People’s Day

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21939, 13 November 1936, Page 8

People’s Day

People’s Day this year arrives with the advantages and heightened interests of a Royal Show and the encouragement of a turn in the weather that has done its evil best to wreck the first half of a week’s pleasure. It will not be surprising if a new record in attendances is reached; and since numbers have their effect on the spirit of a gathering, even the general enjoyment of the day may touch a new height—the sort of record which escapes the statistician but is. impressed, somehow, on the individual memory. One thing is certain, that the true popularity of the occasion will be proved again and refreshed in the proof; and it is well - for Canterbury that this is so. ■ As the province develops, in the conditions of to-day, it is inevitable that the ways of life of the city-worker and the country-worker should be more and more unlike and apart, and one danger—not the only one, by any means—is that in this strangeness and separation there will diminish and may be lost that proper sense of common interest which is still, fortunately, alive and active; but signs of the danger, even signs of Ignorant or deliberate attempts to provoke it, are not wanting. It is not easy to think of any that threatens New Zealand’s social and political and economic structure at a point so vital. There are, of course, many defences, many sane influences, to be trusted; and the agricultural and pastoral shows generally, and such an institution as Day in particular, provide encouraging evidence that this trust is not false, and are themselves defences and influences of the kind, of no small value. It is almost enough to say that, so long as People’s Day remains what it is, the people’s instinct will be right and common sense will be doing its saving work. What more is to be said is not so simple. But the rough and ready truth of it is that every possible educative agency should be exerted to see that the crowd which goes

to the show because the love of animals is un- • quenchable—a , single motive, among others—goes there also as well informed and equipped as possible to understand the unfamiliar labour and skill which, all the year round, have produced the sights of a day, and the unity of welfare which such unfamiliarity conceals.