Aftenposten
- Coercion Does Not Create Morality.
- The Gala Dinner at the Palace.
- The Evictions from the Tinnfos Workers' Housing.
Aftenposten's front page of 5 October 1926 carried a signed essay by Drammen school inspector Sven Svensen, who defended his claim that coercion does not create morality: children learn through habit, but laws, especially laws of mere expediency such as the minimum size for lobster, need public support or they provoke defiance and mass violations. The page also printed King Haakon's toast at the palace gala dinner for Finland's visiting President, recalling his studies at the Agricultural College of Norway, and a report from Skien that evictions of workers from Tinnfos company housing at Notodden would probably go ahead on Thursday despite the poor-relief board's offer to pay the overdue rent, with police asked to keep order.
Translation
Coercion Does Not Create Morality.
Stortorvets Gjæstgiveri, 1st and 2nd floors – Evening concert on both floors.
Coercion does not create morality.
By school inspector Sven Svensen, Drammen.
A man writes to me and asks whether I stand by this sentence. And from it he draws the conclusion that, if this is correct, all laws ought to be abolished. I naturally stand by the sentence. But it must be seen in its context, and it thereby acquires its self-evident limitation.
As a teacher I deal with children. Children have poorly developed moral concepts and must be brought up through habituation. This habituation takes place by us adults dictating to them a way of life that corresponds to our moral concepts. The aim is to get the children to take these moral concepts into their consciousness, so that what at first met them as coercion can become something they do in full freedom. Children are as a rule not especially keen on washing themselves. The command meets them as coercion. Then habituation comes in, and little by little it sinks into their consciousness that washing is a necessity, and in time one freely chooses it as a good. But it can also happen that our commands are so arbitrary that they provoke defiance, and then they work against their purpose. It is clear from the connection in which I used the above sentence that I was not thinking of coercion in this sense, as a means of upbringing.
All laws must have the people's moral consciousness as their foundation and be an expression of it. For the necessary precondition for a law to work as intended is that it will be respected. The general penal code brands as impermissible a range of acts that our sense of justice judges to be immoral in and of themselves. Theft, murder, fraudulent conduct, acts of violence, etc. are immoral in themselves and are understood as such by the people's general sense of justice. The law is therefore felt to be just, and not as any coercion, when it passes judgment on these acts. Its task is to protect society.
But alongside these laws, which rest on the general understanding of right and morality, we have a great many laws of expediency. These too must have a strong public opinion as their necessary precondition. Otherwise they will be felt as arbitrariness, and through their character of coercion they will create ill will and incite violation. Stealing from gardens is branded immoral by the general consciousness and falls under the penal code. But if the state authorities were to pass a law forbidding people to pick blueberries and lingonberries in the forest, such a law would conflict with the people's sense of justice, and the only result would be mass violations. In and of itself there is nothing immoral in eating lobster under 21 cm. But a law of expediency sets this limit, and once the law is there, it becomes a violation when undersized lobster is caught and used. The law creates violations, and the question then is whether these are outweighed by the advantages gained. Because this is the general opinion, the law is maintained. But one did not dare take the step (Continued on page 3).
The Gala Dinner at the Palace.
…no stranger in this country. I know that you once stayed at the Agricultural College of Norway for the sake of your studies, and I feel sure that you thereby became attached both to the country and to the people and formed many a bond of personal friendship, which I hope this visit may give occasion to renew. I would further add the hope that the grave news you, Mr. President, have received about your father's condition may soon become so reassuring that you need no longer worry. In proposing a toast to Finland and the Finnish people, I direct this toast to you, Mr. President, and drain a glass to your well-being.
After the King's speech the band played "Vårt land, vårt land". The President replied to His Majesty the King's speech in the following words:
The Evictions from the Tinnfos Workers' Housing.
Barrister Johan Stenersen, Grubbegaten 4, 4th floor. Tel. 15369.
The evictions from the Tinnfos workers' housing.
Will probably take place Thursday.
