The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1882-07-07
FOR A LOAF OF BREAD

Sundays New York Herald contains. in
the compass of q few lines, notice of the
arrest of two young men in that city for
ths theft of a loaf of bread. These boys,
brothers, some eighteen years of age, were
penniless and hungry, and were of bright,
honest looking countenanccs. They had
just arrived in the great city where wealth
and perjury are neighbors of closest posi-
ton, and where the famed merchant and
the famished family reside, perhaps in the
same block. A baker stopped in front of
Isle BuLLocK's grocery store at day break
and there deposited for him the customary
basket of bread. The young men watched
their opportunity and being weary and
worn from many miles of travelling they
took the loaf and ate fit, when the police
man who saw the act took them, being
without bail, to jail, to be thence transfer.
red, it may be, to the pcnitentiary in the
Hover of their youth ard strength, and
perchance, for their offence. What renec-
tons does this short account give rise Ia?
Before our eyes daily we see the most stu.
pendous of frauds committed, the most
hainous Of offences INDUCED in. The Grim.
inal statistics of the country weight down
volume after volume of fruitcss trials
before Judges and iuries for all kinds of
felonies and misdcmcanors, arson, bur
gary, forgery, murder, perjury, rape The
very atmosphere of the criminal court is
loaded with breathings OF indictments, in
formations, trials, etc. And yet where
money, where family or other influence has
boan at work to tinge the color of the
wrong, the expressions acquittals, quashed,
mol pros'd, etc, are heard far oftener than
the word conviction. Thousands yes, mil
lions Of dollars are annually spent in these
trials, and yet the guilty escape through the
mcshes of the law when the mauipula-
tons have been done by skilled ATTORNEYS,
employed by those enabled to pay the
charges asked, and often thus enabled by
the fruits of the guilt it is their business TO
guard against the punishment Of And
yet where the trining matter of the taking
of few peaches recently by hungry way
iarcr from strangers garden, was adj
mitted In the court by the then almost
starved man, or as in the case first mem
toned, the purloining of loaf of bread to
sustain lainting nature, is confessed by two
young men looking for work, the law
comes in, and, by reason Of their poverty,
consigns them to the walls where the same
striped clothes are worn as badge of igno-
mlny to the vericst criminal that ever cut
icllow.creature's throat. The peniten-
tiary of Texas contains to-day a goodly
number Of convicts sent there because of
offences against the law less in nature or
design than those that have been commit
ted by many who move to-day in the upper
walks Of the social sphere, simply because
Of the laws defect somewhere. II has been
because Of this view and these facts that
Governor Roberts has seen fit during his
TO pardon. many for the
minor offences for which they were impris.
,ne |, and often imprisoned through their
inability to procure the counsel that others
secured and SO escaped. The entire Grim
nal code of our own state needs revision
md it Is to be hoped that the legislature
hat meets next winter will give it the re.
lulsite attention, to the end that no one
who takes loaf of bread or the like to
satisfy an appetite that comes of actual
want can be forced TO be blishted for life in
MS career.