The record-union., 1891-03-24
THE NEW vAGRANT LAW.

The Governor has approved the new
vagrant law. and we now have section
upon the statute book that has long been
needed, and that can be made terror to
the idle, dissolute class if the police forces
of the cities of the State so will it. 1t is
understood that the police Of San Fran
cisco will enforce the law in that city
rigidly, that, indeed, the Chief of Police
of that city is the author of the law.
Under the old system when one of the
Objectionable class was brought before a
police magistrate, charged with living an
idle and dissolute life, if he could prove
: that within ten days he had worked SO
little as an hour he was dismissed and set
free. The keepers Of dives and dens of
thieves always stood ready to swear that
within the required time they had hired
the vagrant to do some trifiing work, or
to prove that he had sought employment
within the specified time. By this means
the law was practically nullified, oritwas
not susceptible of the construction put
upon it, but the Police Court of this city,
as once constituted, maintained these de-
lenses, so that it was next to impossible
to make the vagrant class obey the law.
Under the new law, and which is now
in effect, there is no ten-day clause. A
vagrant is so specifically described that
stone-blind policemen cannot fail to
recognize one when he meets him. 1t
Will be some time before the law will ap-
pear in book form, but we reproduce it's
essential features, that the courts and the
officers may beput upon inquiry, and the
dive and den-keepers informed that their
last device for protecting a class that
serves them has been destroyed.
The new law makes vagrancy punish
able by imprisonment for six months or
less-there can be imposed no fines.
This is well, since if society is to support
vagrants, and every one of them is main
tanned by the industrious, it is better pol
icy to afford the support in Jail, where
the vagrant may be enrolled in the chain
gang and be compelled to perform some
little labor for his board.
The definition of vagrants is as follows:
Those able to work but who do not seek
for employment and who are without
visible means of living; beggars; aims
solicitors who do so as a business; known
pickpockets, thieves, burglars, conf
dence operators and the like; loafers
about railroad stations, steamboat land
tngs, auction rooms, public assemblies
and places of amusement; all idle and
dissolute persons or associates of known
thieves, who wander about the streets at
late hours of night; all who make prac-
tice of sleeping in barns, outhouses and
sheds, vessels or other places not kept as
lodging houses, without the consent of
the owner or possessor of the premises;
all lewd and dissolute persons who live
in or about houses of i'll fame; all runners
or cappers for attorneys in or about po-
lice courts or city prisons; every COM
mon prostitute and every common
drunkard
With such a law, so clearly describing
the idle and vicious classes that there can
be no mistake, we ought to be able, in
this city at least, to drive from the place
q host of viciously idle people who
subsist upon the results of the labor of
the industrious. or are supported in the
public prisons, and who live upon the
wages of shame earned by their mis-
tresses. All of this class cost the people
large sums of money; they constitute a
class that is purchasable, and that is the
convenient tool of the men who need to
buy them in politics, or to defeat the ends
of justice. They make the streets at GER
tain hours unsafe for the passage of a
large class of citizens; they hang about
the lowest dives and fleece the simple and
the unwary. or they snore in drunken
stupor upon the walllways, or howl in
the still hours of night in maudlin roar
ing; they serve the skilled burglar and
are the picket guards for sneak thieves
and robbers. There is in Sacramento a
large and a dangerous class of the grades
described in the law, and the sooner we
begin the work of placing them in the
chain-gang and compelling them to work
for the public good, the sooner will wise
action be taken.