The St. Johns herald