WANTED, A LABOUR COLONY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3064, 8 December 1908, Page 4

WANTED, A LABOUR COLONY.

The habit of leaning up against a post, remarks the "Christchurch Press," and trusting to charity or the State to provide the means of obtaining food and lodging and clothes is growing in New Zealand, and considering that the geatest need of this country is workers, the position is a serious one. We are a long way, we trust, from the institution of workhouses in the Dominion, but every year that matters are allowed to drift along as they are at present brings the workhouse nearer; and the establishment of labour colonies, where the beauties of the gospel of work would be forcibly impressed upon the loafers who were s:nt there, would do a good daal to arrest the drift, and check the creation of a permanent pauper class. We hope other charitable aid organisations will adopt a similar resolution to that of the Otago Benevolent Trustees, and thus give the_Governmenc a lead in the right direction.

During a recent visit North Dr. Mason and Dr. Pomare have visited every Maori school and district they could get at between Napier and Rotorua for the purpose of investigating how the present system of looking after the health of the Natives is working, and ascertaining what improvement might be effected. The department supplies medicines to the teachers of all Maori schools.. In many cases the local schoolmaster is the only man in the district who knows anything about sickness, and has any appliances, and to him not only the Maoris, but also the Europeans, are often deeply indebted in time of sickness and trouble. The department spends about £5,000 a year—last year it was £4,7oo—in supplying drugs and subsidising medical, men, and so far the results have been most satisfactory. Our principal difficulty," remarked Dr. Mason to a "Hawke's Bay Herald" reporter, "is in getting the drugs to the outlying districts, but Dr. Buck, Dr. de Lisle, and myself had a conference on the subject on the way down from Wairoa, and, with the assistance of Dr. Pomare, we hope to devise some means.of facilitating access to every Native district. We found a little sickness at some places, including a few cases of typhoid fever, but generally the health of the Maori is good."