THE WANDERING LIFE

Taranaki Daily News, 31 December 1929, Page 16

THE WANDERING LIFE

VAGRANTS IN GERMANV

HOW THEY ARE DEALT WITH.

Germans regard vagrants as childish people, and consequently unable to compete successfully in the world’s labour markets. The duty of shepherding them and protecting them from harming themselves and the public is recognised and accepted, writes a correspondent to the Manchester Guardian.

To effect this, while a measure of liberty is preserved, the area over which the vagrants may wander has been restricted. Regular tramping routes have been defined, and certain charitable and religious bodies* are subsidised to maintain free shelters and lodging houses along these routes. These bodies have also established working homes and farm colonies in the various provinces; their agents are busily engaged in persuading vagrants to forsake the wandering life for decent, honest living in a colony.

There are forty such colonies caring for 12,000 men. Their work is land reclamation, farming, poultry-rearing, market gardening and so on. The men agree to stay six months, but they may remain for life. Many obtain regular employment in time, but the understanding is that they may return if thrown out of work. The labour exchanges keep in close touch with the shelters and lodging houses, posting them with information as to local conditions and demands for labour.

Behind all this the compulsory- work home, to which are committed those who, having fallen into the hands of the law, are adjudged fit to receive training with a view to becoming useful citizens. It is the boast of one such home that 60 per cent, of the men committed to their care return to the world self-supporting. This is a fact that needs careful study, for such a vagrant, permitted.to go on as he has be-

gun, costs the nation at least £250. This far-seeing policy might well be the subject of experiment in England. In municipal areas here the identity of the vagrant tends to become merged with that of the local homeless destitute. Indeed it is often this merging that gives Government departments a wrong view of the vagrancy problem. It is useless for Whitehall to judge the tramp by the visitors to the Metropolitan Asylums Board shelters.

German municipalities are endeavouring to separate the young, from the old and the decent from contaminating influences. Their strong point is in their handling of the juvenile section of the homeless. Lads under eighteen are removed from shelters and lodgings and housed separately. Every endeavour is made to persuade these lads to go home or to be found suitable emnloymenU., .