158 ADDENDA TO THE MINORITY REPORT 



against the actual rent paid for existing cottages of 

 from Is. to 2s. Qd. At the present prices of labour, 

 materials, and money, the cost is £300 ^ per cottage 

 or thereabouts, and the economic rent (to include 

 rates) is about 85.^ To ask discharged soldiers to 

 pay a rent raised so greatly by war conditions is 

 neither politic nor just. It is unjust that having 

 risked their lives for their country in the war, they 

 should in addition be saddled with a burden of expense 

 directly resulting from the war. To raise wages 

 immediately to such a point that they could pay a 

 rent of 8s. and still have enough money over to feed 

 and clothe themselves and their famihes in decency 

 and comfort is not a practical policy. Again, the 

 standard wages of the industry cannot be raised all 

 round, merely to meet the special needs of one class of 

 the workers — ^viz. those in the new expensive houses. 



The alternative of making individual wages vary 

 with the rent of each wage-earner's house seems to 

 us to present insuperable difficulties. We therefore 

 think the argument sound, that the State ought, both 

 as a measure of justice to the returning soldiers and 

 as a matter of practical expediency, to treat as a war 

 expense payable out of the Exchequer a considerable 

 part of the cost of the necessary new housing accom- 

 modation which is attributable to the war. 



If the State were to do more than this, the rent 

 based on the remaining cost would be lower than it 

 ought to be ; and in the days to come when normal 



* This cost includes land and all charges. 



2 We use the word " economic " throughout in the sense in 

 which it is understood by Local Authorities, Public Utility So- 

 cieties, and similar corporate bodies, viz. a rent that avoids a loss. 



