Some of the complainants say that the evil is as bad as could be.
However, there seems to be general agreement with the declarations of police officers that the larrikin evil has ceased to exist in Australia.
Compulsory military training is said to have done much to prevent a recrudescence of the evil, because youths now spend in drill a good deal of the time which budding larrikins of the past used to devote to loafing and cigarette smoking at street corners.
It was resolute action by a couple of police officers that practically wiped out the larrikin pest about Melbourne.
It is not on the official records, but it is well known when ordinary velvet-gloved methods of some police magistrates failed to lessen the larrikin pest, which kept alive in spite of fines, a determined police sub-inspector would get together a lot of hefty, strong-armed constables, and send them out well armed with heavy clubs, with instructions to ''do your best, but don't make any arrests.''
Then followed some grim fights, and many a skull was dented.
The attendants at the police hospital were for a while kept busy at effecting repairs to damaged policemen thirsting to get back into the fighting squad.
But the larrikin element was beaten and scattered.
In other places several magistrates helped considerably by imposing fines which ''broke the bank''of larrikin ''pushes,'' despite the remarkable pecuniary resources of the ''pushes,'' which did not hesitate to gather coin by robbery and blackmail.
Some humanists may say education has stopped organised larrikinism.
Perhaps, but the policeman's club and the crushing fines did more.
• It is years since we have had a big gold rush in Australia, but the germs of the gold fever of which we witnessed most sensational outbreaks are still active and ready for an epidemic at a moment's notice.
This was shown plainly, if on a restricted scale, at a sports gathering in aid of charities held on Wednesday at Dunolly, in Victoria.
Some men engaged in a quoit match.
When one of the players lifted a quoit he found in the hole it had made a nugget of gold weighing an ounce.
As if by magic, the picnic ground and its surroundings were at once converted into the scene of a frantic rush to mark out claims.
Pieces of sapling, women's parasols, rails wrenched from a fence, and quoits used as picks were amongst the implements forced into service for the marking out of claims.
The ground was pegged in all directions in a miraculously short time.
It is virgin ground, and the absence of deserted ''duffers'' helps to sustain the hopeful hunters for more and bigger nuggets in the picnic paddock.
• Sheaf-tossing is becoming a very popular event at North Island sports gatherings and agricultural and pastoral shows.
At the Linton sports over 20 young men, principally farm hands, competed in this event, and at the Marton show there were 31 competitors, the winner tossing the sheaf 24ft.
At Awahuri last month the winner won with a toss of 23ft 11in.
The event consists of throwing a sheaf of rushes or corn, which is bound round the base with a piece of sacking or similar material, over a bar which is swung between two uprights, similar to a football goal post.
Each competitor has three tosses at the different heights, the event being finally won by the one who throws the sheaf highest according to the rules prescribed. - ODT, 19.2.1914.
• COPIES OF PICTURE AVAILABLE FROM ODT FRONT OFFICE, LOWER STUART ST, OR WWW.OTAGOIMAGES.CO.NZ
