INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21248, 30 July 1932, Page 12

INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE

Sir, —Mr. Montgomcrie finds it "difficult to accept my statement that the reason private enterprise ceased to provide house» was because of the monstrous injustice of the Rent Restriction Bill." 1 ho proof of this *is in the fact that after two or three years it was found advisable to remove front the provisions of ihe Act any houses built after the 'passing- of the amending Act, and in 1920 to farther exempt all dwelling houses let for the first time aftfcr the 1920 Act came'into force. He asks, "Why has it been necessary for consecutive Conservative Governments to reimpose that Act?" It has not been necessary. It may have been deemed expedient as a vote-catching measure, hut it lias been necessary to greatly modify some of its most harsh provisions. A wise Government would have allowed it to lapse in terms of the original Act, which provided that it should lapse "six- months after the conclusion of the war." It was not the Government's action which caused lower rentals, and any loss entailed by the Government's housing policy, in general is a burden on the taxpayer he should not be asked to bear. Mr. Montgomery claims that "the death-rate has fallen from 18.9 per 1000 in 1910 to 9.2 in 1931. As the death-rate in 1910 was only 9.71 (not 18.9), the fall to 9.2 in 1931 is not very great, and no part of the fall, or the reduced rate of infantile mortality, can be put to the credit ,of the Government because it advanced 95 per cent of the value of house and land to those who built houses. The reduced death-rates are due to legislative and educational measures and the activity .of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children, with its medical research and its Plunket nurse organisation. A much reduced birth-rate has also been 1 added to the favourable percentage of deaths. J. Thoknes. 231, Parnell Road.