NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19390, 27 July 1926, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

PRISON AS A DETERRENT. *

" The English administration of the criminal law before conviction is frequently contrasted favourably with our own, and we might well consider if their system of administering their prisons without cruelty but with an unvarying and inexorable discipline, starting out with a short period of solitary confinement, is not the common-sense method of making crime unpopular," writes Mr. C. C. Nott, an American judge, in Scribner's Magazine. "No one fs in favour of making punishment more severe than is necessary to accomplish its end. As, therefore, the human race has gradually emerged from the virtual barbarism of those of old days, its progress and the progress of civilisation have resulted in a lessening of crime—and naturally punishment also has been relaxed. But when it is so relaxed as to become no punishment at all, and is so frequently escaped as to warrant the assumption it will be escaped altogether, then there can be no wonder that it fails to act as a deterrent. Such is the condition existing in the United States to-day, and such it is certain to continue until the day amves when punishment is restored to its true function."

CASE FOR HEROIC REMEDIES. "The situation seems to need heroic unconventional treatment," says the Irish Statesman, discussing the coal situation in Britain. "It would be folly to try to keep miners employed in mines which do not pay by help of a subsidy extracted from taxation of other industries which do pay. It would be inhumanity to insist on men working at the most perilous of all employments for wages which it would be the debasing of life to accept. The uneconomic mines should be closed until some discovery of the chemist or engineer makes it possible to work them profitably once more. Instead of wasting over twenty millions subsidising decaying industry it would be much better to pension off the older miners so thrown out of work by the closing of uneconomic mines and to devote the rest to provide employment for the younger men, train them for agriculture »or other industries, assist them to get land in England or Canada or an-* other Dominion. Far better spend ten or twenty millions nobly than spend them ineffectively as the last twenty millions were spent, or lose hundreds of millions in prolonged labour troubles."

THE PASSING CENTURIES. • "Why is it that the eighteenth century so particularly delights us?" afiks Mr. Lytton Strachey in the Nation. "The Romantics and the Victorians had 'good reason to dislike the eighteenth century, which they found to be intolerably rigid, formal and self-satisfied, devoid, to an extraordinary degree, of sympathy, adventure and imagination. The nineteenth century revolted, broke those chains, and then proceeded to forge others of its own invention. It is these later chains that we find distressing. Those of the eighteenth century we cannot consider realistically at all; we were born—owing to the efforts of our grandfathers—free of them; we can afford to look at them romantically; we can even imagine ourselves dancing in them—stately minuets. And for the purposes of a historical vision, the eighteenth* century is exactly what is wanted. What would have been, in fact, its. mdst infuriating quality —its _ amazing self-sufficiency—is precisely what makes it, in retrospect, so satisfying; there hangs the picture before us, framed and glazed, distinct, simple, complete. We are bewitched by it, just as, about the year 2000, our descendants, no doubt, will .cast longing eyes toward the baroque enchantments of the age of Victoria."

J " THE HUMAN MACHINE. A warning to employers against the dangers of (kabness, monotony and routine in factory operations is £iveu by Mr. R. M. Fox in an article in the Nineteenth Century. " Every workman knows "that even machines, without consciousness or feeling, must be ' humoured,' and that a man who. is familiar with a particular machine can get it to go and do good work, while another man- may have nothing but trouble," •he says. " Every machine has its strong and weak points and responds to the coaxing of the man who understands it. How much mcfre then is a rigid uniformity impossible for human beings!" Mr. Fox says monotonous work is not always unpleasant. " What I have always found most irritating has been monotonous work that requires constant close attention because of speeding up. To be kept at the point of extreme tension on work of a simple repetition character and not to be able to relax for a moment, means exhaustion and frayed nerves." The problem of status must also be borne in mind when we discuss industrial evils. If a worker is convinced that he is doing something important and that he really does count, he is far happier than if he is regarded as an animated screw. I have seen men made miserable for the day by abrupt foremen and managers, and this quite apart from any material considera; tion. In the workshop the worker has a craving to be on a human footing. It is difficult in these days of mechanical production/to S&tisfy that craving, but it is worth -while making an effort to do so. Rigid upholders of,. ' managerial rights' refuse to see' that the more they depress the status of worker,* and make of him a being apart, the more they drive him to lose all interest in the work. The sound psychological plan is to enlist his co-operation, and this, by giving him a higher orbit of interests, helps to correct the drab routineof factory life."