TE ORANGA HOME.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 6490, 9 April 1908, Page 4

TE ORANGA HOME.

Although we believe that the inquiry into the conduct of To Oranga Homo was the result of the agitation of sensationalists, scandalmongers, and husyhodies, whose allegations of cruelty, brutality, and had management have in no wise been sustained by tho investigating Commissioner, we are satisfied that the result of Mr Bisreport will he beneficial to the system and advantageous to the Dominion. It is a lamentable thing that in a young and -well-favoured community such as this young womankind can be brought to such a low level of depravity as to constitute “terrible material” for a reformatory home. It shows that we have still much to hope for, much to work for. It discovers to us that some of the heathen in our midst are more degraded and repulsive from a purely human point of view than the heathen in far off lands in regard to whose welfare we are so fervently solicitous.

There is something wrong with a social system, an economic system, and a moral system which will reduce a proportion, however small, of the women of the community to lower depths through fouler customs than those of the "beasts that perish.” We have not, we boast, a slum population, but we have a scum population, and we may well feel humiliated in the knowledge that for every degraded female scathed by this latest revelation, there are dozens of male wantons equally culpable, equally despicable, who escape detection and censure. It is gratifying to realise, however, that while it is not within the power of the community to eradicate the blot, it is possible by sane and salutary measures to mitigate the stain. We can, it seems, by wise expenditure so organise the reformatories to which the female pariahs are sent as to take from them their repugnant and degrading features, and, by giving incentive to the better trails in the characters of their occupants, lead them by smoother •paths to better lives. We are not with these who favour the removal of all drastic punishments. The soft answer which turneth away wrath does not suffice when dealing with vicious children of criminal tendencies. Desperate diseases proverbially call for desperate remedies, but the use of the strap is as little to be recommended as a reformatory agency in dealing witu unhumamsed women, as the employment of the cat-o’-nine-tails as a deterrent to the human tigers in our gaols. Still wo should not spring to extremes, and if “hair-cutting” and “punish-

raont dresses” are required to bring these vixens to their senses, no maudlin sentimentality should be allowed to stand in the Way of a continuance of these practices. 31r Bishop’s summing up amounts to a handsome exculpation of the management of Te Oranga Homo from the charges which have been levelled against it. “In spite of many shortcomings, many drawbacks, many weaknesses, one cannot,” says the Commissioner, "but feel grateful to the management for much excellent work that is being done.” A reformatory which takes in seeming incorrigibles and turns out a large percentage of girls “gentle in manners, good in address, and showing undoubted evidences of refinement,” cannot be said to have failed in its mission. And yet it is felt something more will have to be done. Further classification is essential, and legislative power will have to bo obtained to indeterminately detain young women so deficient in mental and moral control as to constitute a danger to themselves and a menace to the community, The inquiry has been a protracted and expensive undertaking, but it has been educational in more respects than one. If the findings of the Commissioner are acted upon with the promptitude of which the Hon. Mr Fowlds remarks give indication, it will indeed have been money well spent.