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Progress, Volume X, Issue 6, 1 February 1915, Page 195

undoubtedly all the power it needs in the Municipal Corporations Act and Public Works Act, but these statutes give it no right to impose conditions upon land-owners so as to ensure that future suburbs are laid out upon the best lines, with due regard to the health of the people and the beauty of their environment. Sane town planning is really an enlightened selfishness, because it means a better disposition of the land and an improved return in the long run. Local bodies who wish to combine in schemes of town planning would, under the present conditions of the law; find themselves in no end of a muddle of hampering restrictions from which nobodv but so skilled a lawyer as the Minister of Internal Affairs could extricate them. We sincerely hope that if the fortune of political war favours Mr. Bell's side, he will introduce a Bill to make easy the way of local authorities wishing to go in for Town Planning, setting up a national authority to advise and exercise general control. In this respect Ave are far behind so-called conservative England which has, among the officers of its Local Government Department, a comptroller of Housing and Town Planning with salary rising from £BSO to £I,OOO per annum, an assistant at £BOO, and five Housing Inspectors who do invaluable work in the thickly populated centres. "Progress" is not concerned about politics, and it is because of our town planning ideals that Ave regret the exclusion from the new Parliament of so enthusiastic and well-informed friend of the movement as the Hon. George Fowlds formerly Member for Grey Lynn. J * * * * How are we to pay for the Avar? Accustomed as New Zealanders are to borrowing, most people absorb with confidence the professions of both sides in politics that there is no need to impose war taxation upon us. This might be good policy while the Motherland, out of its wonderful resources, can spare us millions on easy terms, but we must make up our minds that the burden is not going to be shouldered on to posterity. Borrowing for reproductive works can be justified, but borrowing for so wasteful a purpose as war can only be justified as a temporary measure. The war costs England about one million sterling a day Such an enormous sum could not be paid out of annual revenue, hence the 350 million loan, which however, is to be redeemed in from 10 to 14 years. The current year's finance, according to the iloL D - Lloyd George will show a deficiency of £339,5 /1,000. New taxation will yield fifteen and a half millions the first year, and loan-money will fill the remainder of the big gap, but taxation is to provide £65,000,000 next year. The increase needed to produce this enormous sum were announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer as follows 1. The income-tax and supertax are to be doubled. This year, however, the increase is only to be collected in respect of one-third of the income. The tax (raised to Is. 3d. in the last Budget) will be levied at the rate of Is. Bd. this year, and of 2s. 6d. next year. The rate for earned incomes (now 9d.) will be Is this year and Is. 6d. next year.

2. The duty on beer is to be increased by 17s. 3d. the barrel. This will allow the publican to charge the consumer an additional |d. on the half-pint.

3. The duty on tea is to be increased by 3d. per lb.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer also announced that the Government propose to raise immediately a War Loan of £350,000,000, to be issued at 95, and to bear interest at the rate of 3| per cent. It is to be redeemed by the Government at par on March 1, 1928, or, subject to three months notice at any time between March 1, 1925, and March 1, 1928. In effect, therefore, it will be a 4 per cent, security.

New Zealand Treasurer must soon face the position, and we must pay just as cheerfully as we have voluntarily handed out our money for the Patriotic Fund. Our income tax normally is less than that of England. To double it would yield an extra half million sterling. Perhaps the totalisator tax might also go up, and "that most elusive person the teetotaller," as Lloyd George calls him, would not mind if the tea tax which he now escapes, came back again._ The English war-tax on tea is Bd. per lb.; this on our very large consumption of tea would alone give the cheerful Minister of Finance no less a sum than £200,000. What of that hitherto untapped, though threatened source of revenue, petrol? The position is hopeful enough for the Treasurer, and those who pay will deem it cheap in return for the coming triumph of the allied arms. Business men who keep going, and consumers who keep buying, are doing their share towards that desirable end without waiting to be forced by the taxgatherer. * # * # A new process for making coal dust, lignite, peat, or sawdust into briquettes suitable for use as a fuel has originated in France. This process consists in mixing with the material treated some gelatinous substance such as the flour made from rice, compressing the mixture into briquettes, and drying under a high temperature. In making briquettes from an-thracite-coal dust, a mixture is made consisting of 2i per cent, of rice flour and 97£ per cent, of coal dust. Hot water or steam is then injected into the mixture to transform the flour into a pasty mass, and the whole is thoroughly kneaded before it is passed to the fuel press. After being taken from the press, the briquettes are dried for three or four hours in a temperature of from 180 to 360 degrees F. It is said that the briquettes made by this process are capable of withstanding the action of water for a long period without danger of disintegration. If this process is a proved practical success it will enormously extend the world's fuel resources by making available low-grade coal for power and household use. Large quantities of New Zealand coal go to waste for want of an inexpensive briquetting method, the system in which pitch is used as the consolidating medium being so expensive that the State Coal Departments briquetting works on the West Coast ended its unprofitable run by being closed down several years ago.