The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1884. SOCIAL REFORM.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 6, Issue 1596, 30 January 1884, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1884. SOCIAL REFORM.

The wise men of Enghnd are now making an earnest effort to solve some of the social enigmas which so long have troubled politicians and philanthropists. Though more is done for the poor in England than in any other country in the world in the way of public and private charities, crime, poverty and' intemperance increaiae to alarming proportions. In all great iientre? of population, an abyss of nioral and material evils is found which almost defies human efforts to explore or relieve. A southern contemporary calls attention to the lesson, which this state of things should teach us in New Zealand where prevention is stil! possible. Crime, poverty, intemperance, all that that tends to make up the sum of moral and material misery —the aggregate of human degradation —increases with the density of population. Densely packed human beings are lower in the scale of civilisation than people who have more breathing room. Out in New Zealand we are Only beginning to pack people here and there, but it would be very easy to avoid all packing. land is plentiful in this colony, and yet how frequently do we see new centres of population: laid off on a scale of half a dozen allotments to the acre when at least an acre could will be spared for every householder both present and prospective. The State has a right to prevent the crowding of tenements in our rising townships. As yet tho State in New Zealand has not, to any appreciable extent, made any effort to prevent the growth of the social evils •which deso*

lute the mother country, and which will in time sully life in Now Zealand. If. Major Atkinson would drop his impracticable scheme of National Insurance, and devise means for the prevention of density of population in New Zealand, bo would yet make his mark in our little history as a social reformer. It may be said that our municipalities possess considerable powers for enforcing sanitation, but; unfortunately, there is little controlling influence to induce them to exercise their functions, On the contrary, they are so amenable to popular opinion that they practically take their instructions from ratepayers who have neither time nor inclination to study sanitation. In theory we possess ■writery organisations throughout; the 'colony,' but as the State does not demand that they shall be in active operation, they arc practically all buta dead letter. In almost every large town in tho colony " back slums '' in different stages of growth are to be found which ought not to be allowed to exist, and which could not, as a matter of fact, have a local habitation and a Dame if the State restricted within prudent limits tho density of population in boroughs.