ARE THE RICH DOING THEIR BIT?

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5355, 12 February 1916, Page 3

ARE THE RICH DOING THEIR BIT?

AN INTERESTING COMPARISON

Mr Charles Lewis, ex-M.P. for Christchurch, in a letter refuting the oft-repeated statement by certain labour agitators that the rich are not doing their share in the war in men or money, says : One i- confronted by the difficulty of arriving at a common agreement as to what constitutes a rich man. It is the difficulty of classification, the impossibility of absolute numerical accuracy upon which the class agitators rely; but I think I have hit upon a. line of investigation whose results are quite saifficient t-o disprove the statement which is mv test. There are in New Zealand two schools which l frequently have heard alluded to as pre-eminently devoted to the “sons of the rich.” There are others, no doubt, but I believe these two' have a larger proportion of ‘rich” boys than any others, and ray attention was particularly directed to them because in December T received copies of magazines issued by these two schools. These contained the names of over 700 old boys who have enlisted. I consulted the Education reports taking haphazard the veins 1900. 1903, 1910 and 1913. I found that the mean average attendai*ee at these two schools was 417, which shows that the percentage of recruits to attendance is soin,c 168 per cent. In the case of the public schools the attendance was 63.000. hut it is not possible to state within equal precision the number of recruits. On the one hand many recruits we re not educate! a.t the public schools nor in New Zealand ; on the other hand many teicmits ffrpTn these schools have enlisted in other countries. Balancing one of those factors against the other, and crediting the public schools with the whole of the 4G.(KX) enlistments mentioned in Mr Massey’s manifesto the percentage of enlistments is 73 percent.