Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1891-04-13

You ought to be ashamed OF yourself
And then | committed crime again,
and l was brought up before the same
Judge, and he said, You rascalr And
after while | committed some other
crime, and | was brought before the
same Judge and he said, You ought to
be hanged That is all they had
done for him in the way of reformation
and salvation. "Oh," you say, these
people are incorrigible." [ suppose
there are hundreds of persons this day
lying in the prison hunks who woul4
leap up at the prospect of reformation
if society would only allow them a way
into decency and responsibility. ooh,
you say, II have no patience with these
rogues." ask you nreply, how much
better would you have been under the
same circumstances?
Suppose your mother had been
olasphemer and your father sot. and
you had started life with body stuffed
with evil prOclivities, and you had
spent much of your time in q cellar
amid obscenities and cursings and if
at ten years of age you had been COM
oelled to 90 out and steal, battered and
banged at night if you came in without
any spoils, and suppose your early man
hood and WOmanhOOd had been COW
cred with rags and filth, and decent So
ciety had turned its back upon YOU
and left you to consort with vagabonds
and wharf rats how much better
would you have been? | lave no sym
pathy with that executive clenency
which would let crime run loose, or
which would sit in the gallery Of 81
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
influences 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, rs 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 of
Tenders l saw in one prison q woman,
with a child almost blind, who had
been arrested for the crime of poverty,
who was waiting until the slow law
could take her to the almshouse, where
she rightfully 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
slept on the floor, with nothing but
a vermin covered blanket over them.
Those people crowded and wan and
wasted and half suffOcated and infuri-
ated. [ said to the men, How do you
stand it here?" God knows" said 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 assassin's knife. They are this min
ute plotting worse burglaries.
Some of the city jails are the best
places | know of to manufacture foot
pads, vagabonds and cutthroats. Yale
college is not SO well calculated to
make scholars, nor Harvard 50 well
calculated to make scientists, nor
Princeton so well calculated to make
theolOgians as many of our jails are
calculated to make criminals All that
those men do not know of crime after
they have been in that dungeon for
some time Satanic machination cannot
teach them. In the insufferabIe stencil
and sickening surroundings of such
places there is nothing but disease for
the body, idiocy for the mind and
death for the soul. Stifled air and
darkness and vermin never turned q
thief into an honest man.
We want men like John Howard and
Sir William Blackstone and women
like Elizabeth Fry to do for the pris-
0ns of the United States what those
people did in other days for the prisons
Isaac Z. Hopper and DIR. Wines and
Mr.. Harris and scores of others have
done in the way of prison reform; but
we want something more radical before
will come the blessing of him who said,
4 was in prison, and We came unto
me"
Again, in your effort to arrest this
plague of crime you need to consider
Enthusiastically officials. 'FWoe unto
thee, O land, when thy king is a child
and thy princes drink in the morning"
1t is a great calamity to a city when
bad men get into public authority.
Why was it that in New York there
was such unparalleled crime between
1866 and 1871? 1t was because the
judges of police in that city at that
5ime, for the most part were as cor
rupt as the vagabOnds that came be-
fore them for trial. Those were the
e r
assassination and forgery. We had all
kinds of rings There was one man
during those years that got one hun
1red and twenty-eight thousand dollars
n one year for serving the public. In
few years it was estimated that there
we're fifty millions of public treasure
3quandered. In those times the Grim
inal had only to wink at the judge, or
his lawyer would wink for him, and the
question was decided for the defend
ant.
OF the eight thousand people arrest
ed in that city in one year only three
thousand were punished. These little
matters were fixed up" while the in
terests of society were fixed down"
You know as well as do that one vii
lain who escapes only opens the door
for other criminalities. When the two
pickpockets snatched the diamond pin
from the Brooklyn gentleman in a
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.
WHEN THE WICKED RULE THE PEOPLE
MOURN.
1t is no compliment to public authori-
ty when we have in all the cities of the
country, walking abroad, men and
women notorious for criminality I'M
whipped of justice. 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, shelter
ing the thief and at great price hand