CORRESPONDENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10130, 13 May 1896, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE.

BOARD OF EDUCATION. TO THE EDITOR. 'I Sir;— May it not be possible that your leading articles on the above subject have been somewhat partial ? When you accuse certain members of the Board of being the creatures of intrigue and wire pulling, i consider it would only be fair to those accused that you. go further, and fully, enlighten your readers, by furnishing them with the details of what you profess ,to know. It is a dangerous practice to impute motives without' furnishing proof; those affected by such insinuations may, and some, times do, retort. _ ... .. 1 do not object to fair criticism ; »U public men are the better for close supervision, and their actions are legitimate subjects for fair comment, but I do _ not like to see this American style of criticism introduced among us, in which insinuation and abuse take the place of lionest and impartial criticism, it is to be eared that this objectionable Yankee style of journalism will introduce another undesirable adjunct '.rom the same quarter, an initial instance ot which seems to have occurred on Saturday last in Queen - street. as reported in your columns. While deploring the unpleasant state of matters at the Board of Education, I wish to show your readers that all the blame of the deadlock is not to be placed on the shoulders of those on whom your leader would fasten it, In the Chairman's Handbook, by R. P. D. Patgrave, C.8., Clerk of the House of Commons, page 14, the following passage occurs : — " Election of chairman : The Legislature has to to a certain extent tried to meet the difficulty of a 1 tie' between two candidates for the I chair. At the annual election of Mayor, I the outgoing Mayor, by statute chairman for that occasion, par. 6 of the Municipal Corporations Act, ,1882, _is prohibited from giving any but a casting vote when the votes are equal: and it is provided by the Commissioners Clauses Act. 1847, par. 38, that if there be an equality of votes in the election of a chairman it shall be decided by lot which of the candidates having an equal number of votes shall be chairman. Now. sir, at the Board's meeting on. Ist April Mr. lambs suggested several times that if an equality of votes should be given for two candidates for the chair, the matter should be decided by lot, and those who in your columns are described as the creatures of intrigue and wire-pulling at once acquiesced in the suggestion, while those who are held up as paragons of perfection would have none of it. In conclusion, while prepared to assert my right by election to the chair, I feel that it is absolutely necessary that the present very unpleasant state of matters at the Board should be terminated as soon as possible. I therefore propose that both claimants for the chair submit their claims to a Judge of the Supreme Court, and that until the matter is decided another member of the Board act as chairman. I will agree to abide by the decision given. The members of a public body having charge of the administration of education in one of the most important educational districtMn the colony ought to be prepared to make every reasonable concession, in order to demonstrate that their only aim is the efficient education of the rising generation.— I am, etc., James Mors.

JUVENILE DEPRAVITY. TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—The factors in a child's life which educate him may be divided roughly into four—home, school, companions, religion. If each of these acted in a proper way we might begin with religion. What are the homes like? Do parents make them attractive to the children, & present enjoyment and a pleasant memory through life? Do sisters always try and make home happy to their brothers ? Home is the most educating of all influences on young children, and should be a unit of Christian organisation. School oan never have the deep, lasting moral effect on children that is needed with-

