INCREASING CHARITABLE AID.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 76, 23 December 1907, Page 6

INCREASING CHARITABLE AID.

Some attention is due to the disquieting report of the increase in the cost of local charitable aid which the Benevolent Trustees received from the Secretary last week. During the eight months ending November 30, the is v suo of rations was 56 per cent, 'greater than was the case, in the corresponding period last year, and there had also being a 12 per cent, increase in the Trustees' disbursements for rent. "The tendency of outdoor relief," said the Secretary, " was in the direction of increasing." That this disturbing persistence of poverty and increase in the community's burden of pauper-relief are not confined to the Wellington district is clear from some statements which the Christchurch "Press "reports as having been made by the Chairman of the North Canterbury Charitable Aid Board. The experience of many years had convinced, him that under present conditions great injury is done to the system of outdoor relief by the cultivation of " wastrels," and the abuses which stand.for waste and extravagance. We are disinclined to suggest that our system of public charities is beginning to produce that artificial pauperdom which was created by ! the loose administration of ' the Poor Law in England, and which still flourishes under the dominance of ignorance and Radical sentiment in the Old Country. In New Zealand we have for years come increasingly under the control of experimenters who work upon'new theories, and sentimentalists' who deny the old theories that, are born of experience. It is, therefore, peculiarly necessary to what countless sociologists, have pointed out as an of. charity— that, loose and lavish public charity confirms .the indigent in their helplessness, transforms the: able-bodied unemployed, into chronic idlers, and creates an army of paupers. > It would naturally be supposed that the cost of charitable aid in New .Zealand should have been steadily diminishing as one prosperous year exceeds another. An endless succession qf handsome surpluses,' and :increasingly enthusiastic speeches by Premiers and Ministers upon the unapproachable buoyancy and happiness of ( this favoured country, would seem to.call for a steadily diminishing charge for the relief of poverty. Yet, if we compare the expenditure on charitable aid for the last financial year with the financial year 1894-s—rwliich we have selected as the turning-point after the depression of the J Bo's and. early '90's— we find that the charge upon the public funds has increased from £86,555 to £102,866.' Nor must it be forgotten that the system of old age pensions has been introduced since 1805. Tet, in spite of old age pensions, and a series of years as good as the country can ever hope to experience, there is evidence that the cost of lookirig after the paupers is on the up-grade. It is obvious ' that this condition of affairs must be due to a laxness of administration, and the too-ready inclination of dispensing bodies to distribute relief where it is not deserved, and in other cases to disburse more than is absolutely necessary. In his last report the Inspector-General of Hospitals and Charitable Institutions quoted some impressive examples of the loose and lavish administration of outdoor relief in some districts, and he has since devised a method of minimising some of the existing abuses by requiring the fullest particulars of the circumstances of applicants for relief. It is clear that the Inspector-General's action has not come too soon, and it is worth while going a good deal further in the-way of investigation; for' there seems to be good reason to suppose that the manufacture of paupers is becoming a flourishing industry. ' '.