CHILD SLAVERY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8989, 26 November 1907, Page 5

CHILD SLAVERY.

INVESTIGATION CALLED FOR. The Auckland Star, in commenting last night on the statements recently published regarding "child slavery" in Taranaki, remarks: —"We do not impute deliberate cruelty, or even an exceptional degree of callous selfishness to those responsible for this state of things. We are fully aware that most of our small dairy farmers have a hard struggle to make both ends meet, and we do not deny that children are far healthier in mind and body, and are likely to develop into better men and women if they are trained to regular habits of industry than if they are allowed to grow up idle; but there is a reasonable limit to the amount of work that young children should be called upon to do, and this limit, we believe, has long been passed on many dairy farms. It seems to us," adds the paper, "that a case for investigation into the conditions of child labour in our country districts has been fully made out, and the remedy is with the people themselves. We have too much confidence in the sense of justice on which democracy is founded to believe that the men and women who have passed laws to protect themselves against sweating and overwork will long remain content to know that child slavery in any shape or form is tolerated in Ne"' Zealand."

CABLE NEWS.

United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph Copyright.