Humours of the Census.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIX, Issue 21, 21 May 1913, Page 3

Humours of the Census.

'Did it ever occur to you what an amount of pure, unadulterated fun can be extracted from a census report? asks an American paper. They must be merry dogs who compile these documents. We can imagine them digging each other in the ribs over their walnuts and planning new cargoes of explosive facts to be sent sailing cheerily into the midst of the movements and agitations that make up the larger part of modern life. For example, take that giddy publication en-

titled “Relations Between Occupation and Criminality of Women.’’ it must have been a humorist of the first water who got on the track of that particular research. He tells us that if wo take 100 women and find that twenty of them are in jail, and that nil those twenty’ are of the same occupation, it would be well for us to inquire what that occupation is and why it should lead to the penitentiary. Then he gets right down to work and does the very thing. Out of 3229 women criminals no less than 81 per cent come from the ranks of domestic service. Now why should domestic servants show a tendency to criminality? Are they domestic servants because they- are criminal, or are they criminal because they are domestic servants? Which is tho post hoc and which the propter hoc! Are we to understand that domestic service, or working for another woman, can only be tolerated by those whose natures are already hardened and calloused by crime, by those who have already thrown selfrespect to the winds and who aro ready to snatch at anything that seems to bo just a grade better than jail sentence? If that theory should appear disrespect*fill to "the housekeepers of the country, then we wii! willingly adopt, the only alternative. We will suppose that domestic service, or working for another woman, has the curious property of avousing the latent criminality iu th® female breast, and that even a brie? season of domestic Servitude is likely to suggest arson or burglary tc minds form erly healthy and i'inoee.nt. The latter theory seems tho more probable of the

two, and it seems, moreover, to be Alone favoured by the statistical genius it Washington. He suggests that (he dmi estic servant has no chanee to rise. Her mistress will see to that. She has no social standards to restrain her. Her mistress will see that she ha«s none, an.l can be trusted to remind her of the fact. Robbed of her sense of decency and of dignity by the poisonous atmce here of social inferiority with which she i,s surrounded, she readily succumbs to criminal temptation. She is not allowed to have the standards that- are a protection.