out some definite religion in it. Modern education is incomplete because it only trains certain mental faculties, and leaves out the spiritual side of human nature. The neglect of one aide of Nature must prodace serious effects. A vacuum is apt to causc curious consequence.';. Companions are always sought by such gregarious creatures as children, and "birds of a feather flock together." Children with some aptitude for special sins associate with those who are more knowing in the same. Companions may be classed under school-yards, street, home, and Sunday-school. The home companions are under some supervision, "friend's children"mostly,the others have very little supervision, if any. These four classes overlap, seldom are completely identical, Now try and think out the varied influences of all these; just think over the conversation of an Auckland gutter-snipe from the samples you overhear occasionally, and say if that is not a likely introduction to all kinds of sin. Pardon my reiteration of these topics. And now for religion, even if at the risk of an eruption of Mount Eden, I must say it. The first thing needed to check the growing immorality of the town is the re-organization or suppression of all Bands ofSHopa, Christian Eudeavourers, and every society which takes young people out: at night. The religious bodies are seriously to blame for keeping nurseries for prostitutes, as many of these societies have in cases been. Once you form the habit of going out of an evening in a town with a climate and facilities like this, temptation will come and happy are they who resist it. Religious bodies have been trying to build on amusement and excitement as a way of winning children, instead of preaching the Gospel and training them to love and worship God, they have sown the wind and the community is reaping the whirlwind. I say nothing against occasional evening entertainments where parents take their children. It is the habit of weekly evenings out, sometimes three or four in the week, and it is between the ages of eight and fourteen that the damage is done. If it were true that all these evening meetings were only to collect children running the street off from it, it would be different, but they are not welcomed at these societies half as much as the respectable children who might be kept at home, if " religion" did not come in and help to break the home up. The suddeu collapse of all these societies might be disastrous, as tlie taste for being out and the quasi religious excuse to get out is a strongly-developed 'and evil habit in the whole; community. But they have been subversive of morals in many cases, they are an infraction on home life, they are an excuse for lazy parents to neglect their first duty, and they ought to be gradually swept out of existence. It the religious bodies have not got the sense to see and do this, then these societies should be legislated out of existence—" out la wed" in fact. For notwithstanding " the shrieking sisterhood," I am convinced we must bring in the arm of the law. Wo do not need all the Acts which are gloated over with so prurient a relish by their opponents. (In view of literature I have had sent me from an unknown, this is a gentle 'vay of putting it.) But we need some means of fining parents who do not keep their children at home alter houri. I wish the police were allowed to arrest stray children on the spot, and have the parents up to be fined next morning. Could we have a specially arranged lockup, where children out late without guardians could be kept " till called for ?' It is not in Queen-street that they should be hunted for, but in the Park and Domain, and among timber yards, round the foreshore, and such like places. Of course I know quite well that you cannot make people, even children, moral by Act of Parliament, but you can legislate so as to enforce parental authority; and, when children set that at defiance as young as they do, something warts changing. The cause of the evil is to be found in the influences brought to bear on the children's lives; remove all that are evil if possible, but put in their place good influences. Because, external causes are not all; these would not be causes unless they found a field of action ready to their hand: thereare internal causes a3 well. Evil influences must be replaced with good, and that chief yat home. It is a constructive policy we want, not merely a destructive one. Any one can declaim at sin and hurl threats at sinners. But Chris-

tianity was preached to make people into saints, to elevate the whole of humanity, and raise it to a corporate life of holiness. And the perfection of no individual can be complete whilst his brethren are grovelling in sin. For each are members of one body, and the good suffers from the badness of _ the wicked, who conversely gains by the righteousness of the good.— am, etc., W. Edward Lush. Church of the Epiphany, May 11,1896.

THE UNEMPLOYED DIFFICULTY. TO THE EDITOR.

Sib,— Referring to our Premier's reply to an unemployed deputation in Wellington, as stated in your journal of 25th of last month, I crave space to place the matter before the public, so far as it appears to me. It is the question of civilisation to-day, call it what you may—the unemployed, the overworked, or the starvation question. Why do people starve amidst abundance? The question must be answered. Justice demands It. Forty-eight working people interviewed our chief for the purpose of getting an honest loaf, viz., by working for one, His reply was that permanent grappling with the question was impossible, because if they mitigated the trouble to-day, next week there would be the same number in town again, so far then as Mr. Sedaon himself is concerned, ,he can safely say I grappling with the question at all is im--1 probable or impossible, a3 bess suits, but to I assert anything beyond: that is altogether beyond the mark, If th#43 who asked to.be

