CHARGES OF CHILD SLAVERY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 61, 7 November 1907, Page 2

CHARGES OF CHILD SLAVERY.

A KKI'LY: TO THE CHIEF JUSTICE. In a recent issue of the Gishorno Times, Mr. D. O'Sullivan, of Gisborne, well known in this province, replies to Sir Robert Stout's allegations as follows: —"It is only charitable to suppose that in levelling against the farming community of Taranaki the very serious

charge of child slavery, Sir Robert Stout was not giving the result' of his own personal experience in that locality, but was simply voicing a report which for years has been persistently repeated by Taranaki's unfair critics. I shall be much surprised to learn that Sir Robert has ever set foot on half-a-dozen Taranaki farms. During a residence of many years in that part of the Dominion I never marked his presence. I have a fair knowledge of this country. During the last twenty-four years I have been constantly engaged in travelling from one end of i\ T ew Zealand to the other, the backblocks and farms being my chief

sphere of observation. I can truthfully claim an intimate knowledge, running through several years, of almost every farm in TaranakL, With this knowledge at my disposal I have much pleasure in stating the report of child slavery in Taranaki to lie absolutely without foundation. The community in question has been recruited during the last few years troni nearly every part of the Dominion, and it seems monstrous to suppose that farmers shout* lose all parental feeling and become dead to every prompting of humanity simply because they had come within a certain distance of Mount Egmont. Taranaki boasts more well-to-do farmers, more

comfortable homes, produces more athletes, and employs more extraneous labor than any other district of its size in New Zealand. The children are proverbially healthy, and, considering the terrible roads along which schools have to be approached, the children compare favorably in educational matters with their confreres. Finally, it is well to know that the Chief Inspector of Schools for Taranaki reported favorably on the dairying industry in all its bearing on education. It is also well known in all parts of the world that country settlers, old md young, rise earlier than do those of the towns, but in all that appertains to country life Taranaki is no exception, save and except in the hardships which the settlers encountered in the roadless backblocks during the early days of

settlement. Sir llobert Stout seems to think that the dairying industry gives an abnormal value to land; the reverse is the case. In Taranaki and Southland, the two great dairying centres of New Zealand, land is much cheaper than in the grain-growing districts of Poverty Bay, Marlborough, and Canterbury. Kindly allow me to give the origin of this oft-repeated libel about Taranaki: For years past the Evening Post, of Wellington, has been devoting much of its editorial space to diatribes against the much-maligned district, while space has been also freely given in the correspondence columns to every idle loafer who thought lit to give what he called his experience. To the other side of the question the Post gave short shrift. It is very doubtful whether the editor o.' the Post ever saw that province he so diligently vilified. Last year I ventured to say a few words in favor of the Taranaki farmer, but my lettev was mostly suppressed, and what appeared -,•.■ i'l.oatly mutilated, paraphrased, and hold up to we ridicule of the Post's readers. Incidentally I had called attention to a fcr more degrading form of child slavery in the streets of the capital, in the shape of little girls of tender years who in all weathers

were selling papers in the streets till a late hour in the night. This the Post contradicted, but on the following evening 1 took the street at 7.30 and bought four copies of the Post from girls, the last purchase being precisely at 9'p.m. On each paper I wrote the name, age, and address of the vendor. I carefully filed those papers. I also filed a cop'v of next night's issue, in which it asserted that the previous night (the one on which I was making by purchases) the inclemency of the weather was bevond anything known for years."