THE COST OF LIVING.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16550, 14 May 1914, Page 2

THE COST OF LIVING.

10 THE EDITOR. Sir,—Quite recently an incident came under my notice which throws a lurid light on the struggle to maintain respectability among tho great mass of cur people. Having arranged to join a family on their long-delayed trip to the seaside 1 went to their home. In tho wash-house I found tho father hard at work mending two pairs of boots. He admitted quite frankly that the cost of living compelled him to undertake scores of "such odd jobs before and after a hard day's work. This careworn parent remarked that even with the assistance received from wealthy relatives it was almost impossible to make ends meet. "For years," he observed, "' I've done my level best and have often felt the pangs of hunger in order that the bills might be paid, but lam just about ' full up.' The other day 1 was told a serious operation on my daughter could not be done for less than £25. A father requires the heart of a lion to struggle year in and year out against this sort of thing on ten shillings per day." Here in Now Zealand our'wage-earn-ers are denied that perquisite of their labours which a rich food producing soil should givo them. No industrious man or woman in such a favoured land as ours should be haunted by the spectre or indigence in old age as a reward for a life of self-denial and hard labour. Who can deny the fact that many mothers of sterling qualities have been driven to a bed of lingering sickness after years of anxiety concerning how best to make tho father's eight or nine shillings per day pay tho rent, the butcher or tho doctor? Far too many honest, hard-working parents aro compelled to deny their children new winter frocks, water-tight boots, or a little extra food, in order that excessive house rent might be paid. Yet in this denial care and sickness nourish and finally become the doctor's goldmine. Along with the evil influence of crushing medical expenses, many noble parents are kept within eight of chronic poverty and sickness through tho menace of landlords, butchers, bootmakers, bakers and grocers all clamouring at the door. Does the reader not know scores of cases where parents have denied themselves and their little ones the extra bit of meat, ripe fruit, or week-end outing in order to pay their debts, yet have been compelled to pay away half a year's wages to win back the health this very denial took awav ?

No increase in wages can outpace the growing cost of living. The real remedy lies in changing the incidence of taxation. Land, not the myriad wants of man it produces—must be effectively taxed. , The increased cost of living, in spite of all that has been done to remit taxation through the Customs, is the natural corollary to our obsolete system of taxation. This vicious system leaves ample room for unbridled speculation in land values; it provides no check whatever to the bad system of indirect taxation now the idol of private enterprise. Our people suffer while, land monopolists ransack the world's markets to obtain famine prices for. our food stuffs so that inflated untaxed land values can be! maintained. "Where is the cheap meat, cheap butter, cheap woollens, cheap boots, which should be the inheritance of a food-producing nation? Is it not a fact that in spite of all we produce from the rich soil and sunny hills of New Zealand, the "average parent is forced to pay the famine prices of the Homeland for meat, butter, cheese, etc? There are 25,000,000 sheep grazing on our hillsides, yet a scraggy sheep's neck is a- luxury in many a. working man's home. The ambitious parent is denied access.to a plethora of cheap food in order that ruinous prices may be obtained elsewhere. . This enables our growing army of parasitic land monopolists, avaricious land speculators, and pernicious land agents to wax fat and, multiply on dear land, dear meat, dear butter and cheap labour.

During the past two decades the unimproved value of our lands has ' increased by no less than 110 millions sterling. One hundred and twentysix millions of that stupendous sum have gone, not as a bonus to the citizens of New Zealand- who urgently require relief from indirect taxation, but into the bank accounts, motor-cars, loan offices and Conservative newspapers of 22,500 fortunate families. This is a injustice to the public generally and tho wage-earners particularly who now pay in indirect taxation nearly four shillings from every £1 spent on boots, clothes, etc. It would be impossible to estimate how much the working man pays in further indirect taxation per medium of dear meat, wool, butter, etc., to maintain the steady annual increase of fifteen \ millions sterling in the untaxed un-; improved values of our land now the! monopoly of a few. I

The cost of living in New Zealand must become much more serious unless the incidence of taxation is changed forthwith. Even in Conservative England,. Mr Lloyd George, to the accompaniment of sneers and jeers from our Tory editors and politicians, will succeed in emancipating a great nation from tho worst horrors of indirect taxation, by pouring monopolised millions into the national exchequer from the taxation of land values. Already our wealthy squatters, sheltering under unnatural 'Tights" to untaxed com-munity-created land values, realise that the great mass of the people is loudly clamouring for justice. Fortunately an educated people is aware that the wealthy minority is frantically organising to defeat the demands of its deceived and exploited majority. Under the shadow of a political mirage astutely labelled "Reform," this wealthy minority is rapidly consolidating to resist tooth and nail the nation's permanent remedy for lives wrongfully spent in endless labour, poverty anil debt in a land of plenty.—l ami etc., ARTHUR HUNTER. I Mercer, May 11. !