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Sess. 11.—1897. NEW ZEALAND.

HOSPITALS AND CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS OF THE COLONY (REPORT ON THE), BY THE INSPECTOR OF HOSPITALS.

Presented to both Houses of the General Assembly by Command of His Excellency.

The Inspector of Hospitals and Chabitable Institutions to the Hon. the Ministee of Education. Sir,— I have so long and so vainly tried to rouse the Parliament and the country to the incalculable evils of our system of outdoor relief that I think it better in this report to quote the presidential address of the National American Congress of Charities for 1896: — " Take the question of outdoor relief, illustrating what the President, A. D. Wright, Wisconsin, calls the new philanthropy of the dawn of the twentieth century. " This new philanthropy studies causes as well as symptoms, and it considers classes as well as individuals. On the practical side it tries to improve conditions, thus changing the environment of the defective. It tries to build up character, as well as to relieve or punish, believing that the essential cause of pauperism and crime is usually some defect inside the pauper or criminal as well as bad conditions around him, and it seeks for prevention as well as cure. Outdoor relief does not improve the conditions of the pauper; it does not build up his character; it neither prevents nor cures pauperism. It is therefore contrary to the principles of the new philanthropy, which would meet the same case by a system of friendly visiting and labour bureaux, and, where these failed to cure, would place adult paupers in institutions where they could not propagate their parasitical blood or teach their accompanying vices. The new philanthropy is slowly winning its way. .It is cutting off the entail of hereditary pauperism and crime and insanity and idiocy in a very large degree by keeping defectives in institutions which resemble heaven in at least one particular, because there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage in them. Viewed in this light, the immense mass of people held in mild imprisonment in State and local institutions are, on the whole, wisely kept there. Unless we are prepared for the drastic measures of wholesale death, or equally wholesale castration, we must cut off defective heredity by the more expensive method of wholesale imprisonment." Outdoor relief is as catching as small-pox, and just as deadly. In 1890 a Bill on exactly these lines was introduced into our Parliament. Two years ago it was recast, leaving out the cardinal principle of imprisonment for all able-bodied loafers who would not work. The reason for leaving this keystone out of the arch was that public opinion was not ripe for such a drastic step. We are so given over to weak sentimentalism in New Zealand in all that relates to the problem of poverty that probably we shall have to be taught by hard experience before any Government can be expected to grasp this nettle. The time, however, cannot be far off when we must have a rude awakening from our dreams of a short-cut to Utopia. To point the moral: I know,of a " defective " half-imbecile girl who has already had five illegitimate children by different fathers, all of whom are now being supported by the Charitable Aid Board, while, of course, the mother is maintained, and encouraged to propagate more. Truly it is a far cry to Utopia. All over New Zealand the State subsidy for indiscriminate outdoor relief is the most effective scheme that could be devised for the systematic cultivation of social parasites. We carefully hatch them out, and lay them down in the alimentary tracts of society, and wo call the insane proceeding philanthropy. No man feels more deeply than I the fact that those of our people who have lapsed from self-respect and independence have probably been more sinned against than sinning, especially since the beginning of the Age of Machinery, with all its accumulation of products; but sahis populi suprema lex. That is the sole justification, the only valid excuse, for such legislation as I believe to be inevitable. I have called our system of giving outdoor relief indiscriminate :itis so all over the country ; but it is worse in Wellington than anywhere else. In this belief, I instructed Mrs. Grace Neill, the Assistant Inspector specially appointed for this work, to attend the meetings of the Benevolent Trustees, and thereafter to personally visit and examine in every possible way the recipients of aid—their homes and their environment. I told her to take any time she found necessary, and to use every means to get at the facts, a task of the utmost com--I—H. 22.