Crime -- Great Britain; Criminal anthropology; Punishment -- Great Britain
Subordination there must be before there can be combined action on the
part of men for any purposes, but there need not be senseless
subordination. In any iron-work, for instance, where men work together,
they each take their own and other men's lives in their hands daily. When
they are acting in concert a false step, a careless act, on the part of
anyone, may bring injury or death on himself and others; and they know
this and behave accordingly, or no work would be possible. For the
inefficient person there is no room, and when serious work has to be done
Gessler's cap has no place; there is only room for William Tell.
Men discharged from the army find difficulty in obtaining employment. It
is not that they are worse men than their neighbours. It is because they
have received the wrong kind of training. Employers do not prefer others
to them from any absence of patriotism, but from a desire for efficiency.
They cannot afford in industrial occupations to have people about them who
have learned that it is "theirs not to reason why." They prefer those who
have been taught to use all the sense they have in dealing with their
work. In short, the person who during the most formative years of his life
has been employed industrially, makes a better workman than the man who
during these years has been taught to wait for the word of command before
he does anything. Yet we have people going all over the country trying to
convince their fellow-citizens that there is no salvation for us unless
all young men are subjected to a period of military training, apparently
in ignorance of the fact that those who have had that training have
difficulty in competing industrially with those who have none. It may be
true for other reasons, for purposes of defence, that we ought to learn to
shoot, though for my part I believe that most men are more likely to be
sick sometime in their lives than to be engaged in fighting with people of
whom they know nothing. That would seem to be an argument for their being
taught how to preserve and care for their own rather than how to destroy
somebody else's health; but Gessler's cap is still in the market-place,
and it is rude to say anything about it. Yet it is not the bonnet, but the
head that is in it, that matters in the long run.
CHAPTER VIII
THE FAMILY AS MODEL
The basis of the family not necessarily a blood tie--Adoption--The
head and the centre of the family--The feeling of joint
responsibility--The black sheep--Companionship and sympathy
necessities in life--Reform only possible when these are found--
"Conversion" only temporary in default of force of new interests--The
one way in which reform is made permanent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account