STRATFORD.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 16758, 7 June 1920, Page 7

STRATFORD.

FHOM otra OWN cokuespondent. June s.—Nearly 100 boys and girls have been enrolled m rue totraUortl Boys’ And Girls' improvement Association, a recently lormed body intended to counteract Luo degenerate influences ol tins time of change and absence or discipline. Mootings are to bo field in the Tamil Hall every Monday evening. The Rev. 0. W. Howard is president, with the Revs. M'Kenzie and Neale as vice-presidents. Linder their management tuero will be nothing dry and dull about the proceedings. Tuat something of <tiio kina is badly needed is evident xrom the testimony or tne police in a. case that came before tne court iast week. A lot of young imps had banded themselves together under a cognomen derived from the study of picture films and had embarked, on a career of thieving and burglary. They just escaped an application of the bircu at the hands ol the police and have to remain at home after dark for the next 12 months. The magistrate admonished parents about letting their children go alone to the pictures or allowing them at all at a certain class of films. This advice is all very well, but the difficulty is that ono never knows what one is going to see at the pictures. It cannot bo denied that the censorship is very lax, the standard of what is wholesome and decent being set far too low. No attempt is made by the film producers to improve the popular taste, rather the reverse. Tho portrayal of scenes of crime and vice, varied by maudlin sentimentalism, forms by far too much of the bill of fare at the theatres. The value of such associations of yonng people as that just inaugurated "here will be in proportion to their success in leading the juvenile mind to regard much that they see at the theatre as an illustratiuou of what to avoid iu life. To fprbid children to go to tho pictures at all is a policy that in all probability would lead - to worse results. The school committee has received word that an application for h subsidy ior erecting a girls’ shelter shed will receive favourable consideration from the department. It will bo remembered that when the Minister was here he was asked for a subsidy to a kind of refreshment room a request that rather non. plussod tho hon. gentleman. The girls really need a sheltpr-shed ’for wet weather, and, if cups of cocoa are served in the dinner-hour, they will be none the less welcome for being assimilated in a shed instead of a dininghall. . ,

Stratford’s delegates to the hospitals’ conference have returned, and report that tlie only remit from the Stratford Board was accepted by the Health Department without discussion. It concerned the maintenance of the families of convicted criminals which our board urged should bo a responsibility of the State if it removed the breadwinner in the interests of justice. Stratford is interested to the tune of a good round sum annually. Constrained by the difficulty, amounting almost to impossibility, of getting anything done in the way of building, our A. and P. Association will have for the next 12 months to confine itself to “carrying-on.” This was the result of an" inspection of the grounds hy the committee appointed to report on additions and repairs. Plans of the new Broadway bridge are to hand from the Public WorlTs Department. The cost is estimated at from £IO,OOO and £12,000. Hero again comes in the want of materials, and it is a sure thing that an immense quantity of water has yet to flow under the present bridge, condemned as unsafe though it may be. The Bov. Howard Elliott addressed a large meeting in the Town Hall last night. There, was no disturbance.