Bennington semi-weekly banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 1894-1902, 1895-10-29

indulgence in GquoI, or to the degrad
ing effects and poverty that follow
The Reformer says:
There seems to be an epidemic OF
| crime of the most revolving character in
rural Vermont and particularly in this
corner of the State. Within a twelve
month more of it has developed than il
20 years before.
Then follows a long list of particularly
revolving crimes. Continuing:
And grave feature of 1T all is that this
story of IA crime, in this country at least,
comes from our old native stock. The
names of the criminals are every one old
Y rnkee ntmes,. and but little of it (the
crimes), in the State, can be charged to
the foreigner" 1t is home bred, and
home-nurtured, all in the shadow of the
schools and churches and surroundings
and influences that ought to make for
human uplifting.
Why is it?
Is it an epidemic merely, from causes
unexplainable, or is it the product of
conditions of life that have long been do
ing their work of degeneration, poison
that has slowly been penetrating the
veins of our rural life? If so, how car: 1T
be reached and the remedy applied?
1t certainly can not be laid to the in
fiuences of heated city or village life any
more than to immigration, for most of it,
share far disprOpurtiOnate, develops
among our strictly agricultural popula-
ton such as all human history under nor
NAL conditions has proved to be the most
preservative of virtue and morality.
Men who are acquainted with the con.
ditiol of life, like physicians, can point
out sore spots in at least half dozen of
our Windham county towns where all So
cial restraints are abandoned and men
and women are living more and more
like animals 'every year, communities
where books and newspapers rarely pen
citrate, where schools are maintained the
very least the law will permit, and the
children to large extent kept away from
what there are, where there is no hope
or ambition or care for anything beyond
animal wants. And the pity of it is that
these communities are extending, by
close inbreeding are perpetuatlng and in
tensifylng the evil and year by year are
getting lodgment in new towns. So
gradually have they grown in their de.
mOralizatlOn. that little attention has
been directed to them, the decay of pub
lie spirit has resulted in lack of remedial
measures, and it needs series of events
like those of the past year to sufficiently
arouse public attention to their existence.
If the statistics in this line could be gath
cred all over Vermont the result would
be startling, and doubtless this is also
true of all rural New England
The RefOrmer advances as the cause of
this prevalence of crime, that 1.-THE mate
rial conditions of the past 25 years have
had powerful tendency to bring about
this state of affairs. The discourage.
ments of struggle in which farmers
have constantly found themselves grow
ing poorer, in spite nf all they could do,
have brought those of the least stamina
to an amhitionless, prideless state, where
the bad passions have had raTid growth
and the constant drainage out of the
State of some of the best of its youth and
enterprise"
The Reformer truly says: "It is a
problem worthy of the best attention of
our churches and mi sionary societies, of
the grange which has perhaps within its
range been the best register of this
downward tendency, of all organizations
and agencies and people that have a real
izing sense of the fatherhood of God and
the brotherhood of man