CO-OPERATIVE CAMPS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 14345, 25 October 1910, Page 4

CO-OPERATIVE CAMPS.

“TWO AWFUL FOR WORDS.” Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Oct. 24. Tho revealing searchlight of tho thoroughly candid critic was thrown upon tlio lives of men in some of tho railway co-operative camps by tho Rev. G. C. Cruickshank at tho mission meeting in connection with tho Anglican Synod. As a worker in some m tho English slums, he said, ho thought ho had seen some life tiiat was “pretty hefty,” as ho phrased it. In the railway camps ho knew there were some very fine men, and ho would never characterise a whole community of men by one term; but on tho whole ho had never seen lives so degraded as he had seen in the back blocks co-operative railway camps in Now Zealand. It was ; too awful for words. Tho men in these' camps could knock out 10s or 15s a day with ease. There was nothing to stop them drinking, for they know they would be sure of three meals a day, and they debased themselves in a way that one would never see in tho worst slums in England. They lived in tents 10ft. by 12ft. It rained 3644 days a year, more or less, and they had absolutely ho recreation during their long leisure hours but to twiddle their thumbs. One of them had told him that to pass tho time they had even read the advertisements on the jam tin labels backwards. Almost anybody would drink in those circumstances. It was a scandal that those men should bo allowed to live such a life without any provision for their recreation. If he had had the money he would have started a temperance cafe himself and run it under church auspices among the camps, and that would have saved many a man. Continuing his remarks, Mr, Cruick,shank said that many of tho railway workers were tho scum of creation, but tho greatest difficulty ho and his fellows had to contend with was tho sending of remittances from England. He implored his hearers, if they ever had a black sheep in tho family, not to let him become a remittance man. That yas tho biggest curse that could happen to a man; One of tho speaker’s friends had known a remittance man who had an order payable to hoaryr for £IOOO, and he had many before that. Mr. Cruickshank said that there was great need not only for more clergymen, hut for lay workers to go into the bark blocks.