Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/876

 86o THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

the mind. In spite of this and a recognition of its cruelty, why is the practice approved and advocated by so many healthy-minded people?

It is explained by the fact of the prevalence of flogging in the schools. If a well-educated man's sons are flogged at Eton, it is no disgrace to the lower order to be birched by a policeman or a schoolmaster. Corporal punishment in the English schools is responsible for this servile and tyrannical tone of mind which applauds flogging because they and their children are hardened to its practice in the schools. It is a discipline. In this matter the instinct of the English working classes regarding corporal punishment as a disgrace is truer and less morbid than those " hardened " to it in the schools, i. e., their so-called superiors. The punish- ment of the young seems to be the clue to an understanding of the ethics 1 of cor- poral punishment as a whole. Yet it is unpleasant to record an increase in the past few years of the practice of flogging the young. For example, the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children promoted a bill in iqoo (fortunately defeated) for the wholesale whipping of juvenile offenders at the discretion of the magistrate.

Turning to adult offenders, we find the same cry! for the infliction of bodily pain on hooligans, wife-beaters, dynamiters, train-wreckers, ill-users of children and animals. Some English judges have of late shown a tendency to prescribe the prison birch to " rogues and vagabonds " under the infamous vagrancy acts once obsolete. The argument favoring such procedure, that these scoundrels can- not be disgraced, because already degraded in crime, is false ; any living being, no matter how low, is not beyond human sympathy and aid.

The arguments against the brutality of the lash are futile and amusing : one of the silliest being more concerned in protecting the criminal than the victim of the crime. The most plausible sophism in favor of corporal punishment is con- trasting the evils of imprisonment with the pretended beneficence of the lash. One thing can be said in favor of flogging : it " saves time." Like all short-cuts. " more haste, less speed."

To conclude: Corporal punishment, the antithesis of moral suasion, is an outrage on the supremacy of the human mind and dignity of the human body. All physical violence cannot be dispensed with, but this the most barbarous must be uprooted. Henry S. Salt, in International Journal of Ethics, October, 1905.

S. E. W. B.

Development of Labor Organizations in the United States. The earliest labor classes brought their forms from England, and the first distinctions were social, as between gentlemen and goodmen, or rich and poor. In the middle of the eighteenth century the wage question was first raised, but rather as a political than an economic one. After the War of Independence these organizations broke loose from the mother country, and in 1806 the tailors formed a separate union, followed by the hatters and others.

The years 1825-61 bring to the front labor agitation. Questions of wage and length of day were prominent, but the significance of organization as a means of leading contending classes to a better understanding of each other was not recognized. The movements of this period were under high-minded leaders, such as Owen, Brisbane, Dana, and Greeley ; but they formed rather a politico- ethical sect than a party. In 1848 a great flood of immigrants of socialistic and revolutionary tendencies, stimulated class consciousness. Certain popular movements in England also found sympathy here. Mystical orders, such as "Knights of Labor," took rise. The air was charged with the spirit of Henry George and Bellamy, and the Congress of 1850 at Chicago raised the labor reaction to a triumphant place.

The first organized labor proup which in the third decade of last century demanded shorter hours and higher wage was the builders, especially ship- builders, who after vain attempts to lead their employers to an open discussion of the question, whether a ten-hour day would be a benefit, instituted a strike. In Boston employers organized to withstand the laborers and agreed not to employ organized labor. The boycott was recognized as a legitimate means of struggle. Labor continued to organize more highly and compactly. By 1853