The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1891-04-22

again, and was brought up before the
same Judge, and he said, sYou rascal y
And after while l committed some
other crime, and was brought before
the same judge. and he said, You ought
to be hanSed.'" That IS all they had
done for him in the way of frefor nation
and salvation. "Oh." you say, these
people are incorrigible." 1 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 a way
into decency and respectabllity. Oh"
you say. Il haven patience with these
rogues." ask you in reply, how much
better would you have been under the
same circumstances? Suppose your
mother had been blasphemer and your
latter sot, and you had started lie
with a body stuffed with evil prociivities,
and YOU had spentmuch Of your time IN
cellar amid obscenities and cursing,
and if at ten years of age you had been
compelled to go out and steal, battered
and banged at night if yru came in with
out any spoils and suppose your early
manhood and womanhood had been
covered with rags and filth and decent
society had turned its back upon you,
and lett you to consort with vagaoonds
and whart-rats much better would
YOU hare beens I 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 d
wretch is brought to justice; but [ do say
that the safety and life Of the commu-
nitv 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.
I have visited prisons where no 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. I saw
in one prison woman, with one child
almost blind, who had been arrested Tor
the crime Of poverty, who was waiting
until the slow law could take her TO the
almshouse, where she rghtfullY belonged
but she was thrust in there with her
child amid the most abandoned wretches
of the town. Many Of the offenders
in that prison sleeping on the floor, with
nothing but vermin-covered blanket
over them. Those people crowded and
wan and wasted and halfsufocated and
lnfuriated. SAID to the men, How do
YOU stand it here?" ''God knows" !"
said one man, 1--WE have to stand 1t. !"
Oh, they will pay you when they get out.
Where they burned down one house
they will burn three. They will strike
6eeper the assassin's knife. They are
this minute plotting worse burglarles.
Some of the city jails are the best places
T know Of to manufacture toot-pads,
vaeabonds, and cut-throats. Yale col
lege Is not so well calculated to make
scholars, nor Harvard so well calculated
to make scientists, nor Princeton so we'll
calculated to make theologians, as many
of our Iails are calculated to make criml-
mails. All that those men do not Know
Of crime after they have been IL that
dungeon for 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.
I thank God for what Isaac 7. Hopper
and DR.. Wines and Mr.. Harris and
scores Of others have done in the way
of prison refor u; but we want some.
thing more radical before will come the
blessing of him who said: II was IN
prison. and ye came unto me-"
Again, in Your effort to arrest this
plague of crime you need to consider un-
trustworthy officials. s'Woe unto thee.
O lamb, when thy king IS child, and
thy princes drink IN the morning." 1t
IS a great calamity to city when bad
men g., into pnblic authority. Why
was it that in New York there was such
UNPARALLELED crime between 1866 and
1911? 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,
for election frauds, assassination and
| forgery. We had all kinds Of rings.
There was one man during those years
that got one hundred and twenty eight
thousand dollars in one year for serving
the public. In few years it was estl.
mated that there were fifty millions OF
public treasure squandered, In those
times the criminal had only to wink to
the Judge or Lis lawyer would wink tor
him, and the question was decided Tor
the defendant. Of the eight thousand
people arrested in that city n one year,
only three were punished. These little
matters were fixed up" while the in
terests OF society were ''fxed down."
You know as well as I do that one VII
lain who escapes only opens the door for
other criminalites. 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 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
ssfences," 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 belonged. There you will find
| those who ore called the t.SkinnerS. " the