[All Rights Reserved.] STORIES OF THE POOR.

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 4 March 1908, Page 77

[All Rights Reserved.] STORIES OF THE POOR.

REMEDIES FOB EXISTING EVILS. JBy M. Loane, Author of "Love Stories of the Poor," etc.) If one ventures to utter the word practical with reference to any proposed remedy for an existing evil, the prejudice is instantly aroused that some short- . sighted hand-to-mouth method is designed, which will inevitably result in creating infinitely more misery than it relieves. ■If, on the other hand, it is possible to exclaim, " Mere theory !" one's schemes v are rejected as visionary. . • This is mere playing with words. No • remedy is really practical unless it aims •at prevention ; it is impossible to prevent an evil without knowing its cause or causes ; and no analysis of causes vrhich • omits known tendencies of the human mind has been carried far enough. At the present day some of the greatest ' evils among the poorest classes are the - low level of general health, the loss of ■ presumably healthy infant life, the injury • done to large numbers of children and ■ young people by the ignorant treatment [ they receive, the general lack of home dis- j cipline, bad housing, the existence of large numbers of unemployed or very irregularly employed men, and the wretchedly inadequate pay of most working women and girls. Take any one of these evils and examine into its causes, and we are inevitably led back to tilings of the mind. Why do men become tramps, "for instance? Because they are below the average in intallect, or because of too early a complete emancipation fiom home and school discipline, or because of their own or their parents' shortsightedness. How is it possible to pay women such wretched wages? Because they have to compete against married women and i against girls partly supported by their parents, and these compete against them ■ to the detriment of themselves, their children, their homes, and ultimately of their fathers, husbands, and brothers, " because they do not understand what they j are doing. I MISTAKEN IDEAS. I Children are destroyed, maimed, en- ; feebled in mind and body for lack of pro- ! per food, clothing, and house-room. Is Eoverty the only or even the chief cause? a a large proportion of cases they are simply suffering from unsuitable food and clothing ; the amount of money spent on both was ample, but misdirected. Many a- child has died from cold or contracted diseases which will handicap it as long as it lives who had plush coats and lace collars and kid boots, and many more have been ruined by bad feeding whose food nevertheless coat double what would have been necessary to provide plain, wholesome, and sufficiently appetising nourishment. The housing of the poor is disgracefully bad, and often the matter is beyond their control, but have they any idea of the importance of securing air and light and 6pace, have they even been taught to make the best of their homes as they are? Iv many tliree-roomed dwellings I find the largest and lightest room entirely devoted to show, never opened except to be cleaned, often locked for fear the children should enter it even for five minutes. If '_ there is a well-lighted front kitchen and a gloomy washhouse, intended just as a place in which to perform the roughest and dirtiest part of the work, the whole fnmily will squeeze into the latter, and spend as much time there as possible. Every evil that can be named arises from mistaken ideas, and persists on account of theii prevalence, ar.d every remedy worthy of the name must aim at improving the individual, raising his value as a social unit. People may not receive all the good that they deserve, but in the long run no human institution can secure that they shall have more than they are worth. If a woman is nervous, yielding, anaemic, feeble in mind and body, she can earn very little, and will probably receive less still ; if a man is below the average in health, intellect, and moial discipline he is certain to fall into the ranks of casual labour, and in more extreme cases he will become a tramp. Neither Conservatives, Radicals. ' nor reactionists can prevent these things from happening. Free trade, fair trade, protection, retaliation, will not alter them. Improve individuals, and the state which they compose must also be improved, but without this mental and inward change every system of government is more or less a failure. TRAINING THE MIND. Out of good bricks a substantial building can be made, but if even one-twentieth of them be crumbling and imperfect, no safe structure can be raised, and the more elaborate the design the more numerous the weak points must be. In order to improve the individual we must first insure that he Ins been born uninjured, that he receives constant personal care during the first 12 yeais of his life, and much guidance and supervision during the subsequent eisrht or 10. How can he obtain all this? Not to any great extent by Act of Parliament, or direct State interference of any kind, but chiefly by the improvement of home life and the "expansion of parental ideals. • Instead of asking ceaselessly for more .legislation, more collective powers, let us take stock of what we have already, and 'ask to what extent we are benefited. Instead of hastily bringing fresh organisations into existence, and trusting blindly ,to them for. a quarter of a century, or else (pulling them up by the roots the day after ■to-morrow, let us consider those already in activity, and find out on the one hand nrbether we are checking the evil or mistaken tendencies that lie bidden in all '•human designs, and on the other hand .irhefcher we are getting the utmost amount of good possible out of them.

