STATE SETTLEMENTS.

Evening Star, Issue 10399, 21 August 1897, Page 2 (Supplement)

STATE SETTLEMENTS.

TO TEE EDITOR.

Sib,—By your giving space as.you do to writers who advocate social reforms your paper is calculated to benefit humanity, and furnishes the best illustration for the existence of newspapers, which are, or ought to’ be, radiators of light—* c., intelligence. I have read Mr Le Grove’s excellent ad-, dress in your paper, and with a great deal of interest. It has many strong features to recommend it, and I am euro many besides those to whom the address was given appreciate .it highly. I do, and I thank him for it. Like every effort of individual reformers it is imperfect, and the imperfections are sometimes condemned too reformers, who can see a particular-', imperfection more distinctly, than that other.; The strong condemnation by “X- Rays ” of Mr Le Grove’s 5 per cent.' feature Is justifiable. Yet it could, notwithstanding, be. successfully carried out, although inadvisable. The recommendation by “X Rays” is the only right and proper method to adopt, add success, other, things being equal, is then assured from the first. I(i S gradually beginning to dawn upon the minds of .intelligent reformers that no individual, no matter how eminent in the intellectual world, can put forward any complete scheme of reform, each reformer having only a sectional knowledge, and that in a very limited degree. Each has a sectional bias, which is the result of his environment, and that bias develops as it is affected by surrounding influences. The repeated failures of many experimental schemes of social improvement are to be attributed to the non-recogni-tion of this fact—viz., “the imperfect sectional knowledge of individual reformers.” Organised effort based upon the sectional knowledge of individuals is the omy safe plan, and success can only be reached by unity of purpose. Every effort made to establish equality of opportunity mast recognise individualism as the highest ideal. When this is generally recognised everything is accomplished for which all reformers in all ages have worked for, lived for, and died for. A reformer Is merely the coral insect carrying its tiny burden to the surface; its unitary effort complete, another takes its place, and so tbe reformatory development proceeds to finality.—l am, etc., Chas. W. Clayton. Wanganui, August 13.