District Hospitals & Charitable Aid Board.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2019, 19 January 1887, Page 2

District Hospitals & Charitable Aid Board.

> The Wairarapa District Hospital Board has, with the exception of one member to represent the Grey town Borough Council, now been re-eleeted or re-appointed. The election lor the members ol the new Board to hold oflice for the year ensuing should have been held on the fourth Wednesday in the

month of November, but either through apathy, or pernaps on account of the functions of the Board being at the present time almost nil, the several local bodies of the Wairarapa, with the exception of the Masterton Borough Council, did not return their representatives in the month of November last; but at the late meetiug of the County Council for the South Wairarapa that body nominated for the approval of the Governor four gentlemen to represent the county south ; the names of the gentlemen thus nominated are County Councillors, viz., H Bunny (the present chairman of the Board). Win, Booth (the chairman of the South County Council), W. C. Buchanan, M H.R., and J. Tully, and it may he presumed that bis Excellency will accept the services of these gentlemen on the Board, The Governor has already in terms of section 7 of the “ Hospital Act, 1885,” appointed Messrs R S. Hawkins, W. H. Beetham, and R. 1). Dagg to represedt the Wairarapa North County on the Board. If the Borough Council of Greytown wish to be represented (and Greytown-being appointed the meeting place of the Board the Council should attend to this), they must follow suit with the County Council and nominate the Mayor or some other suitable person to represent them without delay, as the first meeting of the new Board will probably soon be convened. The members elected by the Masterton Borough Council in November last are—Bis Worship the Mayor, Mr M. Caaelberg, and Councillor Samuel Edward Gapper. The apportionment of the representation consequently is as follows :—Wairarapa South County Council, four members ; North, three members ; Masterton Borough Council, two members ; and Greytown Borough Council one member. We draw attention to the constitution of the new Board for this reason : it is generally considered by members of Parliament in various parts of New Zealand that the District Hospital and Charitable Aid Boards should dispense their own charitable aid to the needy of their own particular districts. Our own member, Mr Buchanan, has spoken very distinctly in this direction npon several occasions, and Mr Bunny, the chairman of our Board, and of the United District Board, has expressed similar views. The argument used by some of the advocates of this change is, that a district like the Wairarapa is called upon to supply more than its fair share of charitable aid, and the bulk of the money contributed to the charitable aid fund from the Wairarapa and other large county areas goes to alleviate the distress of the poor and destitute iu the large towns or centres, such ns Wellington, Dunedin, Auckland, and Christchurch. Now it is well known and universally acknowledged that there is a far greater proportion of poverty in these centres and thickly populated “ haunts of men ” than there is in the provinces and more scattered districts, where men do not of necessity require to limit themselves to such narrow grooves in seeking employment. In country places, if a man cannot get work as a carpenter, blacksmith, butcher, baker, gunsmith, tailor, bootmaker, brickmaker, batter, Ac., be can, if be is at all of a willing disposition, procure a job at fencing, ditching, felling bush, dealing land, or any other avocation, which would procure sustenance, and keep the wolf frcm the door. He can, if poor and needy, get a tenement at almost nominal rent, commensurate with bis straightened circumstances, whereas iu Wellington, as in other crowded cities in the colonies, and elsewhere, the bonse rent forms one of the most formidable items in the expenses of the working man, and the merest rabbit butch of a dwelling with a back yard about the size of a cemetery allotment, would swallow up a weekly rental, amounting to as much as a family in the country could, upon a pinch, obtain all the necessaries of life, with home shelter included, for the same period. Then again, the pure, healthy, uucrowded country air, not subject to the pollutions appertaining to dense populations and limited space, has net the same tendency to breed disease and sickness, which at sundry times, makes such inroads upon the circumstances of the mechanic oi labouring man in the metropolitan centres. Of coarse there is the good argument that every healthy workman should guard against sickness by providentially becoming a member of some sick and benefit society, many of which, if be is worthy, are open to receive him in bis health, prime of life and vigour. There are many opportunities, it is true, in our towns to provide for the evil day, but at the same time many a struggling working man with a numerous family, and such men are generally found to be so enriched, cannot part with even sixpence of his weekly earnings to pay into a lodge. When the Saturday night’s scores with the butcher, baker, and landlord are satisfied, where is the margin for the lodge ? Many a man after parting with his weekly earnings finds, more especially if Johnny or Sophia want a pair of boots, that the supply is inadequate to the demand, even if not a sixpence is diverted in the cost of a pint of colouiai beer. Many there are it is true, who, regardless of all the consequences to their family, and the sufferings and privations of the wife and children at home, most cruelly and selfishly throw down their shilling or two, as the case may be, on the counter of the hotel bar, and instead of trying to lighten the burden and infuse an amount of comfort and happiness into their otherwise dreary homes, on the Saturday night, with their boon companions, regardless of all present or hereafter consequences, indulge in moistening their interiors until they are warned by the publican or guardian of the peace to seek refuge elsewhere, which they do by going home in a mellow and unsavoury ;Btate, totally unlit to converse rationally with the partner of their joys and sorrows, and in many oases, morose and disagreeable in disposition, thus making those whom they have vowed to nourish, as miserable and unhappy as it may be the lot of any human beings to become. Of course such characters as those just described would be calculated to become recruits to the ranks of the destitute, and be reliant entirely upon the Charitable Aid Board should fell sickness (which in numberless oases does) overtake them or their households. Such as those, and the chronic invalids to be found in large proportions in all towns are those for whom our contributions iu the Wairarapa in most casts are required. If is seldom, very seldom indeed, that from this district a family is sent to Wellington seeking relief from the United Board ; there are a few isolated cases of men who have no kith or kin here, being brought in from some remote or outlying station in a state of sickness requiring succour and assistance. When these cases occur ire have our local institutions supported by voluntary contributions, and the doors are always open to relegate such unfortunates to these asylums, without they expressly wish to be sent to’ Wellington. So the argument on our side bolds good in all these cases and we contend tint we supply more than out fair share towards the distress of the Empire city. The time must come, aud it will shortly arrive, when we must demand from the colony the right to administer our own local charitable aid ; we earn the money in the district, and if required let as spend it in the district. It is not fair and just that so many private individuals should have from t'me to time to dip their hands into their pockets to assist their poorer neighbors when adversity overtakes them. It is simply for the sake of the honor and credit of the district these cases are seldom or ever sent for relief to the Central Board. We have a public fund of our own, raised in our own district; let us have the command of our money; let our local poor be assisted from that fund aud then the chavitably disposed, (and in country an in other districls their name is legion) will not have to bear the double burden of having (o pay taxes for the support of the poor in other

