South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1880.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2377, 29 October 1880, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1880.

Somk of these fine days the Industrial School problem will have to bo brought to a decided issue. What we called Industrial and Training Schools in New Zealand are little better than social sores, which, if properly uncovered, would nevei be tolerated in their present condition. The fault lies not so much with the management as with the system. School - Inspector - General - Ilabens’ explorations in Auckland have brought to light some of the abuses of the overmanaged institutions in the North, but his examination and its results do not touch the chief source of the gigantic evil which is daily growing up like a pernicious weed, and blossoming into crime and mendicancy. The New Zealand Industrial School has only to be analysed, and it will be found to be an institution whose existence is a disgrace to the colony. Its very title is a delusion and a snare. Instead of being an industrial training ground, it is a receptacle for all kinds of juvenile refuse. The police are the street scavengers, and the Industrial School is a social dust-bin into which the waifs and strays, irrespective of age, physical condition, or any consideration whatever, are indiscriminately tumbled. That the mixed mass of good and bad should grow from bad to worse is only in accordance with the unerring law of social gravitation. The New Zealand Industrial School is an Olla Podrida which can with difficulty be described. To use a familiar expression it is neither fish, flesh, nor red herring. It partakes of the varied nature of a foundling hospital, an orphanage, and a juvenile reformatory all kneaded into one. There is periodically a terrible outcry on the part of amateur gaol reformers like the member for Kaiapoi for instance, about the want of classification in our gaols, but they have never a word to say about the contaminating influence that are

daily and hourly at work in these industrial schools. And this notwithstanding the assertion of experienced and competent authorities that the reform of the adult criminal so long as he is deprived of his liberty is simply an impossibility. With a' zeal which, properly directed, might be turned to valuable account, wo find this class of social reformers ignoring the practical, while aiming at what a little common sense and literary research would show them is utterly impracticable. If we designated the Industrial Schools and Training Schools of New Zealand hot-beds for the development of crime, we could hardly be accused of misrepresentation. Let us take a glance at any one of them and what do we find ? Children of all ages, from the abandoned infant a few days old, cared for by a wet nurse in the pay of the the State in order that its natural pretender may be free from maternal inconvenience, to the rollicking boy or girl in their teens rapidly developing into manhood, or womanhood. Then we have the child of misfortune, the destitute orphan, or what is just as bad, the offspring of poverty or sickness unassociated with crime, cheek by jowl, feeding from the same board, sleeping on the same couch, breathing the same atmosphere with the confirmed juvenile vagrant, the irreclaimable thief, the boyburglar, and the children of drunkards and gaol-birds. What, we ask, can be expected of such a mixture ? Is this disgracefully careless system by which young children of dispositions and antecedents as distinct as their ages, fair to the children themselves, or just to society ? Do the bare facts not warrant us in designating these State institutions simply criminal factories—pest-houses for the propagation and nurture of the worst of vices ?

But besides tbe liability of children previously untainted with crime to morally deteriorate under the polluted atmosphere of these State receptacles, there is another serious consideration. The growth of these State schools has of late years been something alarming. Some of them,within the past three ycai s, have doubled their dimensions, and despite large additions, the cry for more room is constant!} 1, reiterated. We have thus not only a social danger but a ilourishing incubus to contend with. The rapidly increasing dimensions of these institutions cannot wholly be ascribed to the exigencies or misfortunes of parents. As a fact the children of the industrious poor rarcl} 1, or never find their way to these asylums. The Bench in some of our larger towns and cities have contracted an easy happy-go-lucky method of relieving wantons of their illegitimate offspring, in order that they may go back to service, and this accounts for the number of children of tender years, or rather days, that find their way to these badly assorted nurseries. Then again, careless, dissolute parents have only to make themselves scarce, or get into the gaol or the hospital, in order to be eased of their parental responsibilities by the benevolent magistrate. In this way the Industrial Schools of New Zealand arc becoming a serious tax on the thrifty portion of the community. We have merely glanced at the sore in the hope that before it is allowed to spread much further a suitable remedy will be applied. What that remedy ought to be, it is for the authorities to discover. Seeing that gaol labor is being at last turned to reproductive account, it would be well for the Bench, when committing young incorrigibles to State institutions to try the effect of the substitution of enforced labor on the parents in prefercnee to making orders for maintenance that arc seldom complied with. The iniquitous way in which the foundlinghospital, and reformatory arc jumbled together suggests an easy and natural remedy. At whatever cost, the interests of society demand that they should bo disassociated. We believe the cost of these institutions could be at once materially reduced, and the evil, which is attaining such formidable dimensions, abated, if the boarding-out system which Ims worked so well in Great Britain and in some of the Australian colonies were generally adopted, and if, instead of relieving parents of their off spring,means were more generally employed for temporarily assisting any urgent cases of destitution, which unlooked for accidents or misfortunes occasionally produce.