Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1891-04-13
PLAQUES OF THE CITIES.
THE IDLE RICH, THE IDLE POOR, THE
DESPERATE, DANGEROUS POOR.

/ 1LAU U1AC vi ILL NIAAIAOs
THE IDLE RICH, THE IDLE POOR, THE
DESPERATE, DANGEROUS POOR.
DIR. Talmage's Graphic Sketch of the Dan
g.rous Elements in City Life-Life in
the Jniis, Cellars and Hospitals-The
4 Lava Seething Below.
NEW YORK, April 12-Dr. Talmage,
IN continuance of the course OF sermons
on THE Ten Plaques of the Cities" to-
day preached to large audiences in the
Brooklyn Academy of Music in the
I forenoon and at The Christian Herald
service ut the New York Academy of
Music in the evening on THE Plague
/ of Crime" He took for his text Exodus
vii, 90, ''Al the waters that were in
! the river were turned to blood.
Among all the Egyptian plaques none
! could have been worse than this. The
/ Nile is the wealth of Egypt. It's fish
! the food, its waters the irrigation OF
/ garden and fields It's condition de
cides the prosperity or the doom of the
empire What happens to the Nile
/ happens to all Egypt And now in
/ the text that great river is incarnadined.
! 1t is n red cash across an empire. in
/ poetic license we speak Of wars which
turn the rivers into blood But my
text is not Il poetic license. 1t was a
! fact. great crimson, appalling condi-
ton described. The Nile rolling deep
of blood Can you imagine more
awful Plague2
| The modern plague which nearest
corresponds with that is the plague of
| crime in all our cities. It halts not for
| blOodshed. 1t shrinIs from no carnage.
1t bruises and cuts and strikes down
and destroys. 1t revels in the blood of
body and soul-this plague of crime,
rampant for ages, and never holder or
more rampant than now.
HORRORS OF THE POLICE COURTS.
The annual police reports OF these
cities as | examine them are to me more
suggestive than Dantc's Inferno, and
all Christian people as well as reform
ers need to awaken to q present and
tremendous duty. If you want this
plague of Crime to stop there are
several kinds of persons you need to
consider. First, the public criminals.
You ought not T. be surprised that
these pc. lie ma up u large portion
in many communities. The vast ma
iority Of the criminals who take ship
from Europe come into our own port.
In 1859, of the forty-nine thousand PEG
pie who were incarcerated in the pris-
ons of the country thirty-two thousand
We're Of foreign birth. Many of them
were the very desperadOes of society.
oOzing into the slunS of our cities
waiting for an opportunity to riot and
steal and debauch. joining the large
| gang of American thugs and cutthroats
There are in this cluster of cities
New York, Jersey City and Brooklyn
four thousand people whose entire bust
ness in life is to commit crime That
is as much their business as jurisprud-
ence or medicine or merchandise is
your business. To it they bring all
their energies of body, mind and soul,
and they look upon the intervals which
they spend in prison as so much unfor-
tunate loss of time, just as you look
tism which fastenS you in the house for
few days 1t is their lifetime business
to pick pockets and blow up safes and
shOplift and ply the panel game, and
they have as much pride of skill in
their business as you have in yours
when you upset the argument of an
opposing counsel or cure a gunshot
fracture which other surgeons have
given up or fOresee a turn in the mar
ket as you buy goods just before they
90 up 90 per cent. 1t is their bust
ness to commit crime, and I do not
suppose that once in a year the thought
of the immortality strikes them.
Added to these professional Grim
inals, American and foreign, there is a
large class of men who are more or less
industrious in crime. In one year the
police in this cluster of cities arrested
ten thousand people for theft and ten
thousand for assault and battery and
fifty thousand for intOxication. Drunk
enness is responsible for much of the
theft, since it confuses q mans ideas of
property, and he gets his hands on
things that do not belong to him Rum
is responsible for much of the assault
and battery, inspiring men to sudden
bravery, which they must demonstrate,
though it be on the face of the next
gentleman.
Ten million dollars worth of property
stolen in this cluster of cities in one
year You cannot, as good citizens, be
| independent Of that fact It will touch
Won, ,,DoI-a+ T hov-o ,,;,,o 1ro,,
the fact that these three cities pay about
eight million dollars worth of taxes a
year to arraign, Try and support the
criminal population. You help to pay
the board of every criminal, from the
sneak thief that snatches a spool of
cotton up to some man who swamps a
bank More than that, it touches your
heart in the moral depression of the
community. You might as well think
to stand in q closely confined room
where there are fifty people and yet not
breathe the Initiated air as to stand in
a community where there is such
great multitude of the depraved with
out somewhat being contaminated.
What is the fire that burns your store
down compared with the cOnfiagration
which consumes your morals? What
is the theft of the gold and silver from
your money safe compared with the
theft of your children's virtue?
CAN TIE CRIMINAL BE REFORMED?
We are all ready to arraign crimi-
nails. We shout at the top of our
voice, Stop thief!" and when the
police get on the track we come out,
hatless and in our slippers, and assist
IN the arrest. We come around the
bawling ruf1an and hustle him off to
justice, and when he gets in prison
what do we do for him? With great
gusto we put on the handouts and the
hopples; but what preparation are we
making for the day when the handouts
and the hopples come off? Society
seems to say to these criminals, Evil
lain, go in there and rot" when it
ought to say, you are an offender
against the law, but we mean to give
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