ABSENCE OF THRIFT.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4450, 7 August 1922, Page 2

ABSENCE OF THRIFT.

HIGH WAGES & EXTRAVAGANCE.

DO THEY MAKE FOR CRIME?

At the opening of the quarterly criminal sessions of the SupremeCourt at Wellington last week the Chief; Justice (Sir Robert Stout), in. his charge to the grand jury, said that there were four cases of a sexual character and ten of theft in vari-; ous forms. Crime in the Wellington district was evidently not decreasing, = as, for the period up to July last year, counting both prisoners committed for trial and for sentence, the total was 68, while for this year it was 93, an increase of . nearly 50 per cent. Perhaps the increase in theft was due to unemployment and! financial troubles, but undoubtedly some of the men before the Court did not want to ; work ; in their case it was not an unsuccessful genuine search for work. ■ Extravagance had eaten up money . that would have allowed others to make ends meet, and the ednsump- > tion c,f liquor—double that of the pre- , war period—and heavy cigarette smoking no doubt contributed to the . general absence of thrift in the com- • inanity. J

His Honour said that he had estimated that if the latter expenditures were cut out money sufficient to provide work for 5000 men at 10s a day. could be saved to the Wellington district. There was a general tendency towards extravagance. Wellington had at one time sustained only one theatre. How many were there today ? Thrift on serious and general lines, together with harder work, was the only hope of emergence from the financial depression, although this was not nearly so severe as in the early days of the colony, when men, living under harder conditions, often £ in tents, worked much longer than t eight hours a day for less wages. Yet in those days crime was relatively • less, and the community more innocent and sharing a more general happiness.