UNEMPLOYABLE DERELICTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 January 1929, Page 10

UNEMPLOYABLE DERELICTS

CASE FOR FARM COLONY

One obtains only a confused impression of the life of this wanderer. While consuming a meal of the “bucksheesh” order—and he has a great capacity for food and a nice quality of polite decision when he agrees to have a little more—he relates in rambling fashion some episode of his life (says the “New Zealand Herald”). It never has a distinct beginning, nor does it always end. He seems to assume that one knows all the circumstances. So these impressions are just shadows on the screen of a down-and-out life. One may become impatient and decide to harden one’s heart for the good of the man. It might help to force him back to a sense of selfrespect and independence, one imagines. But one knows that it is too late —perhaps it has always been too late. •

Perhaps we may yet be more practical about the care of such folk and place them under control and enforce a little of the discipline of regular work upon them. A farm colony for vagrants has already been suggested, and if it were established this man would be the first to qualify. And in such a. place he would be useful. He would earn his bread and board and something more, and he would be removed from the struggle of life in which lie cannot survive.

Usually he begins by mentioning a “cove” of no particular address who might have given him a permanent job, but who went for a holiday. He feels no real rancour about this “cove. ” He just mentions that fact and adds it to the long, long list of the might-have-beens of his life. “What’s a bloke to do,” he continues. “The woman I had the room off can’t give me credit-” Where did he sleep. Oh- Last night under a thick hedge at a place he used to work. Quite a good “possie” in warm weather. That was where the collie dog found him and spent a few hours with him. Picture the scene. A wanderer beneath a thick hedge. A companionable dog comes along, and, responding to the welcome, snuggles down. The derelict has a friend for a few hours —a friend that does not question and lecture and preach and advise, but simply joins company. Another night it was the shed in the coal yard or some such place. This, perhaps, is a regular haven when it rains. But the concrete floor is cold at times and newspapers are not blankets.

Rambling on, the wanderer mentions a cave at the back of the spring—-a good, dry, warm cave —but apparently that was a haven of Jong ago. There is mention of the police rounding up its residents and of the fact that once a man died there. Usually the conxersation turns to the sources of charity. These never get their titles. In the mind of the wanderer they go by t(ie name of the man in charge. Naturally he “can t understand” these men. He seems to picture them as autocratic controllers of large quantities of money which they insist upon hoarding or of giving to people much less deserving than himself. He “doesn’t know what to make of them.” It is all a great mystery. Once he mentioned a mission which endeavours to help the wanderers to “come back-” He did not intend to be humorous. He simply told what he had seen. “After the‘preachin’,” saicj he, “the bloke asks those who want to be saved to put their hands up. Well, I’ve never put me hand up, but if you don’t you can’t wait and get a bite of supper. Some of the ‘coves’ always puts their hands up just lor the supper. That’s too thick. I couldn’t do that.”

A SEASON OF PLENTY. Now and again there is a brief season of comparative plenty. He falls in, say, with the crew of a vessel that is in port, and because he can play a fiddle and thus assist them in their social diversions they adopt him. A “handle” or two is going, and after the fun is over he is invited to come aboard and have a feed. And in the morning, too, there is always a bit of breakfast at the ship’s galley.

“They said they would sign me on and take me .Home with them,’’ he said, but after some slow reflection lie concluded that the great oceans were not for him. Perhaps he is one of the men who stick close to home, even though they have not got one. Instinct tells them that there is better grazing and more certainty on the familiar range. The unknown must have peculiar terrors for one who mainly lives from meal to meal and has little confidence, no initiative and physical incapacity. Here he knows*what the worst can be. He knows that sleeping out, which can be pleasant in summer weather, can have its anxieties, be-, cause the police have a duty in saving vagrants from themselves and in seeing that their casual habits do not give anxieties to citizens. One is quite sure that the derelicts are not unduly harassed by the police, and it is an undoubted fact that householders in the main are charitably inclined and long-suffering. Excuses are made for such as the wanderer, even though, quite forgetful of the hour, they should enter a port of call late at night and scare a household.

But his case and that of many others in the city emphasises the need of' an island farm colony, as has been suggested by an Auckland magistrateMany are unfit for work. It matters not whether- their condition is due to their own follies. Open-handed private charity often has had something to do with it. Usually a number of influences have combined to make the pauper, and even among young men an indulgence of the dependent spirit is sowing the seeds of future -trouble. As has been mentioned previously, the only refuge for many of the elderly and ageing vagrants—and the type ages early —is prison, where constantly they are being sent practically to be nursed. Winter shelters and soup kitchens have their uses in times of unemployment, but the vagrant type would be filling shelters and thronging soup kitchens in times of the greatest prosperity. Neither prison nor charitable organisations should have the responsibility of this class. A much better course would be the establishment of a farm colony, preferably on an island, which would be a home for the vagrants who are past rehabilitation, and warning to others who are drifting.