OVERWORKED CHILDREN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17328, 27 November 1919, Page 6

OVERWORKED CHILDREN.

STATE OF YOUNG MILKERS.

INSPECTOR'S ALLEGATIONS.

Serious assertions as to the condition of children in dairying districts are made in a report from one of the school inspectors of the Auckland district upon the question of defective children in the schools. This inspector, whose labours apply to a dairying district, states that a number of children in the schools of that district are suffering from want of sufficient sleep. Repeatedly these children are all but asleep in school in the afternoon, and are unfitted to show to advantage in an oral examination. Invariably they are milkers. At one school a girl of 13 informed him that .she rose daily at 3.30 a.m., and he found that a Considerable number rose between 4.30 and 5 a.m., after retiring at varying horns between 8.30 and 9.30 p.m. "These milking family children,'' he adds, "are little more than slaves, and they seldom spend more than one season in one place.'' Speaking generally of the children in the schools of his district, the inspector states that many of them are ill-clothed, and the absence of bath facilities in milkers' cottages is notorious, though the work of tending cows, calves and pigs calls for the use of the most up-to-date sanitary appliances.