Wanganui Chronicle. AND PATEA-RANGITIKEI ADVERTISER. "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1881.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXIII, Issue 9456, 23 July 1881, Page 2

Wanganui Chronicle. AND PATEA-RANGITIKEI ADVERTISER. " NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1881.

There is no denying the fact that the charitable institutions of New Zealand are not at all on a satisfactory basis, and that even in the oldest and most important towns a great deal of sharp distress which ought to be relieved has to be endured by the sufferers, without any such timely and humane assistance. The subject is one of the utmost difficulty, and might be divided into several branches, and looked at from numerous points of view. In some parts of the colony the want of a well-arranged system of charitable aid, and the want of funds to give effect to it, are much more severely felt than in others, but we believe that nowhere is adequate provision made for relieving the distress which must inevitably occur even in the most prosperous communities. The insufficiency of the arrangements was never more fully made clear than during the last two or three years of depression. Those who complained most loudly were very often not those who were suffering most. The ranks of the "unemployed" were swelled by a large contingent of the class of men who are said to walk about seeking for work and praying to God that they may not find it. It was not on the wharves, in the market places, and at the street corners that the principal sufferers were to be found. The able-bodied men generally contrived to get plenty to eat and drink, and we never heard of one who was starved to death or whose clothes hung loose upon their owner, as a sign of compulsory fasting. It was in the lanes and alleys and amongst the women and the children, and the old and decrepid, that the greatest destitution prevailed ; and, if all be true which was reported from time to time, neither public nor private charity accomplished fully what might have been reasonably expected of it. We recollect commenting rather severely on a reporter's sensational and " Paul Pry" sort of effusion published last year by one of our Wellington contemporaries, concerning the distress existing in the back streets of that city. It was to the style which we took exception. We did not question the truth of the statements made ; in fact, we believed that the chronicler did not see the worst. What he related was, however, bad enough. There were women and children in the direst poverty, some of them deserted by their natural protectors, and having a hard struggle to keep body and soul together. Private charity was doing something, and the city authorities a little more, to meet the necessities of the case, but the organisation was imperfect and the relief insufficient and not easily obtainable. Similar distress prevailed over a great part of the colony, and similar provision was made for its amelioration. But there was an uneasy feeling that enough was not being clone, especially in a country which, notwithstanding the hard times, could iiad large sums of money to relieve distress in the "United

Kingdom, It was nofc an unreasonable expectation that the lengthened period of depression would result in J the establishment of strong and active ! charitable organisations throughout the length and breadth of the land — organisations which would outlive the pressing occasion which called them into existence, and become the permanent and accepted channels for the relief of distress. This certainly has not been the case to any great extent. There are a multitude of charitable associations in New Zealand ; indeed, few towns with a couple of thousand inhabitants are without something of the sort, but the work is generally in the hands of a faithful few who are frequently harassed by the claims which are made on their slender resources, and are sometimes powerless to render aid of the kind most needed. In no. class of cases is this more severely and frequently felt than in those where women or children have, either by death or desertion, lost their natural supporters. Wife desertion is a crime of everyday occurrence in New Zealand, and is committed in the coolest and most off-hand manner. The man perhaps cannot get work which exactly suits him, or he may merely have a fancy for roaming. He scrapes together a few shillings or pounds, as the case may be, tells those dependent on him that he can get work at such and such a place, and will send them money in the course of a week. He then shoulders his swag and marches off. It may be that at the time of his departure he doe 3 not contemplate the commission of a dastardly offence against his wife and family, but fully expects to get employment, and intends to remit money. The records of every Magistrate's Court in the colony show that, for some reason or other, the pledge to come back or | send assistance is in many instances j ruthlessly disregarded, and to such an extent has this been the case, that the matter was considered of sufficient importance to form the subject of discussion and proposed arrangement at the recent Intercolonial Conference at Sydney. At present the man who deserts wife and child and goes to another colony cannot be brought back by warrant, as the offence is not a felony. There will not improbably be either joint legislation on the part of the Australasian Colonies, with a view to remedying the evil, or the Imperial Legis- j ture will be asked to pass a new Extradition Act, authorizing the sending back of these criminals to the place where their offence was committed. But those who thus contrive to get well beyond the reach of the law, even if their whereabouts is discovered, form but a small proportion of the deserters of wives and children. Every benevolent society in New Zealand has some of these victims on its list as recipients of charitable aid, and the burden — always heavy — is frequently more than the funds of the society can bear. The assistance of the police is sometimes invoked, and the runaway discovered, brought back, and compelled either to do his duty or go to gaol. In many cases setting the law in motion does not improve matters. The man contrives to keep out of the way, and the wife and children have to be assisted or altogether supported out of charitable funds, for which there is ample employment in assisting the sick and necessitous who have no able-bodied relations to fall back on. It seems to us that the present method of dealing with the deserters when they happen to be caught is defective. The practice is to order the offender to pay a certain weekly sum, and, in case of default, to be sent to gaol. It would be an improvement if, in every case of desertion, the man were sent to hard labour for three or six months. He has committed a cowardly offence — a good deal worse in our opinion than larceny — and should not be allowed to escape harmless by merely doing his duty in the future. '• lie should first be made to suffer for the past. If men knew that they might expect prison fare and prison labour as the reward of desertion, we should hear of fewer women and children left to the tender mercies of the community. Our local Benevolent Society is not without its experience with regard to these cases. There is now in Wanganui a family of four or five children, the eldest about fourteen, the youngest about three years old ; their mother is dead, and their father has deserted them — that is, he has been absent for some months and has contributed nothing to their support, although we are informed that he is actually in receipt of wages up the country. These children live together in a cottage with no grown up person to look after them. They are in filth and rags, and exist on what the Benevolent Society can afford to give, and on the charity of neighbours. Their home is the streets in the daytime, and at night they " pig in together " in the best way they can. Their education is unquestionably free and secular, though they never enter the doors of the State or any other school. They are apparently going to the devil by the shortest road, and may be expected to use the gaols of the colony as their houses of call by the way. We have heard a good deal about pauperising a community by establishing a State system of charitable aid, but the community had better run that risk than put up with such a certainty of evil as we have represented. We blame no one in the above case but the man — who ought to be sent to prison — and the community which suffers such things to exist in its midst. The father's default is abominable, but the children ought to be protected from the consequences of his crime. If under their present circumstances they grow up to be thieves and harlots, who shall be held accountable ? These are the cases which make us question the efficiency of our charitable institutions. There should be some authority which would at once rescue | from their misery these children and others similarly situated, some fund ■\\iiich would defray the cost of their proper food and raiment, and some system under which they might be trained in their duty to society, even though the State declined to impart to them the knowledge that there is | a God.