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


Just As bad as they were before.
The secretary Of one Of the benevolent
societies of New York says q lad fifteen
years OF age had spent three years Of his
life In prison, and he said to the lad,
''What have they done for you to make
you betterf" well, replied the lad, ''the
first time was brought up before the
judge he said, You ought TO be ashamed
Of yourself And then l committed a
crime again, and was brought up before
the same judge, and he said, You rascalP
And after while committed some other
crime, and was brought before the same
judge, and he said, You ought to be
hanged." That was all they had done
for him in the way Of reformation and sal
walton. "Oh," you say, these people are
incorrigible." L suppose there are hum
treds Of persons this day lying in the
prison hunks who would leap up at the
prospect of reformation If society would
only allow them a way into decency and
respectability.
THE UECHARITABLE JUDGES.
"Oh," you say, "I have no patience with
these rogues." 1 ask you in reply, how
much better would you have been under
the same circumstances Suppose your
mother had been blasphemer and your
father sot, and you had started life with
body stuffed with evil proclivities, and
you had spent much of your time in cellar
amid obscenities and cursing. and if at ten
years of age you had been compelled to goout
and steal, battered and banged at night If
you came in without any spoils, and suppose
your early manhood and womanhood had
been covered with rags and filth, and de-
| nout ooniatu had tu,uod ita hank unnu Won
and left you to consort with vagabonds and
wharf rats-how much better would you
have beenP 1 have no sympathy with that
executive clemency which would let crime
run loose, or which would sit in the gallery
of a court room weeping because some
hard hearted wretch is brought to justice;
but do say that the safety and life of the
community demand more potential infu-
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 sunlight. Young men who had
committed their first crime. crowded in
among old offenders. saw in one prison
a woman, with child almost blind, who
had been arrested for the crime of poverty,
|
take her to the almshouse, where she
Yightfully belonged; but she was thrust in
there with her child amid the most aban-
doned wretches of the town. Many of the
offenders in that prison slept on the
floor, with nothing but a vermin covered
blanket over them. Those people crowded
and wan and wasted and half suffocated
and infuriated. said to the men, "How
l l. ;% Crd Lpn coiA
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
assassins knife. They are this minute
plotting worse burglaries
Some of the city jails are the best places
know of to manufacture footpads, vaga-
bonds and cutuhroats. Yale college is not
so we'll calculated to make scholars, nor
Harvard so well calculated to make scien-
fists, nor Princeton so we'll calculated to
make theologians, as many of our lails are
calculated to make criminals. All that those
men do not know of crime after they have
been in that dungeon for some time. Sa-
tanic machination cannot teach them. In
the insufferable stencil and sickening sur
roundings of such places there is nothing
but disease for the body, idiocy for the
mind, and death for the soul. Stified air
and darkness and vermin never turned a
thief into an honest man.
We want men like John Howard and Sir
William Blackstone and women like Eliz-
abeth Fry to do for the prisons of the
United States what those people did in
other days for the prisons of England.
thank God for what Isaac I. Hopper and
DR.. Wines and Mr.. Harris and scores of
others have done in the way of prison re-
form, but we want something more radical
before will come the blessing of him who
said, 81 was in prison, and ye came unto
me-"
THE CRIME OF MIsGovERNMENT.
Again, in your effort to arrest this plague
of crime you need to consider untrust-
worthy 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 it that in New
York there was such unparalleled crime be-
tween 1886 and 1872 It was because 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, assassination and forgery.
We had all kinds of rings. There was one
man during those years that got one hum
dred and twenty-eight thousand dollars in
one year for serving the public.
In few years it was estimated that
there were fifty millions of public treasure
squandered. In those times the criminal
had only to wink to the Judge, or his law
yer 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 punish
ed These little matters were fixed up,"
while the interests of society were fixed
down" You know as we'll as lido that one
villain who escapes only opens the door for
other criminalities When the two pick
pockets snatched the diamond pin from the
Brooklyn gentleman in Broadway stage,
and the villains were arrested and the trial
was set down for the general sessions, and
then the trial never came, and never any
thing more was heard of the case. the pub
lie officials were only bidding higher for
more crime.
1t is no compliment to public authority
when we have in all the cities of the coun-
try, walking abroad, men and women no.
torious 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 the goods to the owner to
whom they belong. There you will find
thosa who are called the 1slxinnera tha