“NO SLUM AREAS”

Evening Star, Issue 18136, 28 November 1922, Page 8

“NO SLUM AREAS”

TO TIIK EDITOR. ■Sir, —I was interested in reading in Saturday’s issue of your paper of tho many cases of poverty and distress brought to your reporter’s notice by a visit with Ensign Coombs. those being only a very few of the total number of cases in God’s Own Country. Now, sir, the Labor Party says the reason of all this poverty and distress is because the means of life are privately owned and manipulated for private profit, instead of being owned by the whole people and managed by the whole people in the interests of themselves, not for profit, because there would bo no sense :-n tho people making a profit out of themselves. This method embodies public ownership as against private ownership, which is iu operation now Moreover, while not suggesting that charity workers stop collecting and giving charity, still the reason why the. present system is kept going longer than is necessary is largely because so much charity is given, and the victims are able to carry on iu a.fashion, existing, but not living as if should be their divine right to live if the people were permitted free access to the raw material, thereby producing all fheir necessities. without first having to pay a primary toll of a certain amount in the shape of rent,"interest, or profit. Tho primary object in a State (i.e., the whole people) or a municipality is to so own and _ manage a public concern as to be able to _ give the product to the people at the minimum cost, plus all other charges. This much is admitted by our municipal councillors and State legislators when they are defending our public concerns; _ but the same individuals in private business preach the veryopposite doctrine. So really we have the present system condemned out of our opponents’ own mouths; and we claim we are justified in asking the people to give us such a mandate on December 7 as will enable us to so change the conditions in this dominion that it can in truth be called, as tho late Right Hou. Richard SedJon called it, “God’s Own Country.”—l am, etc., Truth.

[The victims of circumstances would obviously bo still worse off if they had to produce all their necessities for themselves, or if others wore required to produce them for them without the expectation of a profit which would enable them in their turn to live. There would he no incentive to anyone to do anything in such a world. Wo have not heard of anyone calling Russia “ God’s Own Country.”—Ed. E.S.]