EH? SHALL WE FLOG?

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1210, 19 August 1911, Page 6

EH? SHALL WE FLOG?

AND WHY MUST WE? EVOLUTION OF THE IXOG-EB.

(By GyroA

The (Wellington) Grand Jury views with alarm the larce number of sexual offences continually comintr before the Courts—especially against young children, and ie of opinion that these offences should he treated with more severity, and by the administration of corporal punishment where neces-Eary.-Suprcmo Court nroccedings. "Jimmy"—Crime Child, of Crime Parents. Hog? Yes, gentlemen of the Grand Jury, it is to be feared that wo must. But, have you thought of the flog-ce—his genesis and evolution? He stands on a plnno of crimo -which is all his own. He is like no other criminal. The wharf pillager, for instance, is a. malefactor who comes and- goes in waves, as every merchant and shipping clerk can tell you, but the flog-ee, he is quite different—he is the steadily growing blotch on the face of society. Let us consider the flog-ee, gentlemen, froin the first day on which he folds his little hands behind his little holland pinnie, and' stands up to say his "lesson" in the sunlit infant room of a

Stato school, until tho day conies when his yells, surmounting the tin fence of the gaol (over which Powelka leapt this week), rouso the eohoes clown Abel Smith Street, and along the Ten-ace. Why havo we got' tho poor little atom strapped up to a cask, and belabored by an Irishman? I am quite sure, gentlemen of the Grand Jury; that you do not know tho flog-ce as well as I do. As a teacher in a Stato school for ten years I often saw the flog-ce—tho weird, weedy child of a poor home—and often introduced him to tho only Friend who could have saved him from the cask, and the vigorous Irishman who swings tho "cat" in tho gaol. Whenever I brought him out in front of tho class, and looked at his queer littlo snub nose, and furtive eyes, and poor pinched tear-grinic-d face I would (if ho could have understood nii> havo said something like, this:

How We Used to Save Poor "Jimmy." Jimmy. This is 1900. You must know-that,in 1890 J. A. Millar spatchcocked into our gradual evolution a maritime striko which was violent Since' then we have had a host of really violent paper Acts- of Parliament which Millar and others suppose are going to change, the Ordained Order of things by abolishing our Great Friend Suffering, without which thero is no improvement. I see, in the regime of J. A. Millar and ScddonWard, influences making for tho total extinction of all righteousness on the part of tho State, and the total blotting out of the Golden Gospel of Effort from tho mind of the poor man's son. Jimmy, I propose to savo ■you from That, lest it may happen that, in 1911, Millar, Ward, and others—not' knowing, in tneir ignorance, exactly what to do with you (and probably not caring much) may leave it to grand juries (who aro usually busy men with little sympathy for you) to treat you to the State's brutal correctives. Jimmy, under tho Ward and tho Millar, the Mackenzie, and tho Fovrlds, and, latterly, the Findlay, I take the great risk—for under tho anti-suffer-ing regime it is a great risk—l tako tliis opportunity of beginning your flogging at once, lest a woc.se flogging (which can do you no personal _ good) befall you later. You are, Jimmy, no doubt aware how easy it is for you, under this weird Seddon-Waril regime, to lay your teacher low with a 'but. Jimmy, in your own best interests it's got to be. Hold out you hand! Crime child, begotten of crime parent?, "Jimmy" would nol havo understood this and in the schools, "Jiminy" was always a problem. But in a big city outfit where the work was properly co-ordinated by the headmaster and tho pressure was evenly and equally applied irom the first standard to tho last wo teachers— poor, strenuous'battlers for righteousness and good citizenship—always found it possible to do something with "Jimmy." For tho seven years of his somewhat: clumsy assault, on tho syllabus, we held him resolutely to his duty, and introduced him— not 'without paiii, and tears and red hands—to a closer acquaintance with the ennobling influence of Effort. And, whenever his little pig-stye of a mind broke hounds in some weirdly immoral net ia the play-ground as it occasionally did, we just strapped him, and the plot of first-class Zola novel was thereby removed in ono wipe. By and by—after "Jimmy had marched forward into adolescence, and retired beyond the radius of strap and cane—we sometimes'saw his neat little boot store, or plumber's shop, going up in some growing suburb of the city and. occasionally, when "Jimmy" had made money, anil married, we noted—with some wonder at his growing command of diction— a fat six-inch advertisement in the local paper setting forth how "Mr. James Grimes, the people's candidate, would address municipal electors of I ho third ward nf Bay of Dogs on certain loans, and other current questions of the day." And then we knew that we had wnu. We had saved .Mr. Grimes from the cask. Wo had made a citizen of him. The Cancer in All State Departments. But all this.was prior h< 1000. Meantime ttb did not know what shajkiug in-

