The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-03-20
Educating the Police.

1t appears to be Mrs. d. w. Bishops
opinion that the proper place for mission
airy work is right here in New York
among the police. 1t is hardly in accord
ance with eternal fitness that the repre-
sentatives of law, order and justice-the
guardians of peace and the hope of So
ciety-should be selected as an element of
humanity that should be lifted up and
ennobled, as it were. Yet this is the good
Mrs. Bishops view of it. Furthermore,
she has the courage of her convictions
and has been spending her money in proof
of it.
Believing, as this lady does. that the
police are walking in mental and moral
darkness, she has set about to place books
in their hands. and thus let the lamp of
knowledge shed its bright rays over their
dark pathways, otherwise their "beats"
1t Is Mrs. Bishops plan to convert what is
known as the day room" of each station
house in the city into library where the
policeman can always turn for intellectual
light and life Under this plan twenty
five station houses have been supplied
with bookcases, and the shelves stored with
good books. Believing that the police
were particularly weak on moral philoso-
ply, the arts and sciences. including as
tronomy, etc., Mrs. Bishops first batch of
literature was largely devoted to these
branches.
History was also represented in Motley
and Bancroft, and altogether an intel
lectual feast was spread out before our
Metropolitan police force that should have
made its teeth water. And yet it did not,
/ regret to state. A police commissioner
informs me that it was positively painful
to watch "cop" go through newly
installed library to find mental pabulum,
reject one volume after another and then,
Al 80, Il
upon every feature, sit down and fish
well-thumbed Police Gazette out of his
hip pocket. One day a car load of new
books was received at one of the station
houses.
A ''cop" in from his beat looked over the
pile with ill-concealed contempt Taking
up a volume of Gibbons decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire" he ''leafed" it
through mechanically, and asked ''Say,
wot's all dis rot about, anyhow" This
and other painful incidents of the kind re-
called to Mrs. Bishops mind the wise OBJ
servation of James Freeman Clarke, that
''the taste for reading must begin with tic-
ton" and so she tempted the 'bobby"
with the choicest romance, as she thought.
But even Ben Hur' or Bjornson Born
stjerne's "Synnove Solbakken" would not
WOO him into delightful paths of literature.
1t is said that patrolman in the Ten
derloin district thought, from the title of
it, he might find something worth while
in William Blacks THAT Beautiful
Wretch" but after reading few pages,
threw it away as being fiat. stale and I'M
profitable. These things have tendency
to discourage Mrs. Bishop, of course, and
yet, when woman will, she will and so
Mrs. Bishop is still persevering in highly
commendable way in her mission of police
enlightenment. Already she has dis
tributed more than 5000 volumes. and,
while her educational campaign may be
slow, it ought to result in much good,
Anyhow, her opinion that there is room
for missionary work at home has been con-
firmed by the very discouragements with
which she has met in this present under
taking.