In yesterday's issue a correspondent, writing on the campaign agairist tuberculosis, drew attention to high rents and high prices as being directly responsible for overcrowding and underfeeding—both well known handmaids of this dread illness. In a covering letter the same correspondent, who speaks with medical and practical know. ledge of conditions says:—"Prices are bad, but to the poor are becoming really shocking. Plenty of good food is at least ds essential in fighting tubercules as fresh it, and especially during the com ing hot weather. The seas are clear between us and Fiji—why should sugar be up this week a cent a pound? The Municipality could, perhaps, regulate prices or start a store, and sell at fixed prices to any Europeans who can prove that their income is less than #200." We fear the scheme is utopian, The Municipal Council does not occupy that position towards residents that Governments at Home do to their nationals, and municipal trading of this kind would be obviously ultra vires, But landlords might certainly do something now to temper the wind to the shorn lamb, and those who would help in the fight against tuberculosis may well remember that there are many local charities through which, if properly assisted, high prices may be counteracted. one copy
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.