New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1891-12-08
THE CRANK EPIDEMIC.

There are some things OF an uHpledsanU nature
| in this world that have to be taken for granted
The most uncheeful circumstance in life is the
necessity of some time leaving it; but death IS
| inevitable, and we are not permitted to choose
time or place for meeting it. The call may
come any time and in innumerable ways; a pre-
vailing epidemic, an explosion, collision, a
falling brick or any other of million causes
against which human foresight is powerless to
provide, may cast us off with or without
notice. STILL We cherish a sort of half notion
that by some kind of human enactment we can
put I'D barriers about our persons that Will IN
sure safety against the ordinary accidents OF life
and take away the constant sense OF peril. we
legislate against epidemics by establishing Health
Boards and enforcing sanitary regulations we
provide against boiler explosions by inspections
and against collisions by laws regulating the
movement Of railroad trains; municipal regula-
tons are made to protect citizens from accidents
at the hands of careless wOrl1men, and by
multitude of statutes society has provided, and
is constantly providing for the safety OF It's IN
diyidual members Some of the provisions are
sautary and wise; many of them meddlesome
and foolish. These latter grow out OF the IRE
pressible mania of mankind, as soon as anything
bappens. to do something about 1t at once, 80
that it shall not happen again.
Just now the "cranIl" epidemic engages the
interest of the community, and naturally pubic
attention is directed to the necessity for proyld-
ING by legal enactment some safeguard against
this new menace to life. Most of the suggestions
that have been made are in the direction Of closer
surveillance of persons who show signs of I'M
balanced minds, and more rigorous restraints
upon those who accompany wild and visionary
schemes with outspoken denunciatiOn OF the
whole social order or sullen threats against prom
| inent men. They are the suggestions that natu-
rally arise from recent developments, and are in
! measure salutary and wise. 1t is an open
question, though, whether we need any addl-
! tional legislation on the subject whether we are
not already sufficiently equipped with statutory
enactments to deal vigorously and summary
with this new phase Of crime. We call 1t new
phase of crime, but in fact it is as old as Time
it is assassination in its most cod-blooded and
brutal FORM conditioned upon blackmail or a
ransom 1t is simply transfer of the processes
Of bngandaga from mountain defles to city
streets. We have unconsciously dignified the
crime by calling it homicidal impulse or mania,
and half removed its stigma by calling the rob-
Der and assassin a " crank" phrase which came
| in vogue with the crime of Gulteau, and has
come to be applied so Unfortunately to every
body who holds peculiar views on any subject
from Prohibition or Woman Suffrage to assas-
sination as remedy for social evils, that it means
nothing.
What alarms people at this time is the dis
covery that there are 50 many assassins at large
of the sort that attempted the life of DR.. John
Hall, exploded the bomb in Russell Sages office
and threatened the life of Conrad Harris In
the new sense Of peril they grope Intellectually
for some protection in the form of statutory law
But it seems to us deep inquiry into causes
will show that search in that direction is use
less. We have law enough already to take care
of men who threaten assassination while against
the sullen and stealthy criminal we have no
more protection than against any chance acct
dent, but all that any law can give us. An
underlying cause of this apparently sudden out
break of murderous propensties may perhaps be
found in the growing habit of condemning in
exaggerated language and unstinted phrase the
men who have accumulated large fortunes. TO
the fashion of denouncing successful men as
monopolists," "public enemies" "opprcssors
Of the poor" etc, etc, may be easily traced the
| special forms Ct insanity illustrated by recent
| developments. Half-cducated, idle and shiftleSs
men reading and hearing these things while
| brooding over their own miserable failures arc
impressed by them. They get filed with the
insane idea that they ara in some way the special
victims of these "Oppressors of the poor,n and
gradually work themselves up to the madness
of undertaking by violent means TO avenga their
own and societys wrongs. When that point is
reached a single assassination or wholesale
slaughter impends. No statute law can reach
that condition of things, but the empty talkers
and violent declaimers who promote it by loose
and violent language can mitigate it somewhat
by cultvating moderation.