fluenees wore at work, under Seddonisni v t'.i undermine the good order and conduct of the State, in those days I always saw at least three great remedial iulliiences which were lighting the roaring rabble which Millar's maritime strike nf 1880 had let; loose— the Railway Department, 111!' police, and tho school teacher. A Railway Department is, or should be, the very embodiment of order and exactness, and", as far as an outsider can sre, it has never been the fault of the railway nllicial that it has not been so. ISut gentlemen, the "deputations"! The littlo knots of political claqners who used to ineel Mr. Scddon at the .mouth (if his saloon carriage and ask that the exprc-ss should be flagged here, and flagged there, and flagged at many quaint stations until the whole outfit became as dingy and confiisecl as one of those 'strange sheep-puns of second-class "smokei'a" into which J. A. Millar packs the I'etono workers on a Saturday afternoon. One hesitates about assailing tho police which, were, and to some extent are still, tho "last remedial influence." Some time ago, we had Arnold's police commission and, largely through the uncompromising evidence of a very resolute man—lnspector O'Brien of Dimcdin—a certain amount of things wete sheeted home. In consequence of that evidence, a number of statesmen should have been calmly laid on the altar, and offered up bill, as it-happened, Mr. Dinnic was the worker in the hold of the Ship of State and, as he could not very well "stand from under'' when the guy ropes and slings broke, ho perished.

Hei-for police now? Never believe it. The Arnold Commission probed the dissase of State unrighteousness. a little, but, on the whole, not very far. I conic to the third remedial influence which might have stood between the great right arm of the Irish warder ami "Jimmy" of to-day. Looking . back through my punishment register, where every, stroke that came- down on "Jimmy's" hand is clearly set forth, I note that, in the parallel column, which is allotted to "Complaints by Parents, Committecmoia, etc.,".' the '.entries are steadily, growing, until it came that, .in 1900. one could only see a gill of corporal punishment in a horse-trough of complaint. It was somewhero about that year that the writer—then .quite a successful teacher ia a big. city. school— came to the conclusion that the gains of reforming "Jimmy" was not worth the candle, and threw in his resignation. But that-little ebullition, in the sea of State unrighteousness, in the general breaking down of law and order did not, of course, put an end to the eternal problem of Jimmy." The Non-Crime Child—Even More Pathetic. In fact, Gentlemen of tho Grand Jurj, "Jimmy" has now come home to you like chickens and curses—you to [log. Ho will come to you in increasing numbers every year, and, still—you to flog. He will also come home to you in the next twenty years in rather a more violeut fashion—you to hang. What think ye? But that is not half of it. "Jiminy," crime child, may go his way, but what .of the non-crimo child, gentlemen—your child and mine? He is a more pathetic study still in this Moloch land, where only tho roarer wins, mid where tho axe has been laid to the root of tho Tree of Efficiency. I have never been able to feel genuinely sorry for "Jimmy," but 1 sometimes move up to the very verge of emotion when I look at "Bill"—your child and mine-aud note how he has never had a chance. "Bill" is tho hopeful inefficient w!io comes, at 11, to your office—type-writer, shorthand, plasticine puddlcr, brush worker, black and white artist, and so forth—and asks for a "job." He is the terribly eflicicnfinefHcient product of the State—Hie child who can do everything, except work. Gentlemen of the Grand Jury, your scant excursion into the why and 'wherefore' of crime and things (as indicated bv vojtr recommendation to the Judge) seems to me to be so near-sighted that (with or without, your permission, wo shall look into the more striking case of "Bill"— nrm-mroc child of you and an. other article. . (To be Continued.)