A PRACTICAL SUGGESTION.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 17, Issue 17, 12 October 1894, Page 3

A PRACTICAL SUGGESTION.

Mr Warden Hawkins makes a suggestion in his annual goldfields report I '-'at deserves attention. "If the Goveriim-nt," he says, "oould be induced to vi 'ke the experiment of establish* mg at Waikuja a. b°^se jfl conpection wijh the pave?sham Sohool— mak. ing a draft of, say, ten or fifteen of the stoutest, fittest lads of fifteen or sixteen years of agr, plaoing fie homo u,nd,er t\\& charge of a practical wner who has a wife i-ud 110 ohildren', ana either starting a mining operation themselvos or letting tbe boys work, say, or eo.Mwo certain selected decent miners — it would produce, i good results. This space will not all<>w i me to work out the details, but the thing could bs (jlope at $oss._ The con- , dition of at Caversham is to be deplored, The State might be converting eyery one of these boys into farmers,

'„ ' fruit - growers, poultry - farmers, bee j keepers, gold-miners, dairy-men, or an; { ,of the laud-developing industrials. The: might be brought up in tbe purest air \ with all the glorious influences or i bounteous and loving Nature arounc them. A colony of separate houses neai a place like Waikaia", not more that twenty boys in a house, with a carefully* selected married couple over every housr, would work out a natural redemption foi these waifs of poverty and products ol criminal neglect. Their life needs expansion, not the contraction of a prisonhouse with its dreary round of hopeless task. The Stipendiary Magistrate goes monthly to Waikaia, and' could well arrange to make an extra day and supervise such ao establishment." 1 CJ ii c t b