The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, July 15, 1911. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1018, 15 July 1911, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, July 15, 1911. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The Foxton Harbour Board is anxious to acquire the wharf from the Railway Department and purchase a dredge to give a greater depth of water on the bar in order to facilitate shipping. The importance of these objects has been fully set before the public by the Chairman of the Board, in an elaborate and carefully thoughtout report, which the Board unanimously approved. The Board decided to raise by way of loan the sum of ,£27,000 in order to give effect to its proposals, but in order to do this a rating area must first be defined to provide security for the loan. The proportion of responsibility each local governing body in the proposed rating area should carry was carefully and equitably set out and forwarded to the various bodies for consideration and approval. It was pointed out by the. Board that the revenue from the wharf, when acquired, would in itself be sufficient to provide interest and sinking fund on the loan and that there would not be any necessity to call up the rate —without which security it would be impossible to obtain the loan. Several of the local bodies look upon the proposal with suspicion. They are quite prepared to share the benefits of an improved port, but they decline to accept any responsibility. The Kairanga County Council, which was assessed at ,£125, objected at its last meeting; the Feilding Borough Council object to being included ; and the Devin Borough Council postponed the question from its last meeting alter a lengthy debate, but will come to a decision next Monday night. It is clear that these local bodies have not a grasp of the position. In supporting the Harbour Board in its scheme they have nothing to, lose and much to gain. Dr. Mason recently delivered a lecture in Wellington on “ Eugenics,which he defined as “thescience that dealt with all

influences that improved the inborn qualities of the human race.” Dr Mason said the two most important factors in the development of the race were heredity and environment. Family records must be set out, in order to ascertain the respective value of each factor. Heredity was all important, but the pendulum was swinging gradually towards environment. The truth really lay, in the speaker’s opinion, betwixt and between, the two. He did not believe that heredity represented S 5 per cent, of the influences that moulded a child’s life, as had been stated. Environment In the shape of education, training, and surroundings all told. In the scientific world the most virulent organisms could be tamed and altered completely by their environment. It was possible to turn plague bacillus in six months into something quite harmless —all by change of environment. The same thing applied to the human animal in the bigger world. If this were not so, the outlook of the child of bad parents would be a sorry one. If eugenists did not watch their data carefully, they would be pushed into an illogical and impossible position. Would it be an all-wise proceeding to kill off the bad people ? He doubted whether it would. Some of the men and women, who had contributed to the world’s advancement, had come trom bad people. There was a tendency In nature to revert to a model type. It was idle to discuss at this stage whether asylums and similar institutions should or should not be a part of our society. There was a tendency on the part of nature to pull back the far advanced and advance the backward. This was a hopeful tendency for the world. The offspring of great men rarely reached the standard of their sires. With regard to the birthrate and its decline the lecturer said he would question whether the trumpet call of the Gabriel of America had brought another life into the world. If love of children would not bring them, he had no hope that pride of nationality, patriotism, even the fear of invasion by the Chinese and Japanese, would cause families to grow. It would be an interesting task for the eugenist, he added, to assess the effects of the better climatic conditions and the greater economic ease in New Zealand on the race. “We should try,” concluded the lecturer, “to negative the bad that has come to most of us by inheritance, and leave the sterilisation of the unfit till we have decided on clear grounds who are and who are not fit.”