MR ALDRIDGE ON GENERAL BOOTH.

Auckland Star, Volume XXII, Issue 34, 10 February 1891, Page 3

MR ALDRIDGE ON GENERAL BOOTH.

The address given by Mr Aldridge on Sunday evening- on General Booth's scheme for benefitting; "the submerged tenth," was listened to with close attention by a vast audience. He started off by saying that 'he had no intention of criticising General Booth's scheme, but he intended to state (what he already had done, and what he yet proposed to do. He pointed out the wonderful _-orld-wido.,organisation of fthe.Salvation Army, and how General Booth freighed supreme and intended to remain so. The Salvation Army,/ Mr Abridge said, hkd. 'Beer, for some years engaged in (ministering to the most depi'ayed and lowest class of city population. They found, however, that it was impossible to instil anything approaching religious convic-iona into men—many of them debased with vice, and living.in the,direst misery and poverty, men who did not know where they were going to geb their next meal —until .they had.done something to provide them with food. Booth then provided shelter in different parts of London,' where men and women could be supplied with supper, a bed, and breakfast and a bath for 4d. If no 4d was forthcoming then he had a workshop not far off where they could earn it. Booth now proposes to raise a million pounds sterling to remove this submerged .enth from... the 'misery, poverty and vice, in which t_u_y are 'found, train them on a farm to agricultural pursuits, then place them on little plots of their own, and eventually draft out the best and most energetic of them to land acquired in the colonies, where each man could by labouring-his ground gain a coiripetency and comfort. ' Mr Aldridge then gave certain objections io the scheme made by Professor Huxley and: other leading scientists, only one of which he thought was good and reasonable, -.out there was a good reply to it. This objection was made by a 'man who gave the following illustration. He said : " We see before us a lake of filth and slime, ' very large and very deep, and very offen\sive. General Booth has undertaken to empty this pit and cleanse the pool. Booth, however, forgets that there are ! numberless rill- and streams running into "this offensive pool; the faster he cleans it out and the lower he gets, the quicker will the -treams r>an into it, and the end of his work cannot be predicted. This will continue unless the cause of the evil is removed for ever." Booth himself acknowledges that this is trne, but he asks why should he wait and not do something for the present.sufferers. Let, he said, the social reformers and the Radical politicians light and remove the root oi' the. evil Mr AJdridge drew a moral for New Zealand fron. this " filthy pool," pointing out, that we had a pool of this description already in our midst, not so large, not so deep, not so hopelessly, indescribably filthy as the -Home pool, bub we had one for all that, and each passing year it grew bigger and deeper and more offensive.; He pointed out that Mr Booth was dealing with the result and not the cause of the great evil—the cause en- ; ; abling;tbe rich year by year; to become ever -richer: ;ahd richer, and the poor,-ever increasing in numbers, tto become poorer and poorer. The roob and cause of the evil, he said, was to be found in land monopoly/ where men' were bhey wsre in all countries __to monopolise that commodity known as land, which the Supreme Being had granted to all human . beings born in to this world as ; a vital means of their subsistence on /earth,. Grant God',, creatures this great iboon, and; he" did- nob -say that _this ■would practically cure tho whole evil of poverty, for; drink waß the cause of some •of .it;■■; but the single tax which he was ja favour of would i eradicate the very root of the evil,itself, the rills running into the pool would run no more, -wealth would be more evenly distributed, there would be no very richi arid, no very poor,- btib all would: ihave a competency arid comfqrt.: . - ; , He concluded by saying, that ib was only when the millennial age * and Christ reigned on earth, that all sin, sorrow, suffering and tears would,, pass away, but in the meantime it was tbe bounden duty ;of all patriotic citizens, •especially those of this young country, to usee- to: it that theevil.should be at once ipnt a stop to, and that men should be fallowed to occupy the.larid arid form com-Jfo-table homes.