The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1912. CHILD SLAVERY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 89, 10 December 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1912. CHILD SLAVERY.

Occasionally wild statements are made concerning “child slavery” in dairying centres, not only in this Dominion, hut in the Commonwealth States also. Those who live in such know how very far from the truth these statements often are, that the cases cited are the exception and not the rule. Lecturing recently at Newcastle, New South Wales, Mr. F. C. Adrian, one time Police Magistrate at Lismore, spoke as follows regarding the .Richmond District, and his remarks might equally well apply to Taranaki. Mr. Adrian said: “If I were asked the chief cause of a normal child committing offences I should say want of occupation. A child’s time must be filled up, and the only time he or she should be doing nothing is when they are asleep. I had an opportunity givon me of proving what I say in regard to the importance of children’s time being fully occupied that is not given to every special magistrate. 1 was some nine years police magistrate at Lismore, the largest dairying district by a long way in the Southern Hemisphere. There is a popular and most erroneous idea that the farmers’ children there arc what they call cow slaves. Even the residents of the towns in this locality follow each other like so many sheep in expressing and reiterating this opinion. They tell you the children grow up without any ideas beyond cows, and so on. Well, i don’t know what people expect. For my own part, in a cow or sheep district, 1 would rather have a man talk intelligently about cows or sheep than nnintelligently about something he knows nothing at all about. The ideal citizen is the man who is sufficiently interested in his particular'work to do it well, and to understand it thoroughly. You can’t expect poets and philosophers on every hill, a sprinkling of them will suffice. I had a deal of travelling to do through my district, and often early in the morning gave some of the children a ride to school in my buggy, or a ride home in the afternoon. I found these boys and girls most intelligent. I never found a low order of intelligence in such children. They had been up, no doubt, very early in the morning milking cows, but so far from looking upon school as a task, they seemed to me to look upon it as a break. They seemed to go to school with pleasure, and as a matter of fact these dairy farmers’ children very seldom play the truant, which is fairly good proof of how they view school. J never found them, as some people al!°ge ; going to

school tired and jaded, without heartj and energy. On their return trom school these children will milk cows again, it is true, and go to hcd pro-, bably tired out, hut normal and healthy in every respect. Their time' was, fully occupied, but they lived in the! fresh air. If they rose early, they went to bed early, they were fed well, they slept the sleep of health, and had always a keen appetite. They growl up—and this is most important—-ini these districts I speak of, into stai-l wart, honest men and women, and in nine years I had an opportunity of seeing many of them grow from childhood into healty manhood and womanhood. It is said they fall asleep in school sometimes, hut a teacher at a late conference in Sydney said, sometimes people fall asleep in church, and certainly it is not early rising that causes such people to do so, more likely it rises from want of interest.”