about. When widespread unemployment results, I shall be surprised if the other Trades Unions do not themselves take action in a matter so vital to their interests as this—I am, Sir, StE, EDGAR II. S. BLENEE-ATISTLE.
1 Madeira Park, Tunbridge Wells,
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