PROPOSED WORKHOUSE SYSTEM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9105, 13 July 1888, Page 5

PROPOSED WORKHOUSE SYSTEM.

THE RELIEF OF PAUPERS.

TRAMPS AND THEIR TRICKS.

[BY TELEGRAPH.—SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.] Wellington, Thursday. Dr. MacGregor's description of our system of outdoor relief is graphic in its detail, and has elicited much discussion, but nothing to what has been evoked by his proposed remedy. It is this —" We must assume that in a civilised community no one must be allowed to starve, however degraded, imprudent, or vicious he may be. The State must, without regard to deserts, provide a bare subsistence, and no more, under a rigid workhouse test, whose principle must be that no State pauper can be better treated than the poorest of the people who are taxed to support him. A workhouse should be in each centre, or near it, managed by the most stringent provisions for the idle vagrants. For deserted women and children and the lowest poor a Charity Organisation Society, focussing the benevo : lent societies, and preventing the over- ( lapping of claims, would be the best thing in each centre of population. Twenty ladies and gentlemen in each town thus banded together on the model of the London societies, could reduce the amount spent on charitable relief by one-half. How far such society ought to be subsidised, and from what source, he remarks, is a matter of public policy." Since the commencement of our immigration policy in 1874 the amount spent in hospital and charitable aid is, I am informed, something like three-quarters of a million sterling. In London it is the custom for the professional beggar, on visiting a residence, to affix a secret sign or cabalistic mark on the gate or house indicating: to the next tramp whether it is good enough to apply for relief or whether the resident is "a hard case." Something of the same sort is going on in the colony ; and by an underground railway the professional impostors in the various parts of the colony inform each other where the Hospital and Charitable Aid Boards are the most easy-going and relief the most readily granted. It is on this principle that the fact is accounted for the . Masterton district becoming an exercising ground for tramps and the largest relief expenditure being in Christchurch. .. A good story is told of Christchurch, namely that a sturdy beggar on the relief list of the Charitable Aid Board, but now suffering a term of imprisonment in Lyttelton Gaol, actually wrote to his "pals" in Sydney, informing them of the "good time" he was experiencing ;in Christchurch at the hands of the relief, authorities, and giving them a cordial invitation to come across.