The Manawatu Daily Times Local Government

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 68, 22 March 1935, Page 6

The Manawatu Daily Times Local Government

The sitting of the New Zealand Municipal Conference, which opened in Christchurch yesterday, recalls that the centenary of local government in England is being ‘celebrated this year. It was only 100 years ago that the Municipal Corporations Act was passed providing for the first time for the election of town councils by local ratepayers. The innovation was of an importance comparable with that of the creation of a Parliament.

It was the beginning of a revolution in the conditions ol the lii’c of the people. Before that time the large towns were governed by close corporations which did as little as possible for the citizens; smaller towns were at tiie mercy of a single large property owner. Leeds had 58(i streets, of which only sixty-eight were ever cleaned; the suburbs of Bradford were not cleaned at all. In most towns Ihrre was no public water supply, no adequate sewers, no supervision of food, no organised roudmuking, and needless lo say no public parks, libraries or museums.

It is doubtful if a modern inhabitant of one of the older of Lie old towns in England would recognise it if he could travel back in lime and see it as it was 100 years ago. Local government to this day is far from being all that it should be in Great Britain. Gome elected bodies still take their duties lightly, and others busy themselves with wasteful officiousness. But nothing could more clearly reveal the rapidity of progress in modern social life than the history of the local organisations which have turned towns that were still medieval in their appearance a century ago into the habitable places of to-day.

Time to Spare

“ You will 'discover the elementary truth that the best cure for unemployment is employment," and that, therefore, it is folly to help the unemployed in such a way as to cause other people now employed to lose their jobs,” writes the Master of Balliol, Dr. A. D. Lindsay, in discussing the problems of idleness. “You will soon find out that that simple principle produces —all sorts of thorny and very unsimple questions as to what occupational clubs may properly do, as it produces for Government a set of very' thorny questions as to what Government may wisely do. But lam convinced that if the best and the wisest Government imaginable had done all that it could do, the problem I am concerned with—the meanwhile problem of time to spare—would still remain. And, further, lam sure that whatever our differences as to what Government can do to bring back employment and to help those who are. unemployed —whether we accept the existing system or want radically and speedily to sweep it away, whatever our political complexion or allegiance—we can all unite in dealing with this problem.

“Let us by all means continue our political differences, but let us personally come together on this problem. And because only voluntary work done by ordinary people can help in that, I refuse to take part in a process of salving our consciences and evading our personal responsibilities by making ourselves ocmplacent over what the Government has righteously indignant over what the Government has left undone.”

Harvest festival services will be held The New Zealand University Bugby in St. Peter's Anglican Church, Ter- Football Council is accepting an invitarace end, on Sunday. Gifts of produce, tion to send a team to Australia in etc., may be left at the church to- May, subject to the New Zealand morrow. On Monday the produce will Bugby Union’s permission, be despatched to All Saints' Home.