Skien, 4 October. Deputy bailiff Robertsen at Notodden states, in reply to an inquiry from "Varden", that the question of the Notodden poor-relief board's offer to pay the overdue rent for the workers at Tinnfos will be taken up for a ruling in the course of the day. The deputy bailiff says that the ruling will most likely go against the municipality. The eviction must therefore be carried out, probably on Thursday. The deputy bailiff has informed the police that the necessary protection of order must be arranged before the proceedings begin, as unrest is feared.
"Argus". To our Argus collection we yesterday received from an anonymous donor
Context
Why a Finnish president's visit to Norway was a rare occasion
The gala dinner at the Palace belonged to the state visit that Finland's President Lauri Kristian Relander paid to King Haakon VII, which a list of Haakon's state visits dates to 4–6 October 1926, so this page went to press while the President was still in the country. Such visits were few in Haakon's reign: the same list explains that Norway was then a comparatively poor country and that royal travel abroad, and hosting the customary return visits, was expensive. Before 1926 the King had received state visits only from the heads of Denmark, Britain, France and the Netherlands, and Finland now joined that short list; Haakon returned the courtesy by visiting Relander in Finland in June 1928. In the toast as Aftenposten printed it, the King stressed personal ties rather than policy, recalling Relander's student stay at the Agricultural College of Norway and his Norwegian friendships, and wishing his father a recovery. Those biographical details are the newspaper's report of the speech.
Svensen's essay and the 1926 prohibition referendum
The essay appeared thirteen days before Norwegians voted, on 18 October 1926, in a consultative referendum on whether to keep prohibition. Sales of spirits and fortified wine had first been banned during the First World War as part of the state's supply controls; partial prohibition had been in force since 1917, and a 1919 referendum had extended the ban to spirits and dessert wine. Svensen's argument, that laws of expediency need strong public opinion behind them or they breed ill will and mass violations, applies directly to a law the voters were about to judge. The part printed on the front page never names alcohol, however: its examples are berry-picking and undersized lobster, and the sentence "But one did not dare take the step" breaks off before the continuation on page 3. The link to the referendum is therefore a strong inference from timing and argument rather than something this excerpt states. The vote went against prohibition, and the law was abolished.
The economic setting of the Tinnfos evictions
Notodden was one of the new industrial towns, alongside Odda, Sauda and Rjukan, that grew up in the early twentieth century on cheap hydroelectric power and foreign capital investment. By 1926 Norway was in the grip of the 1920s deflation: after a temporary rise in prices around 1923–1924, prices kept falling, partly as a result of a deliberate deflationary policy, and forced auctions climbed from 742 in 1920 to 2,547 in 1925 and would reach 4,463 in 1929. The Skien report shows what was happening in the workers' housing of one such industrial town: rent for the workers at Tinnfos had fallen into arrears, Notodden's poor-relief board offered to pay it, and the deputy bailiff expected the ruling to go against the municipality, so that the eviction would proceed, probably on Thursday, with police told to provide protection because unrest was feared.
Original
Tvang skaper ikke moral.
