REFORM OR RUIN.

Mataura Ensign, Issue 19, 13 August 1895, Page 2

REFORM OR RUIN.

TO THE EDITOE. SIR,— I have just read your leader on the above subject, in a late issue, and would like to endorse what you say by adding a few words of my own on the subject. One urgent reform required is a check upon the abuse of tobacco and cigarettes. The lasting evil brought upon the youth by the inordinate use of either is well known, but when one sees boys of 8, 9 and 10 years old marching along the streets with a cigarette in their mouth, and puffing away quite unconcerned, it seems to me that it is about time that something was done, When mere children can get 6d to buy oigaretteß, and it takes their parents all they know how to earn sufficient to keep them in food and clothing, it seem» folly to talk of hard times. The use of stimulants by mere children is certain to produce an effect on the constitution that will not be got rid of in a day, and may affect tha child all its life. But stimulants do more to degrade the youth than most people are aware of. It is the use of nerve stimulants that lead to all sorts of immorality, and to miny untimely graves. Some check should be put on tha sa'e of cigarettes, cigars and tobacco, to keep boys from ruining their health and undermining their constitutions after the care and trouble their parents have had in the reariog of them. Then the serving of drink to mere boys is another blot on our national character. Boys do not want drink, nor for that matter do men, and only take drink at first because they think it manly to do what they see their elders doing. In time, some boys come to like drink, and go to the dogs, and, long before they are men, they have the stamp of a habitual drunkard marked on their white and careworn faces. It is not in Gore alone that this cry has gone forth, but in almost evory large town in the colony. Men and women are content to walk an and piss it by at almost every street corner. Why don't they take up with the same spirit this question of social reform as they do many of less urgent questions? Is there anything that tells one more plainly that we live in the Utter end of the 19th century than seeing a lad about 15 years old half drunk walking along our streets, calmly smoking a little piece of paper and some French cabbage leaves, cursing and swearing and spitting right and left ? The refdrm of the present Ministry, I am afraid, would be too Herculean a job to attempt. It would require more than the ordinary washing to clean out our Parliamentary stable. It seems that the people are all more or less imbued with the same feeling— viz., that in numbers we sometimes get completely lo3t. With the numerous measures of the present Government we seem to have got deeper and deeper into the bottomless bog of social and national corruption. It ia no figure of speech to say that corruption is eating into the heart of our lives, as it is only to evident that it is so. What a spectacle does not the late election in Auckland present. The Ministry of the day actually dominates the constituency, and, as the secretary to the Labor Union tersely putit.theservantaare diotating to their masters. If this is freedom of selection, freedom of choice, then it is hard to say what' use there is for the driver of the donkey but to take its place Evidently the tail is wagging the dog, and, by praaant appearances, it ia hard to say how long the dog will be before he wakes up. Isn't it time the electors woke up ? By finding a corner for this is your next issue you will confer a favor.— l am, etc., J.G.