The minority report : a criticism : (a summary of which appeared in the Times of 19th June 1910).

Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The minority report : a criticism : (a summary of which appeared in the Times of 19th June 1910). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    task is set them under the supervision of the able farm manager. Their behaviour is usually unexcep- tionable, and the reports from week to week are that everything is going well. But the question still remains whether this is the sort of training which makes men, or whether the “ institutional ” atmosphere of the colony is not inimical to such results. We have little to go upon so far. Only a small percentage of men have been re-established in the labour market. The Minority put it at io per cent. (p. 1122). There is nothing to show that even this has been the result of their stay at Hollesley Bay, and we have to set against it the fact that except for their periodical “outings” they have for sixteen weeks been secluded from opportunities of looking for work. The only other evidence we have as to the results of training colonies comes from abroad, and the only colonies that appear to have met with much success there have been the semi-penal colonies. “ Recidivism ” is a well- known feature of the foreign colonies and the “ Kolonie bummler ” a familiar figure in Germany. It is sig- nificant that already there has been a disposition on the part of a good many men who have had their six- teen weeks or more at Hollesley Bay to try to get back there. Non-Residential Colonies. Of course the Minority contemplate also another type of colony, the non - residential colony, which is to be a sort of industrial school for the man out of work—but the question of the efficacy of the training is the same everywhere. The theory of this training, which is the keystone of the constructive policy of the Minority in regard to the able-bodied, is that adults can be trained both physically and morally to a new life. But the nature of grown-up men and women is not so easily changed. Those who have experienced the difficulty in a single case, it may be that of a relative or friend, will find it hard to