PUNISHING STOWAWAYS. Why the State's Duty?

Free Lance, Volume I, Issue 33, 16 February 1901, Page 8

PUNISHING STOWAWAYS. Why the State's Duty?

IN the Magistrate s Court last week a man was brought up in custody as a stowaway. He was charged with having travelled from Sydney to Wellington without paying his faie of £2 15s Apparently, he pleaded guilty, for the newspaper briefly records the fact that a fine of 30s was inflicted, with the oj^tion of fourteen days' impnsonment The case is not an isolated one by any means. Quite the contrary. * • * In fact, it is rather a usual thing at the Bluff, Wellington, and Auckland, on the arrival of an Australian steamei, to see some wretched stowaway handed over to the police and marched off to the lock-up with every mark of ignominy just as though he were a felon. We don't, of course, presume to defend or extenuate the conduct of those who sneak a passage on the cheap In the eyes of the shipping companies it is doubtless a crime of the utmost gravity, which must not be spoken of or written about with flippancy But we altogether fail to see why the State should go out of its way to collect debts foi the big steamship companies and saddle itself with the expense of gaoling, by way of punishing, the miserable wights who arc unable to pay their steamer fares * » * It is the business of the steamship companies themselves to see that those who travel by their boats pay the regulation fares It is their business to refuse passages to those

who can't or won't pay. If any individuals manage to elude the vigilance of the ship's officers, and secure a passage by stowing themselves away, that surely is the concern of the boat's owners, and not of the Government of the colony to which she is making her way. Why should it put itself about or incur any expense in the matter? The steamship company have their civil remedy like humbler persons. The Courts are open to them, and they can proceed by summons for the recovery of the passage money. ♦ • ♦ Instead of that, however, the State takes all the trouble on its own shoulders. A posse of police is despatched, at the summons of the ship's purser, to take over the abject stowaways. They are handcuffed and marched through the streets to the lock-up. And, finally, they are haled before the Court, fined, an'd ordered to pay the fare, and, if they cannot do so, they are sent to gaol. Surely, it is high time to import some common-sense into this business. Why should we allow the steamship companies to dump these people on our shores? In very many cases — the majority, no doubt they are dead-beats; in nearly every instance they are quite destitute The State might reasonably insist upon the steamship companies taking them back whence they came, instead of leaving them here to be a burden upon the community. At any rate, there is no sense in the State sending them to gaol. It seems the surest way for society to kick them into criminality.