Bedford inquirer. [volume] (Bedford, Pa.) 1857-1884, 1867-06-07
WHO ARE REsPONsIBLE4
Trained to Crime.

Trained to Crime.
1t is no uncommon thing to find editors
Of newspapers shedding crocodile tears over
she moral depravity of the age, the increase
Of crime of every kind, and the general
food-tide Of yeualitv that is deluging the
country The same general strain of com
planning IS taken up and repeated by that
chronic set of grCmblers, who see only the
dark side of things present, and are ever
staring backward at the bright side Of the
good old times. We are of the number Of
those who, though not denying the general
prevalence Of much that is evil, are not
disposed to condemn the present as worse
than the past, but on the contrary look
upon it as buoyant with hope and promise
for the near future. But our present OBJ
iect is to show the hypocrisy of those fault
finders with the existing state of things.
A close examination Of the class of newspa-
pers addicted to these gloomy jeremiads
win show that they take special care to fill
their news-columns with police reports,
murders, robberies, adulteries, and every
species of criminal news and statistics. In
their zeal to expose the wiekedness OF the
times, they become the teachers of crime,
the cultiyators of taste in their readers for
criminal statistics, from which it Is but a
step to participation. 1t is thus that thou
sands of the youth of the land are yearly
made familiar with the whole criminal vo-
cabulary, are trained to think Of, and to
dwell in Imagination upon every species OF
crime, and from thinking upon, the way to
participation in it, in every form, is easy, and
the passage swift and sure. But the res
possibility rests not alone with the editor,
who thus basely panders to vicious and
dspraved tastes in some, and cultivates
them in others. The patrons of such pa
pers are scarcely less guilty than the pub
fishers. All over the country are men by
hundreds and thousands, who estimate the
value of the paper they introduce into their
families for daily reading, by the size Of the
sheet or the amount Of reading matter, with
out regard to quality, From our own expe-
rience, we know that there is scarcely one
in dozen Of either city or country papers
that is not literally crowded, with disgust
ing police reports, the minutest details OF
criAinal trials, and in which are not adver-
tised gift enterprises and lotteries, to tram
the young to gambling, and patent medl-
cines and obscene books, the character ol
which is not 70 he named in decent society,
all calculated to initiate the young INTO the
worst of vices. Yet these arc daily patron
lied bv those who complain of the awful de
dravitv Of the times, and the appalling ar
raw Of crimes every where committed. We
believe that there is a much greater preva-
lepee of crime than there should be, and
that much of what now prevails may be res
trained and prevented but il can only be
done, when these same, hypocritical, grum-
bling editors awake to a sense Of their res
possibility, in welding for good or evil the
immense power of the press, and when men
making pretensions TO common morality
cease to patronize the thousands of filthy
and obscene sheets that now pollute every
corner Of the land This is a subject that
comes home to every head of family and
to every one interested in elevating the
moral standard Of our people. Let all such
heed the lesson, and live up to the princi-
pies they profess, and henceforth beware of
lending their aid in the training Of the peo-
rle IN vice instead of virtue