South Canterbury Times. FRIDAY, DEC. 5, 1879.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2092, 5 December 1879, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. FRIDAY, DEC. 5, 1879.

It is quite evident* that something will hare to be done to our Industrial School system or these institutions will become an unbearable weight upon the resources of this highly taxed community. The Industrial Schools, if we mistake not, are included in the list of asylums designated public charities, and inasmuch as charity is a supreme virtue, and in more senses than one, covers a multitude of sins and crimes as well, we should be sorry to say an unnecessary harsh or disparaging word concerning them. But the rapidity with which, under the influence of crime, drunkenness, and poverty, these institutions arc growing—the enormous dimensions they arc attaining—and the ravages which they arc making in the consolidated revenue, is becoming something appalling. If we take for an illustration the Industrial School situate at. Cavcrsham near Dunedin, we have a prospect for the community far from cheerful. Some four or five years ago that conservatory for neglected olive branches held a few score inmates ; now it numbers its hundreds and the quantity is increasing daily. Formerly an unfortunate little orphan, or street Bedouin, whose parents were in tiio hospital or the gaol, tumbled into the refuge once in a while ; now we find whole families flowing in as steadily as the ocean tides. That something must be done to reduce the stream of juvenile pauperism is becoming painfully evident. Free education may be a modified blessing, although the term is a flagrant misnomer, for it has to he paid for indirectly by the public, hut free nurseries are an unmitigated evil. Hospitals and Lunatic As3 - lums arc necessary institutions, although, through mismanagement, they sometimes outgrow all reasonable limits, but Gaols and Industrial Schools come within a different category. The Industrial School, if wo mistake not, was never intended by its original promoters to bo a family convenience. It was.not erected specially for the benefit of the improvident or the depraved. It was never intended to hold out a temptation to individual indulgence and extravagance. AYe assume that the Industrial School was meant to he a true charity, a place in which the children of poverty and neglect might be temporarily cared for until they became able to provide for themselves.

Instead of this, what do wo find ? The Industrial schools of Yew Zealand are being daily crowded with little waifs and outcasts, whose parents have either deserted them or allowed drunken habits to displace natural affection. Why are these institutions swelling at such an enormous rate ? The cause may easily be ascertained. Let the inmates be ])roperly classified. It is customary to classify the inmates of criminal and charitable institutions according to their religions. Something else than a religious classification is wanted for our Industrial schools, so that that the chief causes of their vigorous growth maj r be determined, and the requisite specific ascertained Let the children whose parents arc dead, and who have no near relatives to spare them the humility of being reared at the public expense, be put on one side, and the children of drunkards, criminals, and wantons be arranged in their proper order. If this were done,the community, we believe, would be astounded at the encroachments on the pockets of honest, thrifty ratepayers, which dissipation find immorality arc making. If the truth wci’o properly known, we believe there would be a vigorous protest against the way in which the Industrial Schools of Yew Zealand ai’e made to minister to vice. Yow this is a thing that demands attention. We do not assume that the police are at fault for acting the part of social scavengers, and sweeping the half-naked and much neglected Arabs of large centres before the Bench. But the Bench fails to recognise the grave responsibility with which it is clothed. In committing families for a term of years to the Industrial School, the presiding Magistrate generally keeps in view the benefit likely to bo conferred on the children, and forgets altogether the huge burthen imposed on the people. To dispense charity is an agreeable thing, especially when it can be done at the sole expense of the public. If magistrates could only be induced to make their benevolence a little more comprehensive, there would, we believe, be fewer knocks at the doors of their benevolent dispositions and the industrial schools. Dunedin possesses a sagacious magistrate, who is in the habit of ordering children to be whipped in gaol and then whipped into the Industrial School. Yet when the pests of society come before him, men and women well able to work, but suffering from habitual dissipation and laziness, they are allowed to escape with a mild reprimand, or a sentence that practically amounts to a shampooing at the expense of the country. If a large per centagc of the future hope of this .young colony is not to be nurtured on charity and reared in an artificial way without the advantage of home influences, chronic dissipation and idleness whenever manifested must be vigorously dealt with, and something like the hangman’s lash must be flourished over the heads of indolent and careless parents. It is a popular fiction that people steeped in vice are irreclaimable. So long as they have

the ability to earn tbeir living honestly they may easily be reached by display of firmness, but where persuasion fails compulsion must begin. The idler, the able-bodied vagrant, the habit and repute drunkard, be they men or women, are injured rather than improved by a few hours’ incarceration. A few years training in Laid labor and under sober regimen would have a beneficial effect, for it would teach them industrial habits, and the community would have the benefit of tbeir , work, while it would also have a deterrent effect on other backsliders to whom liberty has its value, AYe would suggest that the idleness and dissipation of parents should be dealt with in an effective instead of a chicken-hearted manner, and theu there will he less domestic misery and fewer demands on the juvenile refuges of the colony.

Periodically an agitation is got up over that much-abused class of tradesmen, the bakers. It is asserted that the fourpound loaf has been tested and is found to he a few pennyweights short, and paterfamilias waxes indignant. Of course the baker is abused, taxed with dishonesty, aud as he rarely or never replies, the innocent amusement, carried on at the cost of his moral reputation, is freely indulged in. As a favorite pastime, this light weight bread agitation may be said to have its place with football, cricket, marbles and kit eflying. It is prolific of newspaper paragraphs, and it generally fills the correspondence column. People with surlcy tempers, who can write decently on nothing else, usually manage to grow eloquent on this popular theme. Meantime the baker bears the abuse good-naturedly, laughs in his sleeve, and endeavors to feed the discontent of his revilors by cribbing an extra quarter of an ounce from the products of his oven. As a fact, he knows that the popular indignation has no ballast, and amounts to empty vaporing, because there is nothing in the statutes of th« colony to keep him for manufacturing bread of any weight he thinks proper. The evil of light weight bread is not due to any want of strict honesty on the part of the baker, but to a careless custom on the part of the consuming public. Broad is not purchased by the pound in the same way as tea and sugar. The customer requests a small loaf or a largo loaf, and is supplied accordingly. The loaves, if they don’t belong to the fancy upper crust, are supposed to weigh two and four pounds respectively, but as a fact, they average from au ounce to half-a-pouud short. IE the public insisted upon full weight and the use of the scales, we have no doubt the}’’ would get it, and the result would be beneficial to baker and customer alike. But while such an inexpensive and useful detective as a small pair of scales; arc so rarely considered a necessary auxiliary to the furniture of the kitchen cupboard we need look for but little improvement. If anyone is entitled to sympathy in this matter it is the baker, who if he endeavors to fix a standard, weight for his bread, and to act upon it, is robbed by the ruinous competition of the less .scrupulous, and speedily finds himself in the Bankruptcy Court —the victim of his own honesty.