The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1891-04-21


again. andI was brought up before the
same judge, and he said, You rascal p
And after II while 1 committed some
other crime, and j was brought before
the same judge, and he said, You ought
to be haneed.'U That Is all tn ey had
done for him in the way Of refor nation
and salvation. ssOh,n you say, ssthese
people are ;ncorrigible.n suppose
there are hundreds of persons this day
lying in the prison hunks who would
leap up at the prospect of reformation,
If society would only show them q way
into decency aud responsibility. "Oh,"
you say, 81 have no patience with these
rogues." I ask you In reply, how much
better would you have been under the
SAME circumstances? Suppose your
mother had been a blasphemer and your
father-a sot, and you had started lite
with O body stuffed with evil p%rociivities,
and you had spentmuch OF your time in
a cellar amid ~obscenitles and cursing,
and IL at ten years of age you had been
compelled to go out and steal, battered
and banged at night If y, II came in with
out any spoils and suppose your early
manhood and wOmanhood had been
covered with rags and fifth and decent
society had turned It's back upon you,
and lett you to consort with yagabonds
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 vallery of a court room
weeping because some hard-hearted
wretch is brought to justice; but L do say
that the safety and life of the commu-
nifty demand more potential influence in
behalf of public offenders.
In some of the city prisons the air is
like that of the Black Hole in Calcutta.
L have visited prisons where no air
swept through the wicket; il almost
knocked me down. No sunlight, young
men who had committed their first crime
crowded in among old offenders. saw
in one prison a woman, with one child
almost blind, who had been arrested for
the crime of poverty, who was waiting
until the slow law could take her to the
almshouse, where she rightfully belonged
but she was thrust in there with her
child amid the most abandc ned wretches
of the town. Many of the offenders
in that prison sleeping on the floor, with
nothing but u yermin-coyered blanket
over them. Those people crowded and
wan and wasted and half suffocated and
infatuated. 1 said to the men, "How do
you stand it here?" "God knows"
said one man, 1--WE have to stand it,"
oh, they will pay you when they get out.
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 iails are the best places
1 know of to manufacture f%oot-pads,
yagabonds, and cut-throats. Yale col
lege Is not 80 we'll calculated to make
scholars, nor Harvard so we'll calculated
to make scientists, nor Princeton so we'll
calculated to make t%heologians, as many
OF our jails are calculated to make crimi.
nails. All that those men do not ku ow
ofcrime after they have been in that
Dungeon Tor some time. Satanic machi-
nation can not teach them. In the sui
ferable stencil and sickening surround
ings of such places there Is nothing but
disease for the body, idlocy for the mind,
and death for the soul. Stuffed air and
darkness AMI vermin never turned a
thief into an honest man.
We want men like John Howard and
Sir William Blackstone, and women like
Elizabeth Fry, to do for the prisons of
the United States what those people did
in other days for the prisons Of England.
L thank God for what Isaac II. Hopper
and DR.. Wines and Mr.. Harris and
scores Of others have done in the way
OF prison refor II; but We want some
thing 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 I'M
trustworthy officials. "Woe unto thee,
0 lamb, when thy king Is a child, and
thy princes drink IN the morning." It
is a great calamity to q city when bad
men get into pnblic authority. Why
was 1t that in New York there was such
unparalleled crime between 1866 and
1S7l? 1t was because the judges of
police in that city, at that time, for the
most part, were as corrupt as the vaga-
bonds that came before them for trial.
Those were the days of high carnival,
Tor election frauds, assassination and
forgery. We had all kinds of rings.
There was one man during those years
that got n hundred and twenty eight
thousand dollars in me year for serving
the public. In n few years it was esti-
mated that there were fifty millions of
public treasure s1uandered, In those
times the criminal had only to wink to
the judge or Lis 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 were punished. These little
matters were fixed up" while the in
~terests OF society were ''fxed down."
You know as we'll as I do that one Wit
lain who escapes only opens the door for
other criminalttes. When the two pick
pockets snatched the diamond pin from
the Brooklyn gentleman in a Broadway
stage, and the villains were arrested, and
the trial was set down for the general
sessions, and then the trial never came,
and new anything more was heard of
the case, the public officials were only
bidding higher for more crime. 1t is no
compliment to public authority when we
have in all the cities of the country,
walking abroad, men and women motor
ious for criminality, unwhipped Of JUS
tice They are pointed out to you in
the street day by day.
There you find what are called the
''fences." the men who stand between
the thief and the honest man, sheltering
the thief, and at great price handing,
over tile goods to the owner to whom
they belonged. There you will find
those who are called the ''skinners," the