TAX UPON SWEARING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18018, 17 February 1922, Page 6

TAX UPON SWEARING.

INNOVATION IN SYDNEY.

MONEY GOES TO HOSPITAL.

On purely ethical grounds, and as a repellent form of profanity very often, swearing has always been condemned. But, unfortunately, it is on the increase. To-day, however, in this city, there are more even than purely ethical arguments against this bad habit; for, in certain circumstances, it can be unprofitable, in the strictly material sense, thus to defile the wells of pure language and thought, says a Sydney paper. There is to-day in Sydney a graduated tax against it. The worse a man. swears the higher the penalty. And, on the principle that one man's folly is another man's fortune, one of the most deserving of our public institutions—the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children—is benefiting and at the same time doing something to suppress an objectionable habit. The idea originated with the secretary of the hospital, Mr. Clarence Moss. In hotels in the city and in some of the suburbs there a/e in all about 200 "swear boxes." For every profane remark uttered a sum has to be placed in the box on the Ijar. It ranges from 3d to 2s 6d, according to the language used. In one hotel bar two boxes were handed in at 11 o'clock in the morning. At four o'clock the next afternoon there were urgent entreaties to Mr. Moss to have the boxes taken away. They were full. The boxes were then something of a novelty; but, where they are now firmly established they are accepted not in the light of a joke, but in the form of retributive punishment. One man, a stranger to the new moralifcv used language comparatively mild in its expression on one occasion. The demand on him for 3d for the "swear box" was as unwelcome as an income tax return. He expressed his indignation in the only form possible to him. He swore again. He saw a bigger coin go into the box this time, and, along with it, a good resolution. The chief accountant in one of the city firms has one of these boxes at his table. Mr. Moss, who vouches for the absolute truth of the statement, said the man in question, a returned soldier, in order to break himself of what was simply a bad habit, personally asked for one of the boxes.