Take compulsory elementary education, j for example. In a very short time all j children under 14 years of age will spend five days a week for about nine and a half months a year at school. Is the best possible use made of this time? Do we not ' in. many ways allow ourselves to be ham- ' pered by the fact that when the "codes" . were first drawn up elementary education, commonly came to an, end at 10 or 11? i Average working class children suffer not i only because their studies leave off too soon, but because they begin, too soon, ands ; are not graduated with sufficient know- i ledge of the ordinary lines on which men- ! tal powers develop. Much precious ume is wasted in laboriously teaching them at I seven or eight things that would have ' been almost self-evident to a child of 11, j whose intelligence had been occupied in j ' the meantime with matters far more easily grasped. The same mistake was formerly made with the children of the rich ; boys of 6ix, and even five, were tormented with | Latin grammar, and still younger girls, cried and struggled over music lessons, { and at 12 they ■ne.t; easily distanced in i these subjects by pupils who had studied | them for a few months. Needless to 6ay, the brains of the successful competitors had not been allowed to lie fallow ; they had been employed chiefly on matters where memory counts for a great deal, and , their intelligence had been exercised, but not strained ; above all, they had never become accustomed to work in a fog. COMPULSORY EDUCATION. The extension of the sj-stem of continua- '. tion schools is much to be desired. They ! are needed not merely for the purpose l of teaching new and more advanced subjects, but to prevent what has already ; been learnt from being forgotten. It is possible to teach moderately intelligent children a very great deal of what ia necessary for their welfare and advancement, but it Ls not possible to make them remember all this, nor even to make them remember what may be considered an irreaucible minimum of instruction, if they leave school at the age of 13 or 14, and divide their time henceforth between physical drudgery and complete idleness. Moreover, many of the most ignorant among the poor are persons who were not defective, but of slow development, and instruction carried over a longer period would have made all the difference in the world to them. Everywhere one finds parents willing and even anxious to keep clever, quickwitted children at school, but few of them "see the use of" prolonged teaching for the dullards. What would become of many middle-class children, especially boys, if all direct teaching ceased at 14 or even earlier ? I will not say that all opportunity o: learning oomes to an end in childhood! e\en among the poorest, but "opportunity' is only a handle for genius, and has never been lacking under any system of social ; life. What we need is that rank-and-file [ brains should meet with a proper amount of care and consideration. Even if raising the common school standard meant the loss of a genius here and there *or the want of special fostering, would it matter very much when we had so greatly reduced the need for them? All the truly great men of the world axe chiefly occuj pied in fighting the battles of tho"se who j have been allowed to remain below whatl is a safe position for human beings to occupy. One reason why compulsory education has not worked as great a reform as iti might have done in over 50 years is because the majority of the teachers are insufficiently acquainted with the daily lives of tlie ordinary scholars. Most of themi come from the aristocracy of the poor, ana have lived in the extr-em-est retirement and isolation. Neither from early personal experience nor by sympathetic study do they know the principal class with which they have to deal. The moral origin of a large amount of stupidity is not sufficiently recognised at the present day. Old school m as ters who declared that memory and understanding waited upon attention, and that attention was within the power of all their pupiis, were not so far from the truth as moutm teachers seem to think. THE INFLUENCE OF THE CLERGY. Very often it is not more instruction that the poor require, but sonic motive for action. It is indeed rare to find persons in any position in life who make a practical use of all their knowledge. If we kok back with anything like clear memory to our own childhood we shall find that tliere was a^ great gap between^ know 1 edge and action, \ between believing a dogma and doin,g anything because we believed it. It is in order to bridge this gap that personal influence may be of so much value, and that religious teaching is ir the fullest sense practical. In the worst neighbourhood I ever visited, several women on distinct occasions told me in almost precisely the same words, "Ah, there's many a thing done here that wouldn't be done if the clergy came among us more." But visit among them was exactly what the clergy would not do. I once read that the poor in 'the country, at any rate, can always have "air and water and the parson's advice." It seemed a scanty allowance, but living in. certain parts of the country I came to the conclusion that in cottages these are the things most often wanting. Inside t/he houses tliere was no :room for air, outside them it was poisoned, the nearest wholesome water supply was sometimes half a mile away, and bow frequently I longed to meet the masterful landlord of fiction or the pragmatic pirson and his interfering wife ! If I told the vicar a few of the facts that inevitably came to my knowledge — that gambling of a ruinous kind was carried on in such and such a house, or heavy secret drinking in another ; if I told his wife that certain girls were old enough for service, and were becoming anaemic from over-crowding, poor food, and idleness, and that their mothers were willing to let them go, but not anxious, what happened? Nothing at all.