A circular from the Education Department was received at yesterday's meeting of the Education Board in connection with the granting of free school books.
It was intimated that as regards classes P to Standard IV, inclusive, a specific grant would be made for 1912 and succeeding years for the replacement of free books, and that Standards V and VI would receive a grant to provide them with new books and also a specific sum for replacement in subsequent years.
The grant for Standards V and VI would practically provide for all the books required for these standards. A proviso has been made that pupils in Standards V and VI may be required to purchase the miscellaneous reader for the standard if, in lieu of providing such reader free, the board expends a portion of the grant in the purchase of the paper used in schools for school purposes instead of slates. A further proviso is made that at least an equal sum shall be spent for the same purpose out of the school funds of any school were such paper is supplied.
• A well-known chinese resident, Yum Wah, returned to Riverton last week after several years absence in China. He informs the Western Star that there is a great advance in trade in China at the present time. The railway will soon be completed from Canton to Peking, and this will open up the country considerably. He says large factories are springing up on all sides, and the iron and coal mines of the interior are being worked. The country is hardly ever free of risings, and his own city of Canton not long ago there was a collision between the troops and Boxers, when over 200 of the latter were killed. Yum Wah has a great admiration for the British, who are investing large sums in fostering industries. He is a doctor by profession, and a British subject, having come to this country 35 years ago. He intends to spend some time in New Zealand.
• Nearly 50 years ago Benjamin Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, deplored the "vast emigration from Ireland" as "a great social and political calamity". "I acknowledge," he said, "that under some conditions and even under general conditions emigration is the safety valve of a people. But there is a difference between blood-letting and hemorrhage." The terrible nature of this hemorrhage in the case of Ireland may be gathered from the estimate that the total number of Irish emigrants from May, 1851, to December, 1906, was over four million souls.
There has been some improvement within the last decade, for whereas in 1900 the total number of emigrants was 45,188, or over 10 per thousand of the population, in 1908 the emigration decreased to 23,295, or a little more than five per thousand. This improvement was largely due to the operation of the successive Land Purchase Acts, particularly Mr Wyndham's Act of 1903, for under the beneficent provisions of that measure a quarter of a million tenants were enabled in five years to purchase their holdings. In 1909, however, the emigration figures showed an upward trend, the total number of emigrants that year being 28,676, or an increase of over 5000 on the previous year. And a cablegram just to hand reveals a further advance to 32,457 in 1910, when the loss of population exceeded the natural increase by about 5000.
Whether this increased emigration of over 9000 within two years is attributable to the less liberal provisions of the more recent law it is difficult to say. But under the new Act land purchase has once more for all practical purposes ceased.
- ODT, 17.8.1911
