The Brookhaven leader., 1891-04-23
PROFESSIONAL CRIME.
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage Discourses
on Another Great Plague.
The Reign of Crime, Followed as n Pro-
fession, One of the Greatest Plaques
the Cities OF the Land are
Called to Deal with.

Brooklyn and New York City. His text
was:
All the waters that were in the river were
turned to blood.-Exodus vii, 20.
Among all the Egyptian plaques none
could have been worse than this. The
Nile is the wealth of Egypt. Its fish
the food, its waters the irrigation of
garden and fields Its condition decides
the prosperity or the doom of the en-
pire. What happens to the Nile hap
pens to all Egypt. And now in the text
that great river is incarnadined. 1t
is red cash across an empire. In po-
etic license we speak of wars which
turn the rivers into blood. But my text
is not n poetic license. 1t was fact, a
great crimson APPALLING condition, de-
scribcd. The Nile rolling deep of blood.
Can you imagine more awful plague?
The modern plague which nearest
corresponds with that is the plague of
crime in all our cities 1t halts not for
bloodshed. 1t shrinks 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 bolder or
more rampant than now.
The annual police reports of these
cities, as | examine them, are to me
more suggestive than ''Dante's In
ferno," and all Christian people, as well
as reformers, need to waken to a pres
ent and tremendous duty. If you want
this plague OF crime to stop there are
several kinds of persons you need to
consider. (D The public criminals.
You ought not to be surprised that
these people make up large portion in
many communities. The vast majority
of criminals who take ship from Europe
come into our own port. In 1869, of the
forty-nine thousand people who were
incarcerated in the prisons of the
country, thirty-two thousand were
of foreign birth. Many of them
were the very desperadocs of cities,
oozing into the slums of our society,
waiting for an opportunity to riot and
steal and debauch, joining the large
gang of American thugs and cut-throats.
There are in this cluster of cities-New
York, Jersey City and Brooklyn-four
thousand people whose entire business
in life is to commit crime That is as
much their business as jurisprudence or
medicine or merchandise is your busi-
ness. 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 unfortunate loss of
time, just as you look upon an attack of
influenza or rheumatism 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 in their business as you have in
yours when you upset the argument of
an opposing counsel, or cure gunshot
fracture which other surgeons have
given up, or foresee a turn in the mar
ket as you buy goods just before they
go up twenty per cent. 1t is their bus
mess to commit crime, and do not sup
pose that once in year the thought of
the immortality strikes them. Added
to these professional criminals, Amer
lean and foreign, there is large class
of men who are more or less indus
trious 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 a 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 can not, as good citizens, be
independent of that fact. 1t will touch
your pocket, since / have to give you
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 the 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 closely-confined room
where there are fifty people and yet not
breathe the vitiated air, as to stand in a
community where there is such great
multitude OF the depraved without some
what being contaminated. What is the
fire that burns your store down COM
pared with the confiagration which con-
sumes your morals? What is the theft
of the gold and silver from your money
safe compared with the theft of your
children's virtue?
We are all ready to arraign criminals
We shout at the top of ouf 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 rufiSan and
hustle him off to justice, and wren he
gets in prison what do we do for him?
With great gusto we put on the hand
cuffs and the hopples; but what pre- "a
ration are we making for the day when
the handouts and the hopples come of
Society seems to say to these criminals:
"Villain, 20 In there and rot, when it
ought to say: "You are an offender
against the law, but we mean to give
you an opportunity to repent; we mean
to help you. Here are Bibles and tracts
and Christian influences. Christ died
for you. Look and live"
Vast improvements have been made
by introducing industries into the pris-
on; but we want something more than