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ABERDARE'S PILLORY.

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ABERDARE'S PILLORY. ABERDARE is still without a Black Maria, and every Tuesday the poor prisoners who have to walk from the Police Station to the railway station are pilloried by a vulgar, inhuman set of loafers of both sexes. Last Tuesday the streets en route to the G.W.R. Station- were lined with sight-seers who had been drawn thither by idle and morbid curiosity, and who seemed to gloat on the misery of their fellow-beings. Re- cently some magistrates have protes- ted against the action of some rail- way companies, who, when persons are convicted for certain railway offences, put them in the stocks of publicity by emblazoning their names on station hoardings. These magistrates have expressed their intention of mitigating the usual penalty which accompanies a breach of the Companies' bye-laws in anticipation of the further penalty which the vindictive railway judicia- ries insist on imposing. The Aber- dare Bench should also realise that the prisoners convicted at the Police Court are twice punished, and when awarding the prisoners the usual time should take into considera- tion that they are also to be pilloried by a rude and cruel public. The strong man is not only bound with fetters and placed to grind in the prison hortse, but he has also to make sport for the Philistines. The Aber- dare Trades Council have asked Black Maria to come to the rescue, but she has not arrived yet. It would be well if in the meantime some effort were made to educate an ignorant public into a better beha- viour. We say ignorant advisedly, because we believe that it is an "evil wrought by want of thought. -:0:- PESSIMISTIC CRITICISM." This is the designation that Mr. John Davies applies to our comments on var- ious subjects dealt with in the "Leader" recently. He avers that our remarks "are strongly flavoured with a spirit of con- servatism and doubt." Pessimism, con- servatism, and scepticism, they all come, we are told, with advancing age, and the "Aberdare Leader" is no exception to the general rule. We do not maintain that thrift and providence can entirely remove the evils of pauperism and unemploy- ment. But we hold that, if more gener- ally exercised, they would greatly reduce the former, and materially temper the severity of the latter. If by a touch of the magic wand of Fate all people could be made thrifty at once, why, we could pension off the majority of relieving offi- cers and workhouse officials, and the bulk of our guardians would be among the un- employed. Union doles and State gratui- ties are good things in their proper place. But when they cause people to depreciate self-help they are worse than useless. Says the thriftless young man, "Why should I save up for 'the evil days' when I may then have the benefit of a poor rate?" Says the improvident worker, "Why should I prepare for a workless old age when the State is providing for me an old age pension P" State help should not discourage self-help, collective charity should not dispense with individual effort. With regard to the educating of young men at the Universities at the expense of the Miners" Federation, Mr. Davies places on Dr. Datta's words a different construction to the one we placed. If Mr. Davies's interpretation is correst, we wilt cry truce on this subject. With re- ference to co-operation, while upholding the principle, we still maintain that it has its limits. The success or failure of co-operative mines is more or less pro- blematical, because the principle has not, so far as we know, been put to the test. But we have a near approach to a prece- dent in the co-operative quarries in North Wales, which, we repeat, have been a failure., And did not Robert Owen, the father of the co-operative movement, ex- periment on industrial co-operation? And do not the ruins of the silent mills of New Lanark to-day testify to. the fact that that great and most practical bene- factor of humanity had not reckoned with one of the frailties of human nature when he dreamt his dream of universal co-oper- ation ?

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