ARROGANCE OF POVERTY

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5144, 27 June 1927, Page 1

ARROGANCE OF POVERTY

AS WELL AS WEALTH. VIEWS OF ARCHBISHOP JULIUS. The nation Is breeding an enormous amount of insanity and disease and did not know how to check it. That there is an arrogance of poverty as well as arrogance of wealth, and tliat character in the individual was of far more value- than repressive legislation, were statements made by Archbishop Julius at a social of the Peace Association at Christchurch. Justices were keepers of the Peace, said the Archbishop, but peace is not easily to keep when one considers the arrogance of poverty.

“ The arrogance of wealth. Need we talk about it ?” he qdded. “It is well known. It is the case of a man who had made money at the expense of other people, and who wa.nts to own the whole world. When his right to such is challenged, he says : This is for me and you go to hell. Then there is arrogance of poverty, the idea that men who do not want to work should live, whether’ they work or not. They say they are here in this world, and have the right to be fed and housed irrespective of whether they will work. This idea brings unemployment and crime.”

What can we do ? We are multiplying a.nd breeding an enormous amount of insanity and disease, and we don’t know how to check it. I have often told people bo come to me for help. One womfjn, a mother of six and expecting another, asks if anything can be done for her husband, who is out of work. Six children and a husband out of work. The King gives a prize to mothers of triplets, but sometimes it would be better that only one instead of three were brought into the world without much of a future.

“ The older I get the more distrustful I am o repressive legislation. The fewer laws wc have the better. We want character, and if we have that we don’t want lawmaking.”