Corpun file 23732

Miami Daily News, Florida, USA, 10 October 1932, p.4

Improved Spanking

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Reports from Sydney, New South Wales, that a spanking machine has been invented is surprising only in that the contraption, with its cog wheels, belts, levers and all, is actually something new.

For generations school children have talked of the spanking machine in awed whispers. It was always kept in some mysterious closet, janitor's room or recess of the principal's office and usually there were one or two "bad boys" who swore gravely that they had been paddled by it.

Not a few parents and teachers have wished for such a machine and possibly some have gone so far as to construct something of the kind, but the Australian inventor seems to be the first to have designed one intended for quantity production.

His device comes rather late to be hailed with general delight. It will be "viewed with alarm" by many followers of the modern theories that corporal punishment of any kind is merely a confession of failure on the part of the parent or teacher.

However scientific it may be in regulating the force to be applied, it will be difficult likewise to persuade the devout disciples of the old "spare the rod and spoil the child" school that it fills their need. Too often, we suspect, they resort to spanking to relieve their own feelings more than to discipline the child and there would be little satisfaction for them in so impersonal a paddling.

It might, however, be put to good use in curing chronic adult offenders for whom fines have no terror and jail sentences are too severe. What a wholesome effect it might have on motorists who persist in mistaking "stop" for "go," if employed in public! It might, indeed, produce the best-mannered drivers the world has ever known.

The only danger would be the temptation to enact new blue laws, that we might see paddled in the public square all those whose only offense is disagreeing with our personal tastes.