The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1878.

Kumara Times, Issue 483, 13 April 1878, Page 2

The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1878.

Next Monday evening the adjourned meeting to he held for the purpose of receiving the resignations of the members of the existing Hospital Committee, and for dealing with hospital matters generally, will take place. The principal question to be discussed will be whether to continue the present system of subscribing money to be expended amongst the tradesmen of Hokitika, or to establish a local Hos: pital and take advantage of the £6OO grant and £ for £ subsidy offered by the Government. There are, we know, differences of opinion as to the exact relationship borne by the Kumara local Hospital Ward Committee towards the Hokitika Hospital Committee, and also as to the precise terms of the Government proposal. Having access to documents which do not so readily reach the public eye, we are perhaps more favourably situated for obtaining; positive information on these points,, and we propose on Monday evening to lay it before our readers in a form that may prove useful when the subject is at a later hour .discussed on the public platform. To day we shall, as briefly as possible, ask those who 'have the interests of Kumara at heart—it is needless to appeal to others—to deliberately look at the subject from another stand-point. It has been estimated that to: maintain a local Hospital with a proper staff would cost annually £I2OO, a moiety of which, viz £6OO, must be raised in the district. On. the 2nd inst. it was demonstrated in these columns that this was equivalent to a capitation tax of less than 3d per week, or about 10s per annum; yet it is pleaded that Kumara cannot support a hospital! Cannot support a hospital 1 Let us see what it liberally, naylavishily, can-support. It c.maupport two £IOOO racing sweeps, the priz-s in which, by the way, invariably go else, where ; it can contribute extravagantly to similar affairs got up in Hokitika and Grtiymouth ; it can permit itself to be fooled to the top of its bent by ititinerant lecturers who, when they have extracted the last shilling from tlie place, run away and laugh at us; it pours money into the coffers of thirdrate showmen who, to compensate for the poverty of their entertainments, “ g' iye away” a few twopenny-halfpenny Brummagem toys; it can spend in fifty public-houses, and as many sly grog-shops, £55,000 per annum, or an average of £l3 per annum for every man, woman, and child in the place, for “ nobblers,” drunk over the counter—it can do all this, and it cannot main, tain a hospital! Within a few months the proprietor of a panorama, a sleight-of-hand showman, and two lecturers have cleared out with upwards of £2OOO, for which we have to show, what 1— Empty pockets wherein cannot be found 2|d per week to support our sick and our wounded! Is this crying evil to continue?’ Is it to remain a standing reproach to the premier alluvial goldfield of the Colony that it is only when the gambling or the drinking instincts of the people are appealed to that they become liberal ? Is it to be said that only when am infinitesimal chance in a “ sweepf” is dangled before their eyes, or a traveling mountebank dazzles them with a tin teapot that, they find the way to their pockets ? Are we in future to listen to the taunt that Kumara, whoso hardy miners day after day go to their work with their lives in their hands, cannot find a pillow for those who “ fall by the way ?” We do not believe it. We believe that when the matter : is put before the public in this light a light in which probably it has never before been held up to them—they will , vindicate their reputation as an enlightened, a kind-hearted, and a liberal community ; and, in the most practical

manner, prove to those who sneeringly say Kumara cannot support a hospital,” that it can and will.