parti and alio privately to assist their own, Xu the next session ol we hop* that our represent* t ves. uu*t particularly those from the Wairarspa, will support a movement whereby wc ihall be flowed to control onr Cbaritilb Aid fondi. We. a» settlers in New Zealand, do not object to supplement the central Boards with a fsat modicum ol subscriptions, but it is time that they took more ol their own troubles upon ‘bur own shoulders. Now it must not be interred that because we have drawn the illustration of the drinking propensities of some of the colonial working men as one of the evils of improvidence that we are preaching total abstinence, fur Iroin it; if the workman eetns good and regular wages, does not drink to oxctfss or to such an extent as to make bis home unhappy by his presence in a maudlin and unconscious state, or by his absence and neglect, he has as much light to his pint or glass of beer, if he enjoys it, as the gentleman or merchant to his glass, of wine or any other more expensive drink, and if he earns it and can take his beer without depriving himaell or family of greater necessities, then by all means let him have it, if he desires it. 1 hers arc other means of extravagance and improvidence. Beside the drinking habits of the work* iug man there is the improvident wife, who will by a system of bad mismanagement squander her husband’s earnings ; and two pounds in the hands of a careful iiousewifs v, ill go as far again as would almost double that sum at the command of the slovenly and careless matron or housekeeper, and much ol the happiness or misery of the household depends upon the management of the wife. A cleanly painstaking and economical woman will make her home attractive to her husband and entice him by all the gentle arts in her power to spend as many of his leisure moments as possible in her company, while upon the other hand the slatternly female will, by her upside-down method of keeping her house, make ail her surroundings so perfectly uncanny and disagreeable os to drive her husband from his home and natural place of repose, to seek solaoe elsewhere, if only in the tap room of a public house. No respectable publican if he knows bis business and respects himself and family can have any regard for a drunkard. Publicans generally respect the man who can take his liquor and go on about his business, and many drunkards owe their condition to their uninviting and uncomfortable homes, wives should look to this and then when the dark hour of trouble suddenly overtakes them or their families, there probably will be a fund ol relief without the necessity of troubling any institution either public or private. Of course we, here in the Wairarapa, ate not free from the same causes ol and effects from improvidence, but as we are more ol a scattered population proportionately, scattered are the cases alluded to. Then there is another feature which points strongly to the necessity for local bodies to deal with the matter of local charity ; it may safely be assumed that members of a Board, living in a particular district where relief is required, would by virtue ol being acquainted with the exact positions and characters of the destitute persons be far the best judges as to the amount and nature of the relief asked for, and the immediate necessity or otherwise for prompt assistance, la country districts every person's exact position mayj he easily known without the aid ol private inquiries, and the trouble of attending to pressing wants would be much lessened if the Charitable Institution were made purely local. It is to be hoped next session that tue provincial representative* will give this matter their grave consideration and thou probably w* shall find some useful work lor our local Charitable Board to do, but at present they happen to be a body, which if ornamental, are not by any means as useful as they should t)3.