BORN FOR PROFIT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26773, 17 May 1948, Page 4

BORN FOR PROFIT

CHILDREN OF TO-DAY CLAIM BY CLERGYMAN FAMILY ALLOWANCE BLAMED P.A. AUCKLAND. May 16. It was easy for people to condemn the early days of industrialism and child labour, when children were born for profit, and then to lose sight of the fact that children were being born for profit in New Zealand to-day, said the Rev. E. Blackwood Moore in a sermon in St. Matthew’s Church. Mr Moore added that he understood there was. in-breeding among Maoris in parts of North Auckland so as to qualify for the family allowance. Recalling a statement by the late Mr Arthur Mee —“ It is the pleasures of to-day that men are seeking: things born in the moaning to die at night ” the minister said that we had failed the Maoris lamentably by giving them “ the things born in the morning to die at night.” Mr Moore protested against the exploitation of the Maoris, and what he described as “ a traffic in souls and the prostitution of a noble race for political ends.” He said that nearly everything people did to-day was done on the assumption that material wellbeing was necessary for man’s self-sufficiency. The minister also claimed that there was a need for a spiritual regeneration.

Referring again to the Native race, Mr Moore said that, a statement that 80 per cent, of the inmates of Mount Eden prison were Maoris had been made by the prison chaplain.