THE RISING GENERATION ON THE WEST COAST.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 225, 27 June 1873, Page 3

THE RISING GENERATION ON THE WEST COAST.

Hugh Miller, in a series of articles written when occupying the Editorial chair of the 'Witness' newspaper, drew the attention of the Legislature and the public to the miseries of the <{ bothy system " of Scotland, which, we may as well explain to our non-Celtic readers, was a system of huddling bands of workpeople, young and old,, into sheds or " bothies." We have a system in full swing in New Zealand which is quite as bad, if not worse than the " bothy system " of Scotland, and one which, if allowed to go on unchecked, will seriously affect the rising generation. We refer to the employment and accommodation given to boys at flax mills. From careful enquiries, we learn that large numbers of boys and youths, ranging from ten to twenty years' of age, are "employed at the various mills throughout the Colony, at wages varying from six shillings to thirty shillings a week and rations. All day long the boys are engaged at their various posts, and work hard; they also swear hard, smoke hard, .and not unfrequently drink hard; in short, being completely their own masters out of working hours, they not unnaturally run wild. At night the evil is simply monstrous, as the boys huddle together in raupo whares and huts hardly fit for human shelter, in which they sit playing cards, and indulging in licentious conversation to an extent that is a | blot upon our boasted civilisation. Not long since a gentleman looked in on Qne of these assemblages and saw some twelve boys occupying a filthy hut, rigged up with bunks one over the other as on board ship. Some of the lads were playing euchre, and using language that would puzzle a Van Demofcian bullock driver to surpass in, obscenity and

blasphemy; more of them -were lying on their bunks with only their boots off, wrapped up in blankets so filthy that the original color could not be discovered, smoking vile-smell-ing tobacco, and occasionally taking part in the frequent disputes at the card table, which, by the way, consisted of a box inverted over four stout stakes driven into the ground. In one corner of the hut were tin' plates and pannikins, just as they had been thrown, aside after the evening meal, and looking as though all the water in the race would not.clean them. Our informant says the sight was one so utterly repulsive and discreditable to a Colony like this, that he felt constrained to speak to the boys, and afterwards to their employer, from all of whom he received grossly insulting advice "as to minding his adjective business, and not poking his adjective nose into other people's". The great evil of the system is this: boys are put to work, and house with men whose character is, in many cases, utterly vile, and who contaminate all who come within their reach; things go on from bad to worse, until finally the boys are so corrupted that they are ripe for crime. Happily, as yet, the crop from this hellish seed was not fully ripened, but the time for its harvesting, is not far off, and the sowing is never suspended. If the Government does not take cognisance of this terrible evil and legislate for it, the Colony will, in a few years, possess a criminal population utterly out of proportion to the remainder, Chronicle.'