VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

Taranaki Daily News, 10 February 1934, Page 9

VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

VIEWS ON CURRENT TOPICS “CAPITAL PUNISHMENT WRONG.” CRIMINALITY.- ONLY A DISEASE. (To ffie Editor.) Sir,—With so many murders in our midst to-day it naturally makes one wonder whether society is at fault I think it is.' Capital punishment is a great evil, almost* as great as war. It does not deter crime; in fact it makes criminals. I do not advocate allowing murderers to go free to continue preying on society but vengeance should not enter into society’s provision for the criminal. All thinkers to-.day, with a better knowledge of the workings of the humanmind, know that crime is a disease, and that it should be treated as such. They realise .its hidden springs lie back in the man’s dark past in his animal existence when the law of the tribe, was to slay and kill in order to survive. These primal urges sometimes break through the veneer ”’hich we call teivilisatioh, and these weak ones, with no understanding of themselves, become beasts again to kill and slay. No . sane human being will murder his kind. “A life for a life!” Wasn't that Moses’ law,- thousands of years before Christ (who, exhorted all to “judge not; help thy weaker brother.”) was born? This is 1934. Have we advanced with the times? I leave that to the imagination of my readers. Well then, what is at fault? Society defeats its own ends. It hands out the punishment, furnishing to the minds of its eager, gloating members a horrible gory feast that serves only to brutalise them and turn the weaker ones into criminals. This barbarous custom that had its beginning in the dark ages is like a great black shadow hovering over the world, hindering civilisation, retarding progress, denying and. mocking Christianity whose very foundation is love and mercy, and preventing the realisation of that hope of the ages—the brotherhood of man.

Does society think of the mothers who mourn, or the wives who agonise, or the little children'who are left fatherless and motherless branded with the shame of their parents? Or, as may be in some cases, innocent ones, who must sometimes die for a crime they have not committed? There is nota thinking man or woman, who is a lover of humanity, who does not deplore.the brutalising effect of the extreme penalty on mankind. The Christly ideal will never be reached until the strong man becomes his weaker brothers’ keeper, and abolish forever those hideous relics of barbarism, war and capital punishment, establishing more human methods for those diseased ones we call criminals. “Sentimentality,” some may call these words, but they are grounded on that which is right and true, and some day the whole world will think the same. “Help thy weaker brothers.”—l am, etc,, • . J BROTHERLY LOVE. Tangarakau, Feb. 8. ’ DAIRY WORKERS’ UNION. (To the Editor.) . Sir, —I, like many others, have for a number of years been paying in a yearly subscription of £1 to the Taranaki " . Dairy Factory Workers’ Union, which has no awards nor benefits whatsoever. Still the secretary of this so-called union is very prompt in calling’for. the yearly subscription. I understand .that if the subscriptions are' not' paid the' unibn; can use force - to -collect them. .-Therefore, if the emplpyeesaj;e forced -to .give a hard earned £1 away just for the -joke of it the time has come when this existing, union should exist nd longer.—l am, etc.,. ONE OF THE MANY. . [When, the above letter was referred to Mr. R. Fulton, organiser of the Tara- , naki Creameries, Cheese, Butter Factories and Dairy Employees’ Union, he stated that the union- was registered under the terms of the Industrial, Conciliation and Arbitration Act, and .was therefore a legally registered. organisation and governed by the rules signed by the Registrar. The main objects of the union were to procure industrial agreement between the ' dairy employers and the union. This objective the union had always endeavoured to achieve and had, been fairly successful until the last two. . years, when’ an amendment was made to the I. C. and A. Act, .which had taken . away the rights of the union to appeal to the Court of Arbitration in the case of disagreement in the Conciliation ■ Court The union had found itself in the position of not being able to agree with the employers with regard to wages and conditions of employment, with the result that no agreement had been arrived at during the past two years. During that time at least four conferences had been held with the employers, but they had resulted in failure to agree. The union had cited the employers to appear before the Conciliation Court to discuss the terms of a new agreement, and the case had been set down for hearing on January 17, but for various reasons the hearing had been postponed from time to time by the Conciliation Commissioner, who had now fixed February 15 as the date of hearing. It would-thus be seen that the union had done everything in its power to obtain an agreement for .better wages and conditions in the dairy industry. According to the rules the union could not do anything unlawful, and it had done as much as it could within the law to. obtain the objects set down in the rules. It was true that if the ..subscriptions .to, the . union were not paid, the union could under rule 8 sue for the' amount owing, A but this action. had not been taken in the past except on rare occasions. The . correspondent could rest assured that the union would continue to do all in its power to achieve its objects.—Ed.]