There is another way in which landlords can profiteer and do profiteer. Any improvement in land contemplated or made out of the ratepayers' money is immediately turned to good account by the property owners without any expense to themselves. The public paid out of their own pockets for the closing of the creek at Yangking-pang. Did they know that the owners of some of the old buildings on either side of the creek would bleed them further? It is not enough for the profiteer that the improvement -to the locality will not leave any empty houses on his hands, but he must needs without any qualms fleece the public. I wonder how much the Love Lane properties will go up in rent, or have gone up already in anticipation of the culverting of the creek. 2
In face of the letters appearing in your columns on rent protiteering can you explain, sir, the apathy of the Council to this flagrant abuse?
Board or Inquiry.
The luissez faire policy hitherto followed by the Council may have proved right in regard to luxuries, but when it concerns the community's moral and physical] welfare directly dependent on food and shelter, it has worked such grave evils that they call for modification or a complete change of the old policy. The general ignorance of the public has allowed this improvident policy, so impoverishing to them, to continue for so long. Since the majority of ratepayers are too much under the thumb of the property owners either as employees or tenants to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.