The prison mirror. [volume] (Stillwater, Minn.) 1887-1894, 1892-08-04

the case! Take little more bother, then,
to prevent or regulate saloons; little more
bother. to keep children out of factories
and keep them at school; little more
bother. to regulate the literature of the
country and to repress the wholesale print
ing of poison and moral filth; little more
bother, to regulate immigration and keep
out the paupers and criminals of the Old
World; little more bother, to clean up the
tenement districts IN our great cities and
make vast amount of this inherited moral
disease an impOssibility; a little more
bother. in looking after the moral education
of our youth and the physical welfare of
their parents, and you will not need so
much bother in the honest and intelligent
study of criminal cases in court.
When you say the task would be difficult
| must reply that am not talking about
the difficulty of 1t. but about the necessity
of it. 1t was difficult to built the Union
Pacific Railroad. 1t was difficult to put
down the rebellion. 1t is difficult to elect a
President. 1t was difficult to adopt our
Federal Constitution. 1t is difficult to get
up Worlds Fair. The man who objects
to what is right. because it is difficult. is
not the man to whom l am talking. If it
were impossible. that would close the case.
right thing can be done whenever we wish
to do it.
l do not believe, however, that the diff
culties, in any or all of these suggested re-
forms, are serious. If we can spend fifty
millions for gunbOats to protect us from
imaginary foes. we can spend ten millions
in the right kind of prisons to protect us
from our actual and constant foes. No ma
tlOn on earth threatens war, but our own
criminal population ceaselessly raids and
tramples upon our rights. You say there
is no politics in it. Aye, there's the rub.
But isn't it time we learn to do some things
because they are necessity and not because
they make votes! The prisons can be built
and equipped. Then with proper place
for each grade of crime. the law can be so
changed and juries can be so constituted
that each criminal shall be remanded to the
place best suited to his condition.
CHANGE WANTED IN THE JURY SYSTEM.
No other duty that cOnfronts a citizen, as
a citizen, is so sacred as jury duty. That
Office may be made so honorable and so eX
acting that it cannot be shutfled from the
shoulders of our best citizens. Men should
be selected for juries, not because they
have no opinions on this or that matter.
but because they have the largest and finest
and most intelligent opinions. The moral
welfare of the world is in the keeping of
juries as it is in the keeping of no other
class of men. Reform. there is reform at
the very fountain of social life. The no.
blest men should be at the helm.
But l do not believe in the exceeding
difficulty of diagnosing prisoners moral
nature. 1t Is just as easy to learn his moral
inheritance and environment and personal
incOmpetency as to learn his intellectual
ability. Halt the time now wasted in every
trial in the ceaseless endeavor to evade law
and evidence would suffice to lay the case in
all circumstantiality and detail before the
jury. Trials are heightened by persistent
attempts to avoid the facts, not by any hon
est attempt to learn the facts
The theory of trial by jury is one of the
most perfect theories on earth. Twelve
unprejudlced men shall learn the facts and
award justice by intelligent arbitration.
The thing can be made reality: and until
it is made reality in our criminal courts,
as in financial arbitrament. we would hang
our heads in shame.
WHEN REFORM WILL BE HAD.
Can we have this reform? Can we ever
do justice to society and to criminals? Can
we have practical surety of detention and
reformation in the overwhelming majority
of criminal cases? We cannot, while we
do not try to have. We cannot while the
people have no interest in this problem.
We cannot. while every suggestion of re-
form is hOoted down with the stupid hOot
of sentimentalism. We cannot, while a
Christian community dallies between in
difference and mad vengeance. We cannot,
while tradition is considered more sacred
than Justice. We cannot. while thought
full men and men of character will not take
a few moments time from business to con-
slider the need of the methods of reform.
We can, and we SHALL have justice in the
overwhelming majority of cases when one
hundred prominent citizens in every city of
a hundred thousand try to have it-when