PIAKO COUNTY COUNCIL.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXII, Issue 42746, 11 July 1905, Page 2

PIAKO COUNTY COUNCIL.

To the Editor. Sir, —The Chairman of the Piako County Council, at the last meeting held in Morrinsville, referred to a renort in the Te Aroha News of the 25th May last. The Clerk was instructed to write to me to ascertain was tho report correct- I have no intension of attacking tho Council through their employees. I always hit out straight from the shoulder, etc. I have no hesitation in telling the chairman his administration would do very little credit to an overgrown school hoy. Kindly insert tho above few lines in your next issue, together with the Clerk’s memo and my reply.—l am, etc., T. McGloin. Piako County Council, Te Aroha, 30th June, 1905. Memo from the County Clerk to Mr T. McGloin, Waitoa. Dear Sir, —I am directed by the Piako County Council to request you to state whether you are correctly reported in the Te Aroha News of the 25th May last, wherein it is stated that at a meeting of tho Piako [Ratepayers’ Reform Association you added with reference to the Council’s employees “that there were men getting 9s and 10s a day who were not earning Is.” If you are correctly reported in this mattei, the Council further ask to whom do you refer. —Yours truly, P. Gilchrist. Waitoa, sth July, 1905. Mr P. Gilchrist, Clerß Piako County Council. Dear Sir, —Your memo of the 30th June duly to hand. You want to know from me whether I was correctly reported in tho Te Aroiia News of the 25 th May last, when referring to the County employees. I beg to state for llie information of the Council, the report was not correct. I referred to the work done on the Thames-Waikato road, between Waihou and Te Aroha. I said the work the men were doing on the road was quite useless. (I have no doubt they were carrying out their instructions from tho Council). Does not the present state of the road justify mo in making the above statement? The men, horses, ploughs, machine, etc., were working for a considerable time ploughing up the old sanded formation, that stood the heavy traffic for over twenty years. What is the result of this heavy expenditure ? An impassable road for any heavy traffic. At your last meeting the overseer recommended “fmcining the main road io 'Te Aroha.''’ That report condemns the County management far worse than any statement I ever made. It is a lamentable state of affairs to ponder over, paying exorbitant rates of one penny in the £ wasted in ploughing up a fairly good road, and substituting ti-tree instead. Creditable, is it not, to your Chairman after his twenty years experience on the Piako County Council.

It was rather refreshing to read the reporr of your last meeting, the chairman airing his eloquence in the Council Chamber defending the county employee s, permit me to tell him, he was rather late in the season taking up the cudgels for the employees—-you have the third overseer in a few mouths time, eight or nine left the service of the Council [otherwise squeezed ®ut) in a short time through the petty annoyance of your bloated county councillors, did your chairman wipe the perspiration off his brow, defending tho employees. No he sat tight, etc Two of tho men worked for me, they were good working men, men capable of doing a good day’s work with any one, or for auy man or local body, knowing what a good day;s work should be, etc,. I share the opinion of a large uumber of ratepayers, that is if your County Councillors took a pleasure trip down the South sea Islands for an iudefinate period, tho [Coun'y employees could got on much betier—and give better satisfac ion to tho ratepayers. On behalf of the Piako Ratepayers, Reform Association I cordially invite them to our next meeting, we will teach your County Councillors the indimonts of Local Government, thanking 3 r our Council for .the attention thoy are paying to the Piako R. R, Association. —I am, etc T. McGloin

[Wo contend the figures quoted by us in our report of the sneering referred to uro strictly correct, nitwithstanding what might-be said to the contrary.--Ed. News.] [To the Editor.] ioir, —Allow me to say a few words in reply to ‘ Justitia.’ ‘ Justitia’ is evidently following the advice of an eminent 'barrister, ‘ if you havohocase abuse the opposition.’ Lotus keep to the point, not ramble about and use a lot of fino words. In the first place , did the correspondent stato the truth or not ? If it was the truth, how can it be a vulgar slander V In the Dictionary it says: Slander, false and malicious report. So if it was true how can it be a slander ? Then he maunders on about the verbiage of freedom, which the Dictionary saj s, moans a superabundance of words and just before ho writes ‘ I Jind, sir, that I have degressed at some considerable length, etc.’ Now, ‘Justitia,’ don’t trouble about mo, 'the Herald or tlio Star, or anything olso, but answer one plain question : is notjjacorrespondent justified in stating an item of news that is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and lias lie not aright to say what lie would do if it happened to him ? I am afraid ‘Justitia,’ you are not appreciated in a a free country; go to Russia, tlioro you might bo able to suppress tho truth, but I don’t think you will in Now Zealand. I will leave it to tho Chairman of the To Aroint West School Committee, if the child was not kept from school and a complaint made to ‘ him, I am telling an untruth; if it is I tru'o, then it is ho who is prevaricating. | I am, etc., Ejuskboh, j

