labourers forcibly deprived of all work to mental arithmetic and the rest. But as this theory of "training" is for the moment so generally adopted, and as so much depends upon it, it is necessary that we should examine it very closely. The "technique," say the Minority, is not yet developed. The only experience we have had so far in England has been that of Hollesley Bay, of the results of which the Majority say it is too soon to judge. Many of those who have had experience of Hollesley Bay have grave doubts of the ultimate result of the "training" received there. There were some witnesses before the Commission who feared that the men there were apt to become "institutionalised." Mr Lansbury himself, in a recent article in the "Commonwealth," uses the expressive phrase "wet-nursing" in connection with it, and there is in fact evidence that men there are being "wet-nursed," but not that they are being "wet-nursed" back into the labour market. There is also evidence that the men "do not take the training sufficiently seriously" (p. 1121). The Minority poke fun at the attempt made in certain London Workhouses to supply a "mental instructor" for the able-bodied inmates. The men either "went to sleep or interrupted" (p. 1065). Possibly the trainer of the future may share the same fate as the mental instructor of the past, though he would have the new power of consigning those who showed distaste for mental arithmetic to a "penal colony." Abroad, training colonies have been in existence for many years and the "technique" should have been worked out by this time. But the general consensus of opinion is that their training and reformatory influence has been but slight, and that they have become "colonies of social wreckage rather than colonies of unemployed" (Board of Trade Reports, 1893, 1904).
