The prison mirror. [volume] (Stillwater, Minn.) 1887-1894, 1890-10-09
TEACHING CRIME.

out explosives, SHOWS tnaC ne Is raw. coming
from such high authority this ought to settle Mr..
Hennessy.
So says the editor of the Minneapolis
Tribune. In fun this is all right enough;
but now. seriously, is not this matter
worthy of the earnest consideration of a
great, influential journal like the Tribune?
Is there not something akin to crime in
these public displays OF criminals methods
of rObbing honest industry Of its earnings?
If the Tribune does not know it THE MIR
ROR does that there are hundreds of boys
and young men. of that class who frequent
the ''heaven" of theaters, in every city, who
only need suggestion of how to commit a
robbery to encourage them to undertake the
commission of one. After circus has eXhib-
tied in town this class of boys may be found
in old barns initiating the tricks they saw
is to become showmen. They visit the the
alter and see safe blown open and hear the
high-tOned people down below applauding
the act 1t is grand. inspiring. They are
assured the performers are real burglars
who have robbed banks, made wonderful
and daring escapes from penitentiarieS, and
are now leading reformed lives at one hun
dred dollars per week. These are real
heroes worthy of emulation. These young
fellows go home from the theater and lay
awake planning-aS do some older ones
without the same stimuluS-hOw to rob a
bank. They drill the hole. put in the pow
der, light the fuse-crash Out rolls the
greenbacks and gold to be grabbed up and
thrown into bags. The police are upon
them-they rush out under cover of the
smoke of the explosion, and amid storm of
pistol shots and flying bullets they escape
into dreamland where. with pockets bullying
with money, they indulge every pent up de-
sire of their hearts. The awakening comes,
and brings them back to the cold realities of
their poverty. that only tend to emphasize
what might be. It is worth trying
anyhow. How many boys have attempted
to realize such dreams may best be seen by
visiting the place where the fancy ended
and the reality began-the prison. You
may think we write under morbid spell,
but such is not the case. We see around
us every day wrecks of men who have been
lured to self destruction by false conceptions
gathered in youth when the mind was sus-
ceptible to enduring Impressions. No man
of natural human feelings can look upon a
prison full of men degraded by crime,
clothed in garments of felony. deprived of
natural rights and debarred from all that
makes life worth living, without hating
every cause that brought them into such a
state. If he be true thinker he will curse
the causes of the degradation he sees more
than the degraded. Society is inclined to
disclaim all responsibility for the misdoings
of individual members, forgetting that the
causes that make criminals lay within itself.
So we say that for the sake of those weaker
members of the human family the great
body of strong members should forego the
pleasure of witnessing exhibitions of pract-
cal methods of crime. At least it should
not heroize the safe robber above he whose
industry made the safe worth rObbing. If
such powerful papers as the Tribune and its
contemporaries would turn their batteries
upon the demoralizing institutions of the
times instead of wasting their ammunition
on the puny criminals, who are shot out of
such institutions like birds from sports.