Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1891-04-23

nAls OF this country, What a safe thing ID
Is to be a great criminalP' let the law
swoop upon them. Let it be known in
this country that crime will have no quar-
ter; that the detectives are afterit; that the
police club Is being brandished; that the
iron door Of the prison is being opened;
that the Judge Is ready TO call on the case.
Too great leniency TO criminals is too great
severity to society.
IDLENEss INVITES THE DEVIL.
Again, in your effort to arrest this plague
of crime you need to consider the idle pop
ulation. OF course do not refer to people
who are getting old, or to the sick or to
those who cannot get work, but tell you
to look out for those athletic men and
women who will not work. When the
French nobleman was asked why he kept
busy when he had so large property he
said, "I keep on engraving so may not
hang myself" I do not care who the man
is, you cannot afford to be idle 1t is from
the idle classes that the criminal classes
are made up. Character, like water, gets
putrid if it stands still too long. Who can
wonder that in this world, where there is
so much to do, and all the hosts of earth
and heaven and hell are plunging into the
conflict and angels are flying and God is at
work and theNniverse is a-quake with the
marching and counter marching, that God
let's his indignation fall upon man who
chooses idlenessf
have watched these do-nothings who
spend their time stroking their beard and
retouching their toilet and criticising in
d1strious people, and pass their days and
nights in barrooms and club houses, loung-
| iro nd o,,,OHfrn oV1d OH onA rd
| playing. They are not only useless, but
| they are dangerous. How hard it is for
them to while away the hoursl Alas, for
theml If they do not know how to while
away an hour, what will they do when
they have all eternity on their handsi
| These men for a while smoke the best ci-
gars and wear the best clothes and move
in the highest spheres, but have noticed
that very soon they come down to the
prison, the almshouse, or stop at the gal
| lows.
The police stations of this cluster of
cities furnish annually between two and
three hundred thousand lodgings. For the
most part these two and three hundred
thousand lodgings are furnished to able
bodied men and women-people as able to
work as you and are. When they are re-
ceived no longer at one police station be-
cause they are "repeaters" they go to
some other station, and so they keep NOV
ing around. They get their food at house
doors, stealing what they can lay their
hands on in the front basement while the
servant is spreading the bread in the back
basement. They will not work. Time and
again, in the country districts, they have
wanted hundreds and thousands of labor
ers. These men will not go. They do not
want to work. have tried them. I have
set them to saving wood in my cellar to
see whether they wanted to work. l Of
| fered to pay them well for it. have
heard the saw going for about three min
utes, and then 1 went down, and lol the
wood, but no saw! They are the pest of
society, and they stand in the way of the
| Lords poor who ought to be helped and
must be helped, and will be helped.
While there are thousands of industrious
men who cannot get any work, these men
who do not want any work come in and
make that plea l am in favor of the res
toration of the old fashioned whipping post
for just this one class of men who will not
work-sleeping at night at public expense
in the station house; during the day get
ting their food at your doorstep. Impris-
Onment does not scare them. They would
like it, Blackwell's Island or Sing Sing
would be comfortable home for them.
They would have no objection to the aims
house, for they like thin soup, if they can
not get mock turtle.
Ipropose this for them On one side of
them put some healthy work; on the other
side put rawhide, and let them take their
choice. like for that class of people the
scant bill of fare that Paul wrote out for
the Thessalonian loafers, "If any work not,
neither should he eat" BY what law of
God or man is it right that you and l
should toll day in and day out until our
hands are blistered and our arms ache and
our brain gets numb, and then be called
upon to support what in the United States
are about two million loafers. They are a
very dangerous class. Let the public au-
thorities keep their eyes on them.
THE ILL TREATED BECOME DESPERATE.
Again, among the uprooting classes !
place the oppressed poor. Poverty to a
certain extent is Christening, but after that,
when it drives q man to the wall, and he
hears his children cry in vain for bread, it
sometimes makes him desperate think
that there are thousands of honest men
lacerated into vagabondism. There are
men crushed under burdens for which they
are not half paid. While there is no ex-
cuse for criminality, even in oppression, /
state it as simple fact that much of the
scoundrelism of the community is conse-
quent upon i'll treatment. There are many
men and women battered and bruised and
stung until the hour of despair has come
and they stand with the ferocity of a wild
beast which, pursued until it can run nc
longer, turns round, foaming and bleeding
to fight the hounds.
There is vast underground New York
and Brooklyn life that is appalling and
shameful. 1t wallows and steams with
putrefaction. You go down the stairs
which are wet and decayed with filth, and
at the bottom you find the poor victims on
the floor, cold, sick, three-fourths dead
Sinking into a still darker corner under
the CLEAN of the lantern of the police
There has not been a breath of fresh air in
that room for five years, literally. The
broken sewer empties it's contents upon
them, and they lie at night in the swim
ming filth. There they are, men, women
children; blacks, whites Mary Magdaler
without her repentance, and Lazarus
without his God. These are "the dives
into which the pickpockets and the thieves
go, as well as great many who would like
different life but cannot get it.
These places are the sores of the city
which bleed perpetual corruption. They
are the underlying volcano that threatens
us with q Caracas earthquake. 1t rolls
and roars and surges and heaves and rock!
and blasphemes and dies, and there art