The Eureka sentinel. [volume] (Eureka, Nev.) 1902-current, 1903-01-17
NEW TO-DAY
HE WHO WHIPS "A CHILD
IS "A BRUTE
And He Hinders Development of
His Own Children.

His UvNn
NLI E appeal to our readers to help discourage the practice, still
wv widespread, of beating young children.
It'll a fact and a very sad one, that many men and women
still cling to the idea that brutality is essential to the education OF
children, and this in spite of the fact that the best men and women
are often those who knew only kindness in their childhood.
Deeply fixed in many minds, especially in very ignorant minds, Is
the idea that children must be whipped. So deeply fixed that laws
may be required to stop cruelty in the home as they have been re-
quired to stop it elsewhere.
We beg those who advocate the beating of helpless little child
rem to remember that beatings were once universal among brutal men.
The cat OF nine tails was once used on sailors; the law stopped
that Yet how much worse to beat a feeble child, SHINING through
ignorance or childish spirits, than to beat a strong man guilty of In
subordinaton or of drunkenness, threatening the lives of others.
Convicts were once whipped and chained, and not so long ago
they were tortured; but to-day no man has power to lay the lash on
even the worst of murderers or thieves.
How horrible that the individual should continue to brutalze
poor children, when the collective wisdom has come to realize that
beatings make even the worst OF criminals worse.
Soldiers in barracks were once beaten. Slaves were beaten,
domestic servants were beaten at the will of the master, even when
they were not slaves.
All that has passed away. thanks to progress.
But what a sad comment on individual depravity is the actual
state of affairs.
In England children are beaten regularly, and the law still in
force says that a husband may beat his wife, if he use a stick not
thicker than his thumb.
In America we have got beyond any sort of licensed wife beat
ing But any man or woman, drunk or sober, calm or in a rage,
may beat the delicate, helpless child that natures accident has made
dependent on the brutal individual.
1t is dreadful to think of the suferings of a little child at the
hands of drunken parents, or worse still, of parents with hideous
tempers Many a poor little body is habitually black and blue be-
fore the child is old enough to speak distinctly or to reason at all
And the horrible part of it is that the ~friendess, helpless creature
Is Wulpp6u, Ill CASES OI f6dl OcdL because IL QlSDldyS UrdnS
inherited from the brutal creature that in1icts the beating. No one
but a broken spirited child knows the worse horror of this existence.
Think OF a little boy or girl five or six years old or younger. 1t
has yielded to some childish temptation and has been told that it is
to be whipped. 1t waits trembling for the torture that its childish
seized by a creature too drunk or too deeply enraged to realize his
own strength. The pitiful cries call out blows even more savage
and the punishment continues until the deviish animal rage of the
brutal parent is glutted.
If you confess that you have a child that must be beaten you
confess that you have brought a deformed and animal-hke child into
the world. But remember that no child is improved by a beating.
Remember that no trainer of horses, even the most stupid, is guilty
OF thrashlng a young colt Is your child inferior to a horse?
What do you demand of your children? Truth and honesty.
And with your stupid, criminal beahngs you make them afraid to be
truthful and afraid to be honest. A child is more sensitive than
you, the grown man or woman. Could your mind develop if the
person above you, the employer or husband, had power to beat you
and did beat you regularly? Would not constant beatings deaden
your ambition? Would they not especially destroy all ELECTION
for the one that inflicted the punishment? Remember that if you
beat a child, you confess yourself first a brutal animal, and second
We hope the day may come when the laws that protect convicts,
MANAGES, paupers. soldiers, sailors and all strong adults from physi-
cal brutality will also protect the tender, helpless children We
hope and believe that the States which now forbid the whipping of
a I'm man guilty OF wife beating will soon forbid the whipping of a
child guilty OF some little ofense through ignorance.
Meanwhile the readers of this newspaper can do much toward
reform and we beg them to do it.
not from terror. And with true humanity, blame and condemn
yourself when your child ~disapponts you You can do more by
making your child sorry to disappoint you than by crushing it with
blows.
The reformatories for children are filed with poor creatures that
had all intelligence and sentiment beaten out of them in youth.
When your child came into the world there was confded in your
care a clean, pure soul, upon which you could write such influence
as you chose. What a disgrace if you must confess that you can
guide that helpless creature only through brutality.
The foregoing article, which appeared editorially in the San
Francisco Examiner of Jan. z, 1908, one of the leading daily news
papers of the Pacific Coast, is here given verbatim. 1t is a matter
OF qualification and much satisfaction to know that the able editor
OF the Monarch OF Danies" gives expression to such noble sentiments
ON the question of child whipping, and very ably argues that he who
whips a child S a brute. The whipping of children of tender age
for trivial ofenses is now indorsed, on presumed authority. by the
Eureka School Board. That the readers of the SENTINEL may have
an ODDOrtunItv If pattino in tonob uHb odunoooI I'LL ~
very important subject, I submit the above for perusal
Eureka, Nevada. Jan. Il 1909 TT A MoHur