Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-02-10
A Modern Miracle.

The whipping post is being exploited as
modern miracle-worker. Brandish it before
the brutal wife-beater. and, we are told.
wife-beating ceases and domestic brutality
is eliminated. 1t Is hardly necessary &C
tualiy to apply the lash; the mere threat of
its suffices. In last years discussion
this miracle was located III Maryland, from
which state wife-beating promr -,y disap-
peared 1T was said. upon the enactment
of a whipping post law. This year the
marvel is worked in Oregon instead of
Maryland. Three doses of the whipping
post have, ii Is announced, destroyed in
Oregonans all tendency toward domestic
cruelty. Brutality is proclaimed as cur
ing brutality, dc ubtless on the homeopathic
principle that like cures like. Or rather
an emblem of brutality is held up to de-
stroy the spirit of brutality, as the brazen
serpent in the wilderness was displayed to
expel and to cure the poison of the living,
fiery serpents that plagued the Israeltes.
OF course Washingtonians know that it
Is the whippng-post and not wife-beating
which has disappeared from Maryland
And human nature being much the same
on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts we know
equally as well that the lash is no more
a miracle worker in Oregon than in Mary
fact mat the fear of the pain of the lash
as a legal penalty instantly ends wife-beat-
Ing, it will obviously have no effect upon
other forms of domestic brutality. not pun
ishable by the whipping-post, and the al
legged miracle. thus narrowed in its appli-
cation. will merely force the cruel husband
to vent his brutality upon his wife in some
other fashion, perhaps more fieudish and
malignant.
IL fear of the lash paralyzes the brute so
far as the pounding of his wife with his
fists or a stick is concerned, he will be
compelled to resort to the razor, the carving
knife. the scissors or the hatpin as an i'm
plement of wife-torture. Or he may be
tempted by the possibilities of unlashed
cruelty suggested by the gentle and in
genious application to the skin of his wife
of a red-hot poker; he may with i'm
punity effectively discipline his wife by
temporarily obstructlng her breathing with
a pillow or towel. For the whipping-post
merely causes the magic disappearance of
wife-beating. and there is no claim that IL
affects wife-cutting or WITHDRAWING or WIFE
choking any other form of wife-torture.
Moreover, the whipping post miracle is
limited to one of the least dangerous forms
OF purely physical torture. and does not
touch the sub;ler and more devIlish phases
OF inflicted torment. The brutal husband.
forbidden by terror of the lash to beat his
wife. may wound her quite as much by
bea ting defenseless members of the house
hold who are dear to her, as her mother or
her children Or he may resort to the tor
ture inflicted through tongue-lashings, ours
ings, infamous insults, venomous word
thrusts that sting and tester and rankle
causing agony far keener than any pro-
duced by blows of the fist. Or he may con-
tinue to torture his wife by wasting the
family resources in drunkenness converting
himself into a dangerous. Irresponsible
beast threatening the life and limb of his
wife. lis children and himself. and degrad-
ing by his bestialty the entire family.
To attempt to eliminate domestic brutal
ity by flashing the wife-beater is to propose
TO cure by local treatment of the little finger
a disease affecting the whole body and orig
mating in the heart
Suppose the husband in drunken rage
loses for the moment that mysterious terror
of the lash which is to protect the wife
from his blows. and strikes her with
his fists or a stick, instead of discreetIy
cutting burning or choking her AS soon
as he realized what ne had done. and that
his wifes word could iniict upon hin the
shame and agony of the dreaded lash
would not his brutal. cowardly impulse
drive him To silence the witness against him
at any cost, or to desert his family alto
gether and hide himself far away from the
shadow OF the whipping post? If the devil
OF wife-beating is driven out by the threat
OF the lash, then Immediately arises the in
Nitation 10 the worse devils of wife-torture,
wlfe-desertion and wife-murder to enter and
take possession. And the last state of all
concerned is worse than the first.