The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12. A DIRTY CITY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 276, 12 April 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12. A DIRTY CITY.

The Auckland Herald lias lately mentioned that Auckland is a filthy city and has called pointed attention to the fact. Anybody who has even a passing acquaintance with the greatest of our centres will agree that it is the dirtiest town in Australasia. The condition of a Dominion city is not only of interest to its own citizens, but to the whole of the people of New Zealand. It is of interest, for instance, to New Plymouth that there is plague in the dirty city, because New Plymouth is in direct communication with it. Auckland may be the germinating ground for diseases that may sweep through the country, and so Auckland should be told about her dirt, both by her own people and' by outsiders. Auckland and its suburbs have grown faster than the ideas of its city and suburban fathers. All local bodies in and around the city would rather quarrel among themselves than keep a tight upper lip and get to work. The city proper—including Queen-street—has been a disgrace for many years. All its public gathering places arc vile—its wharf shelters particularly so. There is a decided . indisposition in Auckland to have clean back-yards, eddies of filthy paper blow against public buildings, a street-cleaner is an unusual sight, and the street cars, none of which could be safely used for storing new milk, stir up the microbes the Council forgets to remove. But infinitely the worst charge that can be laid at the doors of Auckland's municipal bodies is that—except in the city itself—its sanitation is not in advance of the sanitation existing in a Chinese village. The natural drainage of Auckland is good, but there is a chronic lack of modern methods "in all the residential areas. Auckland does not deserve to be healthy. Its local bodies permit the erection of rattletrap buildings on tiny sections, refusing air-space to citizens. In innumerable instances the crude conveniencesnecessitating an army of night, patrollers on noisome errands—are almost part of the dwelling and a danger and offence to the neighbor a few feet away. Under the circumstances Auckland has become, not only a breeding ground for all sorts of diseases-carrying vermin, but a hotbed from which a national scourge may spring. Auckland prides itself en being a wealthy city, on the public-spiritedness of its citizens and the greatness of thengifts. But the Auckland citizen who can make Auckland wash itself, drain itself, kill its rats and disinfect the whole of the citv and suburban areas, will do more for the "Queen City" tlian the greatest financial benefactor who has lived in its short history. Almost alongside palaces in Auckland one will find slums that arc more dangerous than those in the cast of London, mainly because they are built of reeking timber, rotting splinter by splinter and slaying as they rot. We have on many occasions mentioned Auckland as the "City of Perpetual Filth," but Auckland authorities proceed with their tinpot personal quarrels as long as filth does not begot wholesale disease. In general, the Auckland City Council simply allows dirt and disease to do their fell work until medical authorities insist on a temporary change of method. In most other places in New Zealand there is a flagrant disregard of building laws, but Auckland is quite "on its own" in its flagrant disregard of common decency. Wo have taken the liberty of reprinting the following from the Auckland Herald, knowing that it is the truth:—"An old man died roeent.lv in Auckland who 'lived' in a. stable shed under conditions which would have disgraced an outcast, neffro in Central Africa. Tn some suburbs Chinese herd together as they do in Canton. Everywhere there are rotten houses sheltering rent-paying Christians; filthy yards and

soaking cellars which rival those of Constantinople; butchering establishments that are little else than a public nuisance; fruiterers' garbage left to decay; and uncleaned streets threading tiie whole. It is not plague that we need fear, but our own civic mismanagement, which slays more year by year and decade by decade than plague is likely to slay in the worst possible outbreak. Any decent city should maintain a sufficient staff of competent inspectors to ensure investigation of all doubtful sanitation; any decent city or suburban government should enforce sanitation without regard to politics, position, creed or profession. There should be inviolable laws concerning building areas, delapidated houses, drains and yards—and if the local authorities will not enforce th'em the Health Department should act the part of a supervising Local Government Board. If we secured these possible reforms we need not fear plague; more—we should reduce the death-rate, due to other diseases, by a quarter or even by a third, possibly by one-half." If local people find it impossible to stir up the drowsy authorities of Auckland to a sense of their duty, the matter is one that might well be considered by the Municipal Association. The City of Eternal Filth is a menace to every town in New Zealand, and it is the business of every town to protest with all possible vigor.