Mrs Aldis and the ' Herald

Observer, Volume XV, Issue 885, 14 December 1895, Page 2

Mrs Aldis and the ' Herald

Mary Steadman Aldis waß a trifle indiscreet when she put two plain questions to the Auckland Herald, with the request that the answers should be given in plain ■words without needless verbiage. The Herald conceded to Mary Steadman the wish of her heart. The two questions related to the operation and suspension of the CD. Act in Auckland, and the attitude of Mrs Mary Steadman. and her somewhat peculiar spouse towards this and other public questions. The Herald says of ths CD Act : 'It worked well here beyond any honest doubt. It purified our streets ; it lessened the prevalence of the social evil; it arrested disease ; it stretched out the hand of mercy to the suffering in compassion which Jesus showed when He was on earth. It was never once abused ; never was there even a charge of abuse. So far from the unfortunate women who were subjected to its provisions regarding themselves as insulted or wronged by it, they were grateful for its kindness to them. It relieved them from suffering, restored them to health, and in the time of doing so enabled good women like ministering angels to bring their gentle influences to bear on the poor creatures, so as to induce them to return to lives of honour and of happiness. Further than this, it became a protection to posterity in tending to eliminate a physical poison deleterious to the future of the race.

So much for the Act itself. And then the Herald proceeds to gratify Mary Steadman's desire for ' plain words without needless verbiage,' thus : ' They (Mr and Mrs Aldis) have set themselves up as de jure censors of the public, denouncing the convictions of all the rest of the community as necessarily daDgerous and immoral. Nor has this censorship been confined to humanity, but they have warred with the ducks for quacking, the dogs for barking, the cocks for crowing, the cows for mooing, the birds for singing, the riflemen for shooting, the bells for ringing, and all things animate or inanimate that seemed to disturb the eternal silence of the universe. In dealing with social questions they have familiarised the minds of the pure and the innocent with loathsome and debasing details, and in so doing they have lowered the moral tone of the community as it never

was in Auckland before they came here. In dealing with opponents they have coolly assumed that every man or woman opposed to them is impure, and only planning to accomplish immoral purposes ; and in this way, by terrorising the timid with imputations of impurity ,and by dißßeminating a literature that should not have been allowed by the police to circulate in the country, they were, it is true, instrumental in inducing the suspension of the CD. Act. This is what they have done, put in ' plain words,' as requested by Mrs Aldis;. and though the courtesy, which is always due to a lady makes one reluctant to say it, it is a fact which we regret we have to say, that the blame for all these things is laid on Mrs Aldis herself.'

This is a severe castigation — and more severe because it is so well merited. Mary Steadman for once has relied too strongly upon the special consideration that journalists are wont to extend to the gentler sex. And if the plain answers to her plain questions are startling in their plainness Mary Steadman has only herself to blame. She wanted plain language, and she has got it. There is this about the Aldis husband and wife, and their attitude towards the CD. Act, that while they were anxious to destroy the only system of regulating vice we had, they neither suggested nor assisted to create anything to take its place. Not one of the many proposals for reform ha 3 met with their sympathy. Their pens have intentionally or otherwise advocated free trade in vice. Police intervention, to stein the torrent of the social evil has been denonnced as an intolerable interference with the liberty of the individual ; the labours of those who concerned themselves in the rescue movement were held up to public scorn and ridicule, and. as the Herald says, they have questioned the motives and character of everyone opposed to them. For our own part, we care little what remedy is devised to deal with the social evil, so long as there is a remedy. But the time has come for the community to take prompt and vigorous action to regulate a vice that is swiftly undermining the morals of the community.