BAD HOUSING AND ITS RESULTS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2535, 29 July 1893, Page 3

BAD HOUSING AND ITS RESULTS.

The commission appointed by the Established Assembly to inquire into the religious condition of the people has issued its second report. Among other things, it states that the commission had an interview with Mr Duncan, the secretary of the Ploughmen’s Union, who denounced in emphatic terms the condition of the bothies in Forfarshire, declaring that they were unfit for human habitations. He said that at present the bothy is a place “ where the ploughman is ostracised from society. He is not allowed into his employer’s house. It is in nearly every case instant dismissal for a man to be seen there. Hence what follows night-hawkiug, illegitimacy.” The commissioners also describe the “ long narrow, dark slums ” and cellars in which may live iu Edinburgh, aud “ the gloomy tenements ” which are the homes of so many more in this city, and say that these things have made them feel “that to vast multitudes the conditions of life are unutterably depressing and antagonistic to all moral tone and religious aspiration.” They bear testimony to the|enormous amount of money and effort expended in Edinburgh to make things better, but say the charity is too haphazard. The efforts made are often not wise, and there is a want of union and system, and consequently much overlapping. As showing that even in country towns things call for radical improvement, I may quote a statement made in the Established Assembly by Mr Hunter, parish minister of Holytown. He declared that he had people in his parish, living iu houses he would not put a pig in. They had clay floors and no sanitation. Such were the miners’ rows of their mining centres —places that were a crying scandal. And yet Scotland is a civilised country.—Edinburgh. Correspondent Otago Daily Times.