"TOO AWFUL FOR WORDS."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 168, 25 October 1910, Page 5

"TOO AWFUL FOR WORDS."

TABANAKI BACKBLOCKS. J: LIFE IN RAILWAY CAMPS. ■ Auckland, October .24. s\ The revealing searchlight of; the'j. thoroughly candid critic was thrown'!; upon the lives of men in some ~of the; railway co-operative camps by thevJlev,'. G. C. Cruickshank at the mission meet-., ing in connection with the Anglican Syn-'j od. As a worker in some of the Englisft!, slums, lie said, he thought he had .seen ; some life that was ''pretty hefty"as hj3>i phrased it. In the railway camps hel knew there were some very fine men,* • and he would never characterise a wholeji community of men by one term; but on/' the whole he had never seen lives so der graded as he had seen in the co-operative railway camps in New Zea- = land. It was too awful for words. The ; men in these camps could knock out 10s', or 15s a day with ease. There wa9 no- ; thing to stop them drinking, for they' knew they would be sure of three meals' a day, and they debased themselves in a,' 1 way that one would never see in the ■ worst slums in England. They lived" in*tents 10ft by 12ft. It rained 364y s days'; a year, more or less, and they had ab-j solutely no recreation durins their long; 1 leisure hours but to twiddle their 1 thumbs. One of them had told him that),' to pass the time they had even read the-; advertisements on the jam tin labels backwards. .Almost anybody would drink ' in those circumstances* It was a scandal that those men should be allowed to,; live such a life without any provision * for their recreation. If he had had the money he would have started a temperance cafe himself and run it under church auspices among the camps, and that would have saved many a man. Continuing his remarks,, Mr. Cruickshank said that many of the railway workers ' were the, scum of creation, but the great- ■ est difficulty he and his fellows had toi* contend with was the sending of remit-' tance3 from England. He implored his' l hearers, if they ever had a black sheep in the family, not to let him becoriie a , remittance man. That was the curse that could happen to a man. °Onej of the speaker's friends had known a remittance man who had an order payable/' to bearer for £IOOO, and he had many' before that, Mr. Cruickshank said that there was groat need, not only for more' clergymen, but for lay workers to go into the backblocks.