The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1891-04-22

| rs all they had done Tor him In the
way OF reformation and salvation.
"Oh," you say. these people are incor-
rigible." i suppose there are hundreds
OF persons this day lying in prison hunks
who would leap up at the prospect OF
reformation, If society would only allow
them way into deeency and respecta-
biity. "Oh," you say, 81 have no pa
thence with these rogues." ask you in
reply, how much better would you have
been under the same circumstances? Sup
pose your mother had been a blasphemer
and your father a sot, and you had started
life with body stuffed with evil proclivi-
ties, and you had spent much of your
| time in a cellar amid obscenities and
cursing, and if at ten years of
age you had been compelled to
go out and steal, battered
and banged at night if you came in with
! out any spoils, and suppose your early
manhood and womanhood had been COW
cred with rags and filth. and decent So
ciety had turned its back upon you, and
left you to consort with vagabonds and
wharf-rats-how much better would you
have been? | have no sympathy with that
executive clemency which would let crime
run loose, or which would sit in the gal
lery Of court room weeping becau.e some
hard-hearted wretch is brought to justice; ;
but do say that the safety and life of the
community demand more potential intlu-
ences in behalf of public Offenders.
In some OF the city prisons the air is
like that OF the Black Hole OF Calcutta. /
have visited prisons where, as the air
swept through the wicket, it almost
knocked me down. No sum ght. Young
men who had committed their first crime
crowded in among old offenders. / saw
in one prison a woman, with child al
most blind, who had been arrested for the
crime OF poverty, who was waiting until
the slow law could take her to the aims
house, where she rightfully belonged; but
she was thrust in there with her child
amid the most abandoned wretches OF the
town. Many of the offenders in that
prison sleeping on the floor, with nothing
but vermin-covered blanket over them.
These people, crowded and wan. and
wasted, and half su coated, and Infatuated.
| said to the men: "How do you stand
il here?" "God knows" said one man,
I'VE have to stand it." Oh, they will pay
you when they get ont. Where they burned
down one house they will burn three.
They will strike deeper the assassin's
knife. They are this minute plotting
worse burglaries. Some of the city jails
are the best places | know of 10 manu-
iacture foot-pads, vagabonds and cut
Threats. Yale college is not so we'll calcu-
lated to make scholars, nor Harvard so
well calculated 10 make scientists, nor
Princeton so well calculated TO make theo-
logians as many OF our jails are calculated
TO make criminals. All that those men
do not know OF crime after they have been
in that dungeon for some time, satanic
machination cannot teach them. In the
hla cfarrh orA ciplya,ino,
roundings of such places there is nothing
but disease for the body, idiocy for the
mind. and death for the soul. Stifed air
and darkness and vermin never turned a
thief INTO en- honest man.
We want men like John Howard and
Sir William Blackstone, and women like
Eliza beth Fry TO do for the prisoners Of
the United States what those people did in
other DAYS for the prisoners of England.
thank God Tor what Isaac T. Hopper and
DR.. Wines and Mr.. Harris and scores of
others have done in the wav of prison re-
form but We want something more radical
before will come the blessing of him who
said: 81 was in prison, and We came unto
me-"
Again, in your effort to arrest this
plague OF crime you need to consider un-
| trustworthy officials. "Woe unto thee, o
land, when thy king is a child, and thy
| princes drink in the morning" 1t is a
great calamity to city when bad men get
into public authority. Why was il that
in New York there was such unparalleled
crime between 1866 and 1871? 1t was be-
cause the judges OF police in that city
at that time, for the most part, were as
corrupt as the vagabonds that came before
them FOR trial. Those were the DAYS of
| high carnival for election frauds, assassin
alton and forgery. We had all kinds OF
| rings. There was one man during those
| years that got Sl2S,000 in one year for
serving the public In few years it was
estimated that there were $50 ZOO, 600 of
public treasure squandered. In those
| times the criminal had only to wink
TO the judge, or his lawyer would
wink for him, and the question was
| decided for the defendant. OF the eight
thousand people arrested in that city in
one year only three thousand were pun
ished. These little matters were fixed
NJ" while the interests of society were
'fixed down." You know as well as
as do that one william who escapes only
| opens the door for other criminalilies
| When the two pick-pockets snatched the
diamond pin from the Brooklyn gentle
man in a Broadway stage, and the Williams
were arrested, and the trial was set down
| for the general sessions, and then the trial
never came, and never anything more
was heard of the case, the public officials
were only bidding higher for more crime.
| II is no compliment to public authority
when we have in all the cities of the
country, walking abroad, men snd
women notorious for criminality, un-
whipped OF justice. They are pointed
out to you in the street day by day.
| There you find what are called the
fences" the men who stand be-
tween the thief and the honest man,
sheltering the thief, and at a great price,
handing over the goods TO the owner to
whom they belong. There YOU will find
those who are called the ''skinners," the
men who hover around Wall-st, with
great sleight of hand in bonds and stocks.
There you will find the uneral thieves.
| the people who go and sit down and mourn
with families and pick their pockets. And
| there you will find the con fdence men"
who borrow money of you because they
| have dead child in the house and want
to bury il, when they never had house
or family; or they want to go to En-
gland and get a large property there, and
they want you to pay their way, and they
| will send the money back by the
very next mail. There are the
'harbor thieves" the "shoplifters,"
the 'pickpockets," famous ali over
| the cities. Hundreds OF them
i NTH tboir faoos IN h. r.oIIo-,,