NEW SCOURGE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 559, 16 June 1933, Page 7

NEW SCOURGE

RAPID INCREASE IN ROYING CHILDREN WORRY SOVIET. HOMELESS HORDE. London, Saturday. M. Vyshinsky, the Soviet State Pro. secutor, ha.s conferred, says the Riga correspondent of The Times, with the leaders of the O.G.P.U., and other police chiefs to devise measures to combat the "new scourge" of roving • homeless children. Despite an expenditure of 100,000,000 rouhles (£10,000,000 at par), in six months in ro'unding up and reclaiming waifs, they continue to increase in numher, ohliging the Soviet to allot rnore money to extend the reclamation oampaign throughout the country. Followlng the great grain drives in the autumn, village children whose parents had been ievieted or banished, streamed into the towns in thousands.

Youthful Yagrants. The invasion ha.s heen reinforced by the recent purge on collective farms, combined with the widiespread famine, rendering hundreds of thousands of peasants destitute and homeless, while the passport decrees resulting in the depopulation of industrial cientres have createcl more waifs. "Undesitfable" adults were expelled feom restricted areas but thousands -of children remained or hecame lost. Ragged, roaming children, hegglng and steaiing, ara particularly numerous in Leningrad a.nd in Kharoff and other southern towns, but the police untjil reaenltlfy kept iMoscow comparatively free. Now, however, the vagrants are increasing so rapidly that the authorities announca a resolute measure to remove the "sore" from the face of the proletarian metropolis.