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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5
[miscellaneous paragraphs]
A certain Wairarapa newspaper demands that the Railway Commissioners should be cashiered for employing boys in the service. According to the luminary in question apparently no « boy » should be allowed to earn wages or learn any art, craft, or profession. Boys have no rights; they have no place in the world's economy. Unfortunately in certain centres practical effect is to some extent given to this theory, and the genus larrikin—which is only one step removed from the criminal—is on the increase. Boys who are forcibly debarred from following any useful employment in their youth will most probably compel the community to maintain them in idleness when they arrive at maturity—we had almost written manhood. The rival paper retorts that whatever its contemporary's theories may be, its practice is widely different. If the Railway Commissioners followed its example instead of its advice, there would scarcely be a man in the service. The appearance of the journal fully bears out the criticism. None but boys, and ill-instructed boys, could set types so badly. Only a raw juvenile could so make up a form, first of all deluging the columns with water so that great part of the page is unreadable. The proof-reading is clearly done by a boy, who would be the better for some instruction in orthography and punctuation. The literary work apparently falls to the share of the most incapable youngster of all, who thinks to conceal the fact by advocating a general boy-cot of his fellow boys.