184 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



wanting. This is only one illustration of scores that might 

 be cited to show that it is the social, the domestic side of 

 native life that should receive more attention if the race is 

 to be preserved. Questions of land and of title, of technical 

 schools, and of special native settlements, are insignificant 

 compared with the social life of the natives, and those who 

 would help in the regeneration of the Maori will need to begin 

 at the home and with the womenkmd, whose lot is so nearly 

 associated with the perpetuation of the race. Homes have 

 to be made and responsibilities realised, and these can be 

 done by presenting, as in the case of the working-men's 

 homes of the Old Land, higher ideals of domestic life, greater 

 comfort, and more attractions. The women should know how 

 to cook, to bake, to nurse the sick, and how to deal with 

 child-life, and those things can be best done by the help of 

 women who interest themselves in the uplifting of their kind 

 to a higher and better plane of living. 



The missionaries have had their day, and so have the 

 land-seeking pakehas, and the result cannot be deemed as 

 wholly satisfactory. As means to an end it is the women 

 of New Zealand who can influence the social life of the Maori, 

 and I would suggest to the Women's Council of New Zealand 

 that the line of least resistance and of greatest promise in 

 the uplifting of the people is among the native women. To 

 establish a mission for the social regeneration of the women 

 would prepare the native for conditions which the school life 

 has made him ready to accept; but which he is unable to 

 carry out himself. To bring the native women under the 

 home influence, as represented by a school for plain cooking, 

 nursing, and house management, should be the aim of those 

 who have to do with the Native Councils, whose work must 

 fail unless action is at once taken to influence the women in 

 all that makes for healthy and happy homes, along lines such 

 as the girls have learnt when drawn to such schools as those 

 established at Hukarere and elsewhere. 



x\s for the young men, I would again urge their claims to 

 become the teachers, the ministers, doctors, and lawyers of 

 their own people. There is no reason why a young and intel- 

 ligent native should not receive an appointment as a pupil- 

 teacher, an assistant, and finally as principal teacher in a 

 native school. The natives are apt teachers. They caneXplain 

 matters in a simple and interesting way, and should a training- 

 school for the technical training of teachers be established in 

 the North Island a proportionate number of young Te Aute 

 students who are desirous of becoming teachers should be 

 drafted into the school as a preparatory step. 



In conclusion, I would point out what appear to me as 

 serious omissions with respect to the Maori census. "We give 



