White Slaves

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 17, 20 July 1893, Page 2

White Slaves

Wuethkr the lessons now being riven in Victoria to parents and guardians, who are so fond of getting their sons aad daughters employed in the Civil Service of the colony, will be taken to heart by the same individuals in New Zealand is more than doubtful. Yet, one would think that those entrusted with the guidance of the footsteps of youngsters in their first start in life should exercise a little forehought at the outset. In the civil service of any colony there are no prizes. After years of work — and submitting to the thousand and one humiliations incidental to the career — a diligent servant may achieve a position which brings him in say 4>500 a-year. Hundreds upon hundreds fail long before they have reached this (to them) Elysium. In the professions such as law, physic, civil engineering, etc., open to the sons of a very large proportion of our well-to-do colonists, the prizes are real and substantial, at the same time buing within the limits of the attainments of all of those who arc earnest in their work, and diligent in its exercise. Then there are the occupations of practical engineers, the sea, farming, commerce, etc., where the rising generation Qt men can. prepare themselves to change their con- j ditions from servitors to those of master-men, giving place in their turn i to the still younger generation fast treading in the footsteps of their predecessors. When any man with v profession or trade at his disposal j meets with misfortune or bad luck he j can— if he lias health and strength — start again with new vigor, but in the J case of civil servants, when " their j occupation has gone," they are lieJp- ( leasly stranded, and it requires no end of energy on their part to get on their feet again, while a vast majority of them fail in the attempt — if they make the attempt at all. Wo have said before, and have no hesitation in repeating it, that a crime is committed against society when a young healthy lad is bound over to slavery as a civil servant. All his hopes destroyed ; his career of probable usefulness abruptly

ended while on life's threshold, and all for the sake of a few miserable pound?. and the alleged respectability of the position. ._. '

It would be a great advantage to the sellers at and around Bunnythorpe if the railway authorities could see their way to accede to the reasonable request that the , mail trains (north nnd south) should stop i at the Bunnythorpe station. A deputation, as our renders are aware, recently waited on the District Manager, pointing out the- inconvenience caused by the pre- ' sent management, but nothing definite was promised. At present if anyone 1 from that district has to come to Feilding to do banking or other business, the train ' services are unsuitable. It would not be difficult or expensive for the authorities to make this concession, but it would, on tbe other band,, mean a considerable increase to the revenue, and, at the same time, be a direct convenience to the travelling public. A creamery is about > to be started at, Bunnythorpe wbicb will ' add largely to the importance of the > place, It has been pointed out to us 1 that to meet the exegencies of the case ' a stntionmaster could be appointed who 1 would also fulfil the duties of postmaster > and telegraphist.