IN THE PUBLIC MIND

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 91, 17 April 1943, Page 4

IN THE PUBLIC MIND

CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS HOME BUILDING To The Editor

As one who has been for many years a producer of timber, and as a result been very much in touch with builders and the house-building business particularly, I have been interested in recent criticism of the Government activities in this direction. Their legislation has undoubtedly had the effect of taking out of the hands of the small builder who so long had almost a monopoly of cottage building, and the net result appears to be less houses built and the costs more than dotibled, and this before the war commenced. Since the Government came into the picture the small man has been of deliberate purpose pushed out by a system of letting contracts only for large numbers in one contract. By this means the one-horse builder, who usually had a mate or two who were painters and paperhangers, bricklayer, etc., was displaced, and the wage hand, who was thus compelled to join a labour union, substituted. Unionism was thus built up compulsorily, and with the Government in their pocket, they were able to enforce their demands for increased pay, shorter hours and paid holidays. The process has been applied universally, with the result that labour costs per hour actually worked have easily doubled under the present" regime—and, incidentally the purchasing power of the £ has been halved. Owners of houses built prior to the last slump, many of whom during the slump reduced the rents to a very low and uneconomic rental, were debarred by the Labour Government, as soon as they came into office, from restoring their rents to the very reasonable level prevailing before the slump, and these and other restrictive regulations have made house-building for letting or speculative purposes quite an unattractive speculation. The job is left to the Government, and we get further into the mire. TIMBERMAN.