STATE FARMS FOR DEGENERATES.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13420, 18 March 1914, Page 2 (Supplement)

STATE FARMS FOR DEGENERATES.

A deputation consisting: of Messrs. H. Baigent (chairman), ; .J. B. Harrison, W. Lock, and Mesdames Tell and Watson, then waited upon tie Prime Minister with a request that the Government take some action in regard to degenerates. Mrs. Fell was the principal speaker. She said t.':at there was urgent. necessity to provide State farms, or industrial homes or some- other suitable places where work could .be provided for drunkards, wastrels and other self-indulgents. She outlined what was done in Switzerland to .compel degenerates to work; and said that -there was crying need for legislation on the Swiss lines in tlis country.

Mr. Massey assured the deputation that the Government was exceedingly anxious to do all it could in the. matter, and he- was very interested in what Mrs. Fell had said. "As a matter of fact the Government was watching what was being done in Switzerland, and the matter had not been overlooked. There was provision in our piesent laws which enabled magistrates to send inebriates to the Salvation Army homes. He did not la ow whether they had been quite successful. There was also the inebriates' home at Roto Roa. Undesirable persons were committed to prison, and wete expected to -earn something, but neither the Salvation Army nor the prisons were self-supporting. The Hon; Mr. Rhodes, who was head of the Hospitals Department, had requested his Department to furnish a report on the very proposal which Mrs. Fell had brought forward.