INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21245, 27 July 1932, Page 14

INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE

Sir, —It is difficult to accept Mr. Thome's statement that '.'The reason private enterprise ceased to provide houses was because of the monstrous injustice of the Rent Restriction Bill.". Why has it been necessary for consecutive Conservative Governments to reimpose that Act? Mr. Thornes must remember, also, that State and municipal house-building ig not confined to New Zealand, but has been successfully, carried out in many other Mr/ Tom Johnston, in a recent issue of Forward, comments on the success of a municipal house-building policy in the mining town of Kilsyth.. The provision of comfortable houses at « low rental has resulted jji a general lowering of rents, while rates are lower, not higher; But the important fact in connection with it is that the death rat® has fallen from 18.9 in 1910 to 9.2 in 1931, and infantile death rate even more remarkably, from 139 in 1910 to 65 in 1931. Investigations carried out in Scotland by the Board of Health prove beyond doubt the baneful effects of bad housing conditions. In one-apartment houses, for instance, the Jnfantile death rato was more than twice as high as it was among those living in houses of fourapartmeuts or over; arid a corresponding difference in between. This Dominion has the lowest infantile death rate in the world. Is a small temporary loss in our housing policy too high a price to pay for this ? J. S. Montgomerie. July 26, 1932.