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —when the person fromTe Aroha West publicly criticises the conduct of teachers and committees, he in some sort assumes the function of a teacher of the public. In one of his prefaces, speaking of himself as an author, Ruskin says,But what I am, since I take on me the function of a teachei’, it is well that "the reader should know ”... .and he goes on to speak of himself as “ Not an unjust man ; not an unkind one ; not a false one; a lover of order, labour, and peace,” which qualities, he says, are “ enough to give me right to say all I care to say on ethical subjects. Without desiring intimate acquaintance with the person whose public statements I am dissecting. I am j ustified I think, by reason of his assumption aforesaid, in measuring him by Ruskin’s standard; and from the evidence of what he himself has written I am forced to conclude that in ialmost every attribute spocifiec he is conspi cuoualy lacking. I have already in my first letter showed that his is unjust. He is also unkind. He may believe that his violent unkindness to the teacher his kindness to the children. As a matter of fact, he has done them no kindness ; he has end-mvouied rather to do them infinite harm; harm far more serious than that of bndue physical suffering. He has given them the opportunity of knowing that a man, perhaps I should say au adult, considers it right to juggle with the truth, to prejudice the J course of justice, to slander his neighbour And what the adult does, the child is likely to imitate him iu doing. Is it kindness to a child to tx-ain it to do evil? Of the person who .so trains a child it is written, “it were better that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

In the next place the porson from Te Aroha West is falte. Granting, for the sake of argument only, that undue severity has more than once beeu used iu this neighbourhood, I have only to point to his loose and illogical use, with reference to the alleged ill-usage of Jchildren, of such misleading phrases as “ every now and then,” “quite frequently of late;” * marked from head to foot; ” ‘ marked like a zebra ; ” “ committees ar a rule are one-sided ; ” “ the child gets half killed ; ” to proved, without the remotest possibility of sane and truthful contradiction, that the truth is not in Under no circumstances would an exact man belch forth such phrases promiscuously. And even an ordinary specimen of the genus homo, though much may be forgiven him in oral discourse, is expee’ed in deliberate written discourse intenped for the public eye to have regard for the truth.

Yet again, the Te Aroha West person is not a lover of order. If he were, and if he honestly wished to leavn the truth concerning some alleged irregularity, and, if need were, to correct it—supposing it to be his business, for often “ fools rush in where angels fear to tread ” —he would set about his task quietly and decently. The very last thing he would think of doing would be to inflame people’s passions by deliberate exaggeration, and thus set committee, parents, teacher and children by the ears.

Whether he is a lover of labour I cannot say. I fear not, else he would have no time for making mischief. That he is not a lover of peace has been already demonstrated. And now, Sir, it must be patent to the meanest understanding, even to “Freedom’s,” that for the Te Aroha West person to masquerade as a censor of pedagogic morality is an outrage on public decency. That his published statement was prompted only by genuine interest in the welfare of the children it is impossible" to believe. To conceal evil intention with the pretence of good is a very ancient device of the devil. Did not Judas Iscariot complain that certain ointment should have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.” I jump to no o inclusion : I take the Te Aroha West person’s writteu statement to witness against him ; and my analysis of that leads ? o the conclusion that, in the writing of it his chief, if not his only purpose, was to make things as unpleasant as possible for the teacher. Sir, until by fasting and such other disciplinary spiritual exercise as may be expedient, lie has brought himself to a right and sober mind, silence becomes him. The discussion of the proposition that usually an alleged case of undue severity In school is inappropriate for discussion in the correspondence columns of a newspaper—also of poor “ Freedom’s” essay in the realms of literature—must be further postponed. , —I am, etc., Justitia.