WORKING MEN'S CLUBS.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 3, 1 December 1883, Page 6

WORKING MEN'S CLUBS.

Sir, — The festive opening of a social Hall in connection with the Christchurch Working Men’s Club, which took place on the 25th of last month (October), seems to present a favorable opportunity for reviewing the remarkable progress made by this Club since its inauguration (July 4th, 1880), particulars of which cannot fail to interest your readers, and may stimulate and encourage the formation of similar Clubs in other centres of industry. In response to my application, the courteous Secretary of the above Club has supplied me with the following information : The Christchurch Working Men’s Club was established July 4th, 1880. There were then twenty-four members. It now numbers over 400, and has a fine quarter-acre section in the centre of the town, with a good substantial building for the Club proper, containing eleven rooms, as follows : Reading room, card room, chess room, library, committee room, social hall, secretary’s office, bar, steward’s sleeping apartments, &c. The library, though small, is one of the best selected ones in the colony, and embraces the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chambers’ Encyclopaedia, Dictionaries of Languages and of Mechanics, the latest works on Electricity, Chemistry, Carpentry and Joining, Engineering, Mechanics, Medicine, in fact all that is necessary for the artisan and mechanic. A new lecture hall has just been erected at a cost of £7OO. The size of the hall is GGft by 33ft, having a stage 30ft wide and 12ft deep, fitted with scenery and a very handsome act-drop, painted by Mr. E. Briggs, the scenic artist, the subject being the Lake of Como. The ceiling of the hall is coved, having two sun-lights and three centre flues for ventilation. The hall is built of the best pressed bricks and plastered throughout ; the walls are hollow, and consequently will always be dry. I see the members are to have a Concert and Ball on Thursday next, to celebrate the opening of the new hall. About 350 are expected to be present. The building is the best of its size in New Zealand, and reflects credit on the institution. The total worth of the Club at last balance was £ll4l 13s, and I think there is every possibility of this being one of the most prominent institutions in Christchurch. The very marked and most hopeful feature of the present age is the general awakening to intellectual life and mental activity of the industrial classes, which finds expression in combined action, whether of a special or general character, by means of co-operative Societies, Trades Unions, and Clubs for promoting, social, political, and literary culture and advancement. And working men, by their earnestness and self-reliance, are demonstrating their capacity and determination in achieving their own emancipation from the effects of ignorance and thraldom that centuries of oppression and neglect have imposed, and which have been countenanced, encouraged, and perpetuated by a vicious and misleading system of ethics, teaching servility for manliness, and subserviency for independence. It is not strange that while in a general way extolling the virtue of self-reliance the most effectual means should have been taken, by a course of teaching and training especially calculated, by withdrawing men’s minds from a consideration of more worldly affairs, and fixing their hopes and trusts upon some unseen hypothetical power, to materially limit, if not banish, its exercise, the result of which has been ignorance, intemperance, degradation, misery, oppression, and want to the great mass of the real wealth producers. And it is only in these latter days, from the spread of education and a cheap press, a large class have so far shaken themselves free from some of the old trammels as to perceive where their true interests lie, and by mutual help and combination have at length acquired the power and

sure incentives to further progress and improvement. It is a long way from a club of working men in the latter end of the nineteenth century to our primordial ancestors of the caves and gravel-drift periods; but it is very clear that if tact, courage, and self-reliance (which is closely allied to the instinct of self-preservation) had then been wanting—if in the then fierce struggle with Nature’s rude surroundings for a bare existence, and in the dangerous conflicts with the savage and powerful beasts, their contemporaries, they had relied upon or appealed to any power, but their own thought and cunning, and the poor, miserable, insufficient stone weapons which they had rudely contrived —the human link in the chain of creation would doubtlessly have disappeared, in company with many other extinct forms, and we should not be here to-day to speculate upon what might have been*or to assist in extending civilisation in this new country but yesterday in the sole occupation of a savage and cannibal section of our common humanity.— William Pratt. Christchurch, Nov. ig, 1883.