A Dangerous Practice

Northern Advocate, 12 April 1940, Page 4

A Dangerous Practice

iN the clays when the telegraph and telephone were novelties, the younger generation found difficulty in restraining a temptation to use the white insulators as targets. This, of course, was an act deserving the punishment that followed detection, but, beyond the inconvenience paused by interference with a medium of communication then in its infancy, no serious harm was done by the juvenile marksmen. Today, in the Far North, the children in districts in which electric power poles are making their first appearance are under the spell which insulatoTs exert. This constitutes a general menace to life and limb. It is therefore necessary, in the interests of the children, and of the people in the various districts, that something should be done to stop a dangerous practice. The children and young folk generally must have impressed upon them the fact that the smashing of an insulator may not only cause inconvenience but may bring death to them and other people. If an insulator is broken and a high tension cable is allowed to fall to the ground, the electric current may conceivably be carried by wire fences or other meaps to animals in paddocks and to people who come in contact with them. Those who throw stones at insulators must be made to realise the dangerous nature of their act. It was with this end in view that there were brought before the magistrate at Kaikohe on Wednesday no less than seventeen Maori children living along the Mataraua Road. The magistrate took appropriate action against the offenders, and there is little doubt that the fact of their being brought before a children’s court will restrain others upon whom the appearance of insulators may have fascinating influence. The Kaikohe prosecutions emphasise the duty which rests upon parents, school teachers and all responsible people to impress upon children that electric power lines must be regarded with the utmost caution, and that the breaking of insulators may easily have fatal results. Education along these lines is due to youth in districts where electricity reticulation has hitherto been unknown.