The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1891-04-13

said, You rascalp Aud after awhile L
committed some other crime, and was
brought before the same judge, and he SAID,
you ought to be hanged That Is ali
they had done for hun in the way OF
reformation aud salvation. "Oh, =" you say,
ssthese peoula are .aSC-Tigi6ie." 1 suppose
there are hundreds of persons this day lying
IN the prison hunks who would leap up at
the prospect OF reformation, II society
would only allow them way into decency
and resuectability. oh" you say, II
have no pate. ce with these .rogues." ask
Won in reply. how much better would you
have been under the same circumstances
Suppose your mother had been BIAS
phemer and your father a sot, and YOU had
started life with a body stuffed with
evil proclivities, and you had spent much
of YOUR time In a cellar amid obsceni-
ties and cursing, and If at 10 years Of age
YOU had been compelled TO go out and steal,
bate ed and banged at night II you came
in without any spOlls, aud suppose your
early manhood ard womanhood had been
covered with rags and filth. and decent So
ciety had turned its back upon you, and
left you to consort with vagabouds and
wharf -rats-how much better would you
have beeal have no sympathy with That
executive clemency which would let crime
run loose, or which would sit in the gallery
Of 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 lntiu-
ences in behalf of public offenders.
In some of the CITY prisons the air is like
that II the Black Hole of Calcutta have
visited prisons where, as 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 offenders. | saw in one prison
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 among the most abandoned
wretches of the town. Many of the
offenders in that prison sleeping on the
floor, with nothing but a vermin covered
blanket over them. These people crowded
and wan and wasted and half suffocated
and Infatuated. l said to the men, How do
you stand it hereW God knows" said one
man, 1--WE have to stand it." o, they will
pay you when they get out. Where
they burned down one house they will burn
three. They will strike deeper the assasstn's
knife. They are this minute plotting worse
burglaries. Some of the city lalls are the
best places l know of to manufacture foot
pads, vagabonds and cut-throats Yale Col
lege is not so well calculated to make schol-
airs, nor Harvard so we'll 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 about crime after
they have been in that dungeon for some
time, satanic Vaccination cannot teach
them. Ia toe insufferable stencil and sick
ening surroundings of such places there is
nothing but disease for the body, idiocy for
the mind, and death for the soul. Stifed air
and darkness and vermin never turned a
thief into an honest man.
We want men like John Howard and Sir
William Blackstone. and women like Eliza
beth Fry, to do for the prisons of the
United States what those people did in
other days for the prisons of England. /
thank God for what Isaac T. Hopper and
Dr. " ines and Mr.. Harris and scores of
Others have done in the way of prison
reform; but we want something more radi-
cal before will come the blessing of him
who said: II was In prison, and We came
unto me-
Again, in your effort to arrest this plague
of cri me you need to consider untrust-
worthy officials "Woe unto thee, o land
when thy king is child, and thy princes
drink in the morning" 1t is great calam-
lty to city when bad men get into public
authority. Why was it that 10 New York
there was such unparalleled crime between
1866 and 1872 1t was because the judges Of
police ia that city, at that time, for the
most part, were as corrupt as the vagab 0nds
that came before them for trial. Those were
the days Of high carnival for eectio frauds,
assassination aud 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 a few
years it was estimated that
there were fifty millions of public treasure
squandered. In those times the criminal
had only 70 wink at the judge, or his law
yer would wink for him, and the question
was decided for the defendant. or the
eight thousand people arrested in that city
in one year, only three thousand were pun
ished. These little matters were "fixed up"
while interests of the society were fixed
down" You know as we'll as do that one
villain who escapes only opens the door for
other criminslities. When the two pick
pockets snatched the diamond pin from the
Brooklyn gentleman in a Broadly way stage,
and the villains were arrested, and the trial
was set down for the general sessions, and
then the trial never came, and never any
thing more was heard of the case.
the public officials were only bidding
higher for more crime. 1t is no COM
pliment to public authority when we have
in all the cities of the country, walking
abroad, men and women notorious for
criminality, unwnipped 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, sheltering the thief aud at
great price handing over the goods to the
owner to whom they belong. There you
will find those who are called the skin
ners," the men who hover around Wall
street, with great sleight of hand in bonds
and stocks. There you find the funeral
thieves, the people VINO go and sit down
and mourn with families and pick their
pockets, And there you find the "confi-
dence men," who borrow money of you be-
canse they have a dead child in the house
and want TO bury it, when they never had
a house or family; or they want to go
to England and get a large property
there. and they want you to pay their way.
and they will send the money back by the
very next mail. There are the 'harbor
thieves" the ''shoplifters," the spiok
pockets" famous ali over the cities. Huns
dreds of them with their faces in the
''rogues' gallery" yet doing nothing for
the last five or ten years but defraud So
ciety and escape justice. When these peo-
pie go unarrested and unpunishei. it is
putting high premium upon vice, and
saying to the young criminals of this coun-
try: What a safe thing it is 10 be 8
great criminal" Let the law swoop upon
them. Let it be known in this country
that crime will have no quarter, that tn,
detectives are after it, that the police clut
is being brapdished, that the iron door OF
the prison is being opened that the iudore