"UNFETTERED MEN."

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 95, 23 April 1931, Page 23

"UNFETTERED MEN."

With your kind permission I am using the term "unfettered" that my meaning many be better understood by your correspondent "A Good Son," who charges me with being "up against" the single man. Certainly I am not, any more than I regard the plea, in itself, objectionable. It is his tactics I take exception to. My letter has been somewhat distorted, as I stated "no iane person would suggest enforcing such a measure at such an exceptional period as the present." I still maintain that the single man (speaking generally) has squandered his money, when he should have been saving it up for a home. The late Sir Maui Pomare commented on this in the House, adding "he had never heard a Labour advocate recommcnd thrift." And lam sorry to say, sir, that State assistance in erecting houses on a deposit of £10 and even less has largely contributed to a careless form of procedure, as many young men, at the eleventh hour in marrying (sometimes by sheer compulsion rather than choice) will "borrow a £10 note and get a house," partly at the expense of the general taxpayer, who is already burdened with a private loan, which he must repay or lose his home. As to "A Good Son's" reference to the man with eight children, and his pitv for him, it is exactly for such men I have suggested the single tax. So if he is genuine in his sympathy ho win support it. And now once more for the "unemcumbered married." The same argument as applied in the system of rating on unimproved values must apply here also, especially when it comes to such women going round telling the mother of a family "what a fool she is tying herself down so." The man with the family is the backbone of the State, and others shirking their responsibilities are only an encumbrance. ARTHUR GUMMING S.