insurance, he proposed that no child under ten years should be insured for more than £5.
The measures described in these pages are only some of those that deal with the “humanities.” The humanitarian principle runs through many Acts passed by his Administration. It permeates the labour laws, the educational system, the land policy, and even the tariff. The long series of Acts stretching over fifteen or sixteen years of the colony’s history is full of humanitarianism.
He once reviewed these “humanities,” and he was not afraid of ridicule by beginning with the Midwives Act. He saw the scheme embodied in this measure sufficiently far advanced to enable him to open a maternity home at Dunedin. “The silent martyrs of life,” he said on that occasion, “are the low-waged workers’ wives, who keep the cradle full and bear the double burden of poverty and maternity. Can we not profitably lighten their cross and brighten their lives by this simple humanity? One great, large-hearted man in England declared that most of the children of the poor in that country were not so much born into life as damned into it; this reproach should have no truth in this prosperous land. The wages of the working classes seldom permit of comfort and skilled attendance. Feeling this, we have taken steps to establish maternity homes. My desire is that these homes will be available to all whose means will not permit of private comfort and skilled attendance. My earnest hope is that this ‘humanity’ may give the child a better chance of life and the mother a lighter burden to bear.”
