CHALLENGE BY PRINCE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 307, 24 November 1934, Page 7

CHALLENGE BY PRINCE

BETTER LIVING CONDITIONS. STRIKING ADDRESS TO ARCHITECTS. WORKING FOR THE MAJORITY. (United Press Association— By Electric Telegraph .—Copyright.) Beceived November 24, 9.50 a.m. LONDON, Nov. 23. “The great majority of our people should, and can, have better living conditions. I ask you to carry the principle of mass production over to the architecture and building trades,” declared the Prince of Wales in a striking address at the Guildhall to 2000 architects at the centenary of tlie Royal Institute of British Architects., “I am convinced,” added the Prince, “that in no other way will it be possible to raise living conditions. You could develop the idea of widening streets, and raising the height of buildings so that they can be spaced at greater distances from each other, tending to greater openness and less congestion. . “1 feel most strongly about this. You must consider greater and’ more important the ideal of working for the great majority of our people instead of studying the needs of the minority, which is ever dwindling. I am anxious that the living conditions of the great masses be improved as quickly as possible. My visits to the slums and depressed areas have impressed me with the urgency of this. We are not individualists of the Victorian and Edwardian times. We are living mostly as the result of the war in a world more collective in principle than, individualistic. Wealth is more evenly distributed throughout the country than ever and is being directed to greater consideration of the masses and their requirements than to the individual client or selective group we commonly call society,” the Prince declared.