The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1895-07-29
THE CURSE OF HEREDTTY.
Interesting Speculation as to the Preva
lence of Crime on tho Pacific Coast.
rErara tho Mainline O,.,..,,,io.,h

lence of Crime on tho Pacific Coast.
[From the Morning Oregonian.I
The contempt of law and low tone of
public morals in the state of California,
and particularly in the city of San
Francisco, has passed into a national
proverb. Nobody is hanged for murder
in California. Durant probably will be
acquitted for want of conclusive evil
dence, and it is just as we'll that he
should be. Were the evidence ever so
complete he would escape execution by
some Legal trick, and secure pardon
through political influence after brief
Imprisonment.
California does not take crime serious
ly. Public law is held in as great con-
tempt as private morals. The lax So
cial customs that winked at making a
church an designation house before it
was made a slaughter house have the
same root as the diseased public senti-
ment that makes heroes of train rob
bers and murderers, and the intellectu-
al degeneration which makes that com
munity a prey of every fantastic delu-
sion, from Christian science to fiat mon
ey. In spite of many individual in
stances of high intelligence and moral
vigor, the community as whole lacks
| the sound fibre of law-abiding, crime
depressing, order-loving and self-re-
| specting communities.
The reason Is plain enough. Califor-
MIA is under the hereditary curse of a
penal colony. Like Virginia in the sew
enteenth, and Australia in the nine
| teenth century, 1t was peopled with per-
| sons of loose morals and small respect
| for law, whose capacities and tenden-
| cies are inherited by their descendants.
California, in the fifties was a volunta-
ry penal colony-a place of welcome ref
| uge and willing exile for men and wo-
men for whom existence in orderly and
moral communities had become impos-
| sible or uncomfortable.
Convicts and loose women were
| shipped from England and France tc
| Virginia and louisiana Criminals
| were turned loose in Australia after
completing their terms of transporta.
ton. These tainted those new coun.
tries with corruption that genera tions
of more regular living and wholesome
admixture could not cure. 1t took near
ly two hundred years to purify Virginia
The faint still clings about Louisiana
in the shape of tendency TO lawles.
outbreak and reckless private living; tt
political tumult and low estimate O
human life. Sheridan's banditti are thu
| lineal descendants of the French scum
! dumped into Louisiana one hundred
and fifty years ago. The destructiv,
socialism and political folly that rur
riot in Australia engendered in the NOR
bid human strata deposited there il
penal colony times to become the basil
of a new civilization.
j What selfish and brutal state polio,
did for these unfortunate communitie
the chance of gold discoveries in Cali
fornia did for that state 1t was a fer
tile, pastoral country, thinly peoplet
with inferior races The bait of gol,
drew to it such horde of reckless adj
venturers as has never fallen upon
region in modern times. The socia
chaos that resulted from this sudden oc
cupation invited other hordes of mel
and women who sought wealth les
than obscurity. All manner OF socia
outcasts jostled each other in a feveret
| atmosphere that fostered in them tn
germs of moral decay. The Californi;
of the SOS contained more unpromisin;
human material than ever was fount
in avowed penal colonies, because i
drew not the scum of a single state, blu
the refuse of the world.
These people increased and multiplied
after the manner of their kind, ant
their physical and spiritual inheritor
fill California to-day. There has been
vast moral gain with substitution of
settled urban and pastoral population
for the rowing gold hunters of the SOS
There has been wholesome admixture o
blood, too, the evil often mating will
the sound instead of with each other
But one generation is not enough to re
move the moral faint. It will probabl.
be a century from the date of its settle
ment before California will be free il
public standards and private moral
from the hereditary corruption of it
founders.