HOUSING OF WORKERS

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1746, 23 August 1905, Page 16

HOUSING OF WORKERS

THE PROBLEM OF TO-DAY.

INCREASE OF HOUSE RENTS.

The housing problem is dealt with by the Secretary of Labour in hie annual report. “I beg again,” he says, “to emphasise the tenor of the remarks made by me last year in a memorandum presented to Parliament, and entitled ‘High Wages and their Exploitation.’ The subject grows hourly to greater importance. Its bearing, particularly on organised labour, in connection with the •rents demanded in cities is of a very serious nature. In order to procure statistical data for this branch of the subject, circulars were sent out to workers’ unions all over the colony, and sufficient response has been made to enable valuable conclusions to be arrived at. Generally the return shows that the rents are in ratio to earnings in Auckland,- 28 per cent. ; in Wellington,- 33 per cent.; in Christchurch, 25 per cent.; in Dunedin, 25 per cent.; in Oishorne, 27 per cent.; in Napier, 23 per cent.; in Wanganui, 24 per cent.; in Nelson, 26 per cent. ' j “It may “be noted that considerable difference exists between the rates of rent in cities and in rural districts, the town-dweller having a far heavier levy on bis resources than the agricultural labourer or rural artisan. To counterbalance this, the town-dweller draws a higher wage, but —and I ask for special notice for this point—in no fair. ratio ; the higher wage is no real equivalent for • the increased outlay. A large factor in the town-worker’s expenses does not show in his direct rent bill. While the rural worker pays less rent, he in almost every case either grows his own vegetables, and fruit, or could do so if he chose, while in town the fruit and vegetables have had a considerable addition to their cost made by being sold in heavily-rented shops. This is true, of course, also of other things besides fruit and vegetables. . The groceries, the meat, the bread, the garments, the bopts, are all heightened in price to consumer indirectly by excessive rents, so the heavy direct rent of the worker s house is supplemented by the universal extra rent levied through his supplies. It is, therefore, no wonder that under this pressure of direct and indirect rentcharges the cost of living increases day by day, and the wages of the worker have, less and less purchasing power. The slight advance in workers’ wages has kept, I repeat, no fair ratio with the advance of the price of the necessaries of life. Mr Coghlan. the Government Statistician of New South Wales, affirms that wages in New Zealand increased 8£ per cent, in fifteen years. As house reut in the cities has increased at least 30 per cent., and many of the necessaries of life from 10 per cent to 50 per cent, in that time, the reason for what employers stigmatise as the incessant' demand for higher wages becomes not only to be understood but be excused. .

: i -‘‘lf, as is sometimes alleged, the cost of house-rent had risen on account of she higher price of timber and increased wages paid in the building trades, such rise in rent would have a reasonable basis. Nine out of ten, however, of fcihe houses (especially in - Wellington) were built before the time when such a plea could be advanced, and “the high price of labour at present” can hardly explain why a house should be let when it is old and rotten for £1 5s per week which when new produced only 17s. The answer is, of course, that the present cost of labour and .. materials has nothing to do with the question. The high renx is demanded because persons needing houses are driven to sacrifice an undue portion of their income through the necessity of having roofs of some socrt over the heads of their families. Therefore the project entertained by the Government of assisting the wage-earners by obtaining land for them, and by making advances to enable them to build their own dwellings, is bailed with delight by the workers, especially by the workers in towns. The project opens up a door of escape against the crushing system of exploitation by which the owner of private lands and private dwellings in cities and suburbs is taking an '.ever-increasing proportion of the wages/ paid in industries. There can certainly be no reason ■why the town worker, who as a taxV payer, has to share the. guarantee by means of which the country settler obtains cheap money wherewith to improve his property, should not have a reciprocal duty performed for him in his turn. f ‘A scheme insuring cheap houses in the suburbs, and easy communication with industrial centres by low fares for ‘workmen’s trains,’ would not only be a direct benefit to workers, but to others, by relieving the competition for town residences, and would exercise a highly desirable check on the growing rents of town dwellings, now occupied almost (through want of alternative) by compulsion. With the pressure of population removed from the centres, not only will this compulsory payment of high, rents comparatively cease, but this will also probably lower the indirect rent-burden, as shops, following ttbe workers’ suburban settlement, will then not necessarily be situated in a few crowded thoroughfares; - nor will

the shopkeeper find that, hard as he may toil tx> pay his rent, the rent increases at a racing pace with the expiry of each short lease. Occupying wider spaces and healthier breedinggrounds, the cities may have a chance to rear citizens under conditions which Dr Mason, Chief Health Officer of the Government, declared in his last annual report to be impossible in the congested state of our present urban life.”