Profoundly I wish that all Home Secretaries would exercise their minds on the causes that lead to youthful hooliganism, and do something to remove them. It were better far than taking steps to secure more severe punishment. Such talk to me seems callous and cruel, for punitive methods will never eradicate the instincts that lead to disorderly conduct in the streets among the "young gentry" of the poor. I must confess to a feeling of discomfort when I see a boy of sixteen sent to a month's imprisonment for disorderly conduct in the streets. It is true that he has been a nuisance to his elders, and has bumped against them in running after his pals. Equally true that he uses language repulsive to ears polite; but to him it is ordinary language, to which he has been accustomed his life through. But I am afraid it is equally true that similar offences committed by others in a better position would be more leniently dealt with. Would anyone suggest that a public-school boy, or a soldier on furlough, or a young doctor, or an enthusiastic patriot, should be committed for trial on a like charge? I trow not. Allowances are made, and it is right they should be made. I claim these allowances for the poor and the children of the poor.
Moreover, if these "young gentry" are to be consigned in wholesale fashion to prison, will it lessen the evil? I think not. On the contrary, it will largely increase it. Some of them will have lost the moderate respectability that stood for them in place of character; many of them will lose their work, and will join the increasing army of loafers; but all of them will lose their fear of prison, that fear of the unknown that is the greatest deterrent from crime and disorder. Familiarize these "young gentry" with prison, and it is all over with them. The sense of fear will depart, and to a dead certainty more serious disorder and grosser crime will follow. Undoubtedly many of them will find prison quarters preferable to their own homes, and though they may resent the loss of liberty, they will find some comfort in the fact that they do not have to share with four others an apology for a bed, fixed in an apology for a room, of which the door cannot be opened fully because the bedstead prevents it.