The St. Johns herald., 1895-10-03
THE CURFEW CRAZE.
1t Is Seizing Upon the People of
 the Northwest.
In Minnesota and the Dskotas Children Must Keep On the Streets at Night Revival of an Inquisitor-
 ial Custom.

In our western states there is so much Iaith in the mysterious power of legis- lation that not merely commercial ad- vantage and political honesty are or dered by law, but even private morality is often made the subject of legislation. This is done, says the New York Sun, as hopefully as if all the laws of the past had done what was expected of them. The latest of these experiments is the Minnesota process for making children good. It is revival of the curfew custom, which does not seem original until one considers that its ap- plication to life on the edge of the twentieth century is in reality making a new thing ot it. This revival affects all persons under sixteen years of age, and is the device of Minnesota editor, who hit upon the discovery that chil' their natures if they can be kept off the streets. The plan was first put in oper- ation in Saltwater last winter, and has swept like fire over the state until to- day nearly twenty cities have passed ordinances reviving the old cover-fire law which was borrowed from or else gave rise to the military institution of the reveille. Only the largest towns, like St. Paul. Minneapolis and Duluth, have held back and given reason for the belief that parents are still entitled to the exercise of their judgment in the ordering of their home government.
 Without considering the prerogative of parents the mass of the common councilmen, preachers and editors of lent one, as it.undoubtedly is if the rights of the parents and of the indi vidual generally are not worth con- sideration. The new practice has spread into South Dakota, where four or five towns have already adopted it, and it is prophesied that by next Jan uary all the towns in both Dakotas (the same that were carried for prohibition by the strength of the Swedish vote) will put it into effect. Then, as one enthusiastic Minnesota editor predicts, ''the curfew bell will ring in an order of things that shall, in the not far distant future, raise the standard of manhood and womanhood both morally and physically and make better citizens of the rising generation"
 In some of the towns and cities the church bells are rung at the curfew hour, and in all of them the town bell, either in the fire tower or the town hall, rings out the command for the police to clear the streets of children. Then, where the law is enthusiastical- ly enforced, 8 stern search and chase after children is begun. They are pur- sued along the streets, and barns and sheds are ransacked for them. The police turk near their haunts, and, no matter how innocently they may be spending their time, they are caught and warned and dragged off to the sta- tion houses. The ordinances prescribe the ringing of the hour, which is nine o'clock in some towns and ten o'clock in others, but the law is usually clear in it's declaration that the hour, and not the notice of its arrival, shall be needed. No boy or girl can escape arrest by reason of deafness or the bare assertion that he or she did not hear the alarm. This custom has not spread in this way without the ac- compartment of protest. Men have declared in print and in emphatic speech that the curfew ordinance is not only unconstitutional, but that it is productive of worse conditions than those it seeks to cure. They have shown that it is born of population wherein some other element-whether Scandinavian or whatever-is stronger than the Anglo-Saxon with its unalter- able love of individual liberty. They have argued that it is as un-American as it is unprogressive. The essence of the new rule has been shown to be this: That if a child roams the street at night he is in danger of becoming criminal, and in order that this narrow view shall triumph the law slips in and makes him criminal by arresting him and locking him up in the company of hardened characters and with stain upon his reputation. But these protests have made no impression upon any common council because the new idea has been adopted with enthusiasm, es- pecially by the half million foreign born persons in the Minnesota popula- ton. "What if it is unconstitutional" they ask (and this question is repeated editorially in the country press). Ut is not more unconstitutional than many another statute that graces the law books, and it is good thing because it will make good citizens of bad chil- dren."