Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1891-05-01

much better would you have bsen under the
same circumstances Suppose your mother
had been a blasphsmer and your father a
sot, and you had started life with body
stuffed with evil proclivitfes, and you had
spent much o. your time in a 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 you
came IN without 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 vagabonds and
wharf rats-how much better would you
have been? L have no sympathy with that
executive clemency which would let crime
run loose, or wnICa wouEu the yauerY
of a court room weeping because some hard
hearted wretch is brought to justice; but
do say that the safety and life of the COM
munity demand more potential influences In
behalf Of public offenders.
In some Of the city prisons the cir is like
that Of the Black Hole Of Calcutta have
visited prisons where, as the air swept
through the wicket, it almost knocked ma
down. No sunlight. Young men who had
committed their first crime crowded in
among old offenders. I saw in one prison a
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 Yightfully
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 selpt on the floor with nothing but
vermln-cOvered blanket over them. Ihosa
people crowded and wan and wasted and
half suffocated and Infatuated. I said to the
men, How do you stand it here? God
knows" said one man, I'VE 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 minute plot
ting worse burglaries.
Some Of the city jalls are the best places
know Of to manufacture footpads vaga-
bonds and cutthrOats. Yale College is not
so we'll calculated to make scholars, nor Har-
ward so we'll calculated to make scientists,
oor Princeton SO well calculated to make
theologians, many of our jails are cacu-
lated to make criminals All that those men
do not know of crime after they have been
in that dungeon for soma time, Satanic
macnlnaJIon cannot teach Gnem. In the In
siderable stencil and sickening surroundings
of such places there is nothing but disease
tor the body, idiocy for the mind, and death
for the soul. Stided 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 what Isaac T. Hopper and DR.. 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, II was in
prison, and ye came unto me-"
again, your eHorO TO arrest this plague
OF crime you need to consider Enthusiastically
officials. ''Woe unto thee, @ land, when thy
king is child, and thy princes drink in the
morning" 1t is 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? It was because the judges Of police in
that city at that time for the most part were
as corrupt as the vagabonds 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.
1t is no compliment to public authority
when we have in all the cities OF the country
walking abroad, men and women notorious
for criminality unwhipped 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, and at a great price handing over the
goods to the owner to whom they belonged
There you will find those who are called the
''skinners," the men who hover around Wall
street, with great sleight Of hand in bonds
and stocks. There you find the funeral
mourn with families and pick their pockets.
And there you find the confidence men,"
who borrow money of you because they
have 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 ''pickpockets," famous
all over the cities. Hundreds Of them with
their faces in the Rogues' Gallery, yet do
ing nothing for the last five or ten years
but defraud society and escape justice.
punished it is putting high premium
upon vice and saying to the young Grimm
ais of this country, What a safe thing il
is to be great criminalr' Let the law
swoop upon them. Let it be known in
this country crime will have no quarter;
that the detectives are after it; that the
police club is being brandished; that the iron
door of the prison is being opened; that the
judge is ready to call on the case. Too great
leniency to criminals is too great severity to
society.
Again in your effort to arrest this plague
of crime, you need to consider the idle popr
lation. OF course do not refer to people
who are getting old. or to the sick or to those
who cannot get work, but tell you to looB
out for those athletic men and women who
will not work. When the French nobleman
was asked why he kept busy when he had so
large property, he said. II keep ON engrav-
ing so I may not hang myself" l do not
care who the man is, you cannot afford to be
idle. It is from the idle classes that the
criminal classes are made up. Character,
like water, gets putrid if it stands still too
long. Who can wonder that in this world,
where there is so much to do, and all the
hosts of earth and heaven and hell are