THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1910. THE FRESH-AIR FUND.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9710, 4 February 1910, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1910. THE FRESH-AIR FUND.

The well-known London newspaper proprietor, Mr G. Arthur Pearson, is making an appeal in this country for subscriptions to the Fresh Air Fund, the object of which is to enable child waifs of the great cities of the United Kingdom to get an oc- ' casional glimpse of nature's ungrimed and unwiinkled face. The one necessity of life that nature has provided more abundantly than any other is pure air, yet there are hundreds of thousands of children, not to speak of grown-ups, in these places, who do not know what fresh air is. They have never felt its balm upon their

faces, 01 its wine-like stimulus in i their blood They wilt in an atmosphere of grime and gloom, where even the very sunbeams are sold at famine prices by those who have acquired the right to charge for their admission into the streets, where the slum children are born and reared. The very name of a Fresh Air Fund in a world floating in an infinite ethereal sea, has a satirical sound. But the exigencies of modern life are such that people are compelled to crowd into certain confined spaces, from which, in order to find room for them, the very air and light have to be barred out. In the tenement house of the slums the same stale air has to be used over and over again, with barely a sufficient amount of re-oxygenation to keep the dwellers alive. The free use of air and sunshine means ample space, and that is too dear for the crowded-up people to be able to afford. It is an appal ling thing to think of the number of children who are air-starved, in the cities of the world. If the whole of them could be taken in at one "coup d'oeil," the sight would probably be more than the most callousminded man or woman alive could bear. It is a picture of which we dare not allow even imagination to sae more than one small corner at a time. But it is there all the same, the skeleton at civilisation's feast, and we know that beneath the veil with which we cover its grizly nakedness it is silently mocking at what is called modern progress. The enormous growth of cities during recent years has introduced both aggravating and mitigating factors into £he problem of the slums. The numbers of the overcrowded have been increased on the one hand, while improved tiethnds of sanitation and housing otand as some set-off on the other. B tter transit facilities, which enable i ople to go now and then to the f icsh air which is not permitted to cjme to them, represent another slig' u compensation given by the social developments that are causing mora and more intense competition for living room in the cities.