St. Paul daily globe., 1889-10-28
THREE GOOD ROASTS
Delivered in the Considera-
tion Of the Prison Reform
r Question.
!. g.
Rev. Sam Smith Attacks the
Non-Enforeement Of the =.
City Laws. -
x
Hon. John w. Willis Scores
the Principle Of Fixed
Prison Terms. y
Secretary Hart Roasts the
System Of State County - -
Jails.

Yesterday was the annually recurring
''Prison Reform Sunday" Services for
the occasion were held IN several of the
churches, the most conspicuous
being at the Peoples church last even
ing. The subject was divided into three
branches, with a speaker assigned to
each: Causes of crime, Rev. S. q.
Smith: prevention of crime, Hon. John
w. Willis; Juvenile criminals. Secretary
Hart. of the state board 0f'charities and
corrections. Rev. Smith talked in his
usual vigorous style, calling a spade
spade whenever he had occasion to
figuratively refer to that useful article.
He divided the causes of crime into six
heads. First came the natural desire OF
men to sin, which was increased by in
temperance, the social evil ana
gambling. Next came the force of
heredity, the transmission of sinful pro-
penStieS from father to son, eXemplify-
ing the commandment which declares
that the sins of the fathers shall be Wis
tied upon the children even to the third
and fourth generations. Third, the bad
structure of human society; and fourth,
the lack of scientific knowledge. Then
came the lack of belieL in the doctrine
of retributiOn, which included infidelity,
under which head the speaker excOri-
ated those intelligent communities of
lnfdelS which were rotten to the core.
PaganiS1n, he held, was shining moral
light as compared to agnOSticiSm. The
last cause was contempt of law, and
particularly on the part of those whose
duty it was TO enforce it. Under this
head he unm ercifully scored certain
violations of law in st. Paul and walked
rOugh-Sh0d over the men present who
"were too coWardly and lacked the nerve
and spunk to compel its observance"
CRIME AS A DISEASE.
Hon. John w. Willis delivered very
elegant and well-rounded discourse, evil
IDENTIFY thoroughly digested His plans
Nere Utopian, though his rhetoric very
pretty. He regarded crime as a dis
ease. and would prevent it just as dis
ease is prevented. In the beginning he
advocated Christian training and educa-
ton, teaching the youth of the land to
repel crime from their moral nature just
as they would resist disease in their
phySical systems. Crime is malignant y
contagious disease. 1t cannot be cured :
at once, as society has went over crime
for 5000 years. But we disinfect for
disease and we quarantine for cOnta-
gion, and crime may be reduced in the"
same way. He advanced a theory
saying as he did so, that it.
might sound a little theoretical; it
was tOimprison for crime. just as for'
disease. If it required two weeks to-
bring a mans moral nature to state Of
health, keep him two weeks; if four
weeks or four years were necessary,
keep him that long. What would be
IF nh ioio n =
patient from hospital in three weeks
or in seven days, without regard to his,
condition? What would we think of an
asylum where raging maniac was dis
charged in any stated time without re2a
gard to,his mental condition? Mr. VIII
lis theory was to putthe moral. mental
and physical conditions on the same
terms: To be discharged when cured.
JUVENILE CRIMINALS.
Secretary Hart talked in a more
hOmely way, but was equally interest
ing. He devoted himself to juvenile
criminals, but begun with few statis-
tics. There are in this country 10000
inmates Of prisons and refOrmatOries;
of these 10000 are under twenty years
of age, $4,000 are over thirty years and
the remainder between twenty and
thirty years. He then startled his hear
ers 10y asserting: minnesota is the
only one of eight states in which the
foreign population furnishes less than
its share of the criminals" All honor
to the Scandinavians, he said, that
while they form % per cent of the popu-
latiOn of Minnesota, they furnish only
IL per cent of her criminals. 1t
was a singular fact that the larg-
est proportion of the criminals
comes from English speaking
emigrantS. and he attributed this to the
fact that in Great Britain the aid socie-
ties induStri0uSly helped discharged
convicts by furnishing them with means
to emigrate to America. The laws of
heredity did the rest. In the course of
his talk Mr.. Hart referred to the county
jaiIs of Minnesota as a disgrace to the
commonwealth, and charged them with
being most fruitful source of crime, in
that the first seeds of corruption are
there sown by throwing young boys
into communication with hardened
criminals. He talked Interestingly of
the reform school, and gave it as fact
that a majority of the boys confined
there had been what would be called
Sunday school boys; that is,-had been
brought up with Sunday school training.