employe!, had been employed, that would mean 1 4S productive labourers added to the community, and 48 less idle people to be fed ; also 83 vho have now to be fed by active labourew could be fed by them, or 131 persons in all; who, if they have got nothing by 1 them saved, will ■ have to & fed out of working people at present working. S» far as bringing the unemployed into town is concerned, by affording them an opportunity of getting a living by work, no doubt that is true, but what use is it for men beiig unemployed in the country, they are just as objectionable to the country people as the townspeople, and totally undesirable, and unrequired ; i the public wellbeing, The men simply ask to be employed so as to feed themselves and families. No private individuals requiring them, is it then the duty of the State to employ them ? J maintain, most certainly ; failing which they must certainly sink into degradation. Mr. Seddon observed that New Zealand was in a fairly satisfactory position, which induced unemployed from other colonies to come here. The same could be said of any colony, workpeople go everywhere in search of any honest living equally the same do sellers in search of an idle living. So far as being in a satisfactory position is concerned, it may be so, for as the prosperity of financial institutions and the rent-living class is concerned who an in receipt of nearly the whole of the work people's earnings, less minimum subsistence of wealth-producer?, but so far as the wealthproducers themselves are concerned it is drifting to deplorable misery. If our policy were sound, we should gladly hail an increasing population of healthy adults. Are we going toad vocate depopulation as the remedy, or stand still at present population ? So fai as recommending starvation rather than degradation by carrying an advertising board, I say do anything rather than starve. Those who are ready to recommend it to others would not be very willing to do it themselves. Whatever charity has been instituted for, wc hive to deal with what it has and is now being utilized for, viz., finding idlers in high places, also placing heavy burdens upon workpeople's backs, which they seek to be removed not by way o! charity, but as a mark justice. Then we have the employment on co-operative works as a part remedy in accordance with appropriations. Revenue, no doubt, will as usual appropriate all it can get. How much of that will go to pay people for working, and how much will go to other purposes remains to be seen. Then we have the land settlement system. Seeing that this class feeds and clothes all, they certainly should be maintained upon the land at any hazard. What our Premier has said re the unemployed can for the present remain in abeyance. What we wait now for is to see what he intends to do. Meanwhile the difficulty is yearly growing, and is as an iceberg presenting only a small portion of its danger, or as distant sounding artillery, it is an enemy. that must be faced. Who then is the man in all New Zealand who proposes to grasp the question ? To say that we are not so effectively starved, naked, or houseless as our neighbours, is like telling a bullock in the yoke he is not so badly used as a bullock that is being eaten.—l am, etc., Jons' Anderson, Ruakaka.

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. TO THE EDITOR.

Sir,—Will you allow me space in your paper to gay a few words in reply to the "Present Mode of Worship." enlarged upon by the Rev. Lush at the Church Congress, and a report of which appeared in your columns on the Bth iust. Does the rev. gentleman for one moment mean to infer that organisations like the Salvation Army, the Helping Hand Mission, and other dissenting bodies, do not worship God aright? Is it because they do not use the Book of Common Prayer that we are to infer tHat the mode ot worship is not acceptable before God ? Let the rev. gentleman pause before he infers such conclusions as this, and remember that there is also a great danger of using the Book of Common Prayer until there is a tendency of its becoming " too common, 1 ' and of it becoming mere lip worship. Again and again the clergy 01 the Church of England are asking why the working classes are not found worshipping there in large numbers ? Shall I give what I believe from experience to be the chief reason ? It is. this: Because the mode of worship in the Church of England is not the real and proper mode of worship laid down by Christ. I say this advisedly, and not with presumption, but there is too much of the ritual and too little of the Christ, because there is a growing tendency to the return of those days when the Popish rule held sway, and a repeal ot the liberty of religious thought for which our forefathers fought and died for. lam a working man, sir, and can speak as such, but until the Church of England unbends itself and recognises the true brotherhood of man, and can look upon every work anil every servant ol Christ (be his creed whit it may, sc i loug as it has for its aim the exten sion of Christ's kingdom) so long will it mourn from its ranks those who very largelj would become its chief adherents. One cannot help but deplore the fact that men who assume a title which Christ himself never gave or took upon himself, viz., rer., should assert that because men do not worship God in the particular mode set down by the Church of England as being the one, that »uy other worship than theirs is not acceptable before God.— an., etc. Suffolk street, Auckland. " Veritas."