Stortorvets Gjæstgiveri I. og II. etg. - Aftenkoncert i begge etager. Tvang skaper ikke moral. Av skoleinspektør Sven Svensen, Drammen. En mand skriver til mig og spør, om jeg vedkjender mig denne sætning. Og han trækker derav den slutning, at hvis dette er riktig, burde man ophæve alle love. Jeg fastholder selvsagt sætningen. Men den maa sees i sin sammenhæng og faar derved sin selvgivne begrænsning. Som lærer har jeg med barn at gjøre. Barna har lite utviklede moralbegreper og maa opdrages gjennem tilvænning. Denne tilvænning sker derved, at vi voksne dikterer dem en livsform som svarer til vore moralske begreper. Maalet er at faa barna til at opta disse moralbegreper i sin bevissthet, saa det som til at begynde med møtte dem som tvang, kan bli til noget de gjør i fuld frihet. Barn pleier som regel ikke være videre begeistret for at vaske sig. Paabudet møter dem som tvang. Herved kommer tilvænningen og litt efter litt gaar det ind i bevisstheten, at det at vaske sig er en nødvendighet, og med tiden vælger man det i frihet som et gode. Men det kan ogsaa hænde, at vore paabud er saa vilkaarlige at de fremkalder trods, og da virker de imot sin hensikt. Det fremgaar av den forbindelse, hvori jeg har brukt ovenstaaende sætning, at jeg ikke har tænkt paa tvang i denne betydning, som opdragelsesmiddel. Alle love maa ha som grundlag og være uttryk for folkets moralske bevissthet. Den nødvendige forutsætning for at en lov skal virke efter sin hensikt er nemlig, at den vil bli respektert. Den almindelige straffelov stempler som utilladelige en række handlinger, som vor retsbevissthet dømmer som umoralske i og for sig. Tyveri, mord, svikefuld fremfærd, voldshandlinger osv. er umoralske i sig selv og opfattes saaledes av folkets almene retsbevissthet. Loven føles derfor retfærdig og ikke som nogen tvang, naar den fælder dommen over disse handlinger. Dens opgave er at beskytte samfundet. Men ved siden av disse love, som har til grundlag den almindelige opfatning av ret og moral, har vi en hel del hensiktsmæssighetslove. Ogsaa disse maa ha som sin nødvendige forutsætning en sterk folkeopinion. Ellers vil de føles som en vilkaarlighet, og de vil ved sin karakter av tvang skape uvilje og egge til overtrædelse. Havetyverier stemples av den almene bevissthet som umoralske og falder ind under straffeloven. Men hvis statsmaktene vilde vedta en lov som forbød folk at plukke blaabær og tyttebær i skogen, saa vilde en slik lov stride mot folkets retsbevissthet, og det eneste resultat vilde bli masseovertrædelser. I og for sig er det ikke noget umoralsk at spise hummer under 21 cm. Men en hensiktsmæssighetslov sætter denne grænse, og naar loven er der, blir det en overtrædelse, naar undermaals hummer fiskes op og nyttiggjøres. Loven skaper overtrædelser, og spørsmaalet er da, om disse opveies av de fordele som opnaaes. Fordi dette er den almindelige mening, opretholdes loven. Men man vaaget ikke at ta det skridt (Forts. 3dje side).
Galamiddagen paa Slottet.
ikke nogen fremmed her i landet. Jeg vet, at De i sin tid opholdt Dem for Deres studiers skyld ved Norges Landbrukshøiskole, og jeg føler mig sikker paa, at De derved er blit knyttet baade til land og folk og har knyttet mangt et personlig venskapsbaand, som jeg haaber dette besøk maa gi anledning til at opfriske. Jeg vil endnu tilknytte det haab, at de alvorlige efterretninger, som hr. præsidenten har mottat om Deres fars tilstand, snart maa bli saa beroligende, at de ikke længer behøver at bekymre Dem. Idet jeg utbringer en skaal for Finland og det finske folk, retter jeg denne skaal til Dem, hr. præsident, og tømmer et glas paa Deres velgaaende. Efter Kongens tale spilte musikken» Vårt land, vårt land «. Præsidenten besvarte H. M. Kongens tale i følgende ordelag:
Utkastelsene fra Tinnfos arbeiderboliger.
Overretssakfører Johan Stenersen Grubbegaten 4, IV. Tlf. 15369. Utkastelsene fra Tinnfos arbeiderboliger. Finder antagelig sted torsdag. Skien, 4de oktober. Underfogd Robertsen paa Notodden oplyser paa henvendelse fra» Varden «, at spørsmaalet om Notoddens fattigvæsens tilbud om at betale den forfaldne husleie for arbeiderne ved Tinnfos vil bli optat til kjendelse i løpet av dagen. Underfogden uttaler, at kjendelsen nok vil komme til at gaa kommunen imot. Utkastelsen maa derfor bli at fremme, antagelig torsdag. Underfogden har git politiet underretning om, at der maa skaffes det nødvendige ordensvern, før forretningen paabegyndes, da man frykter for uroligheter. «Argus». Til vor Argus-indsamling har vi igaar fra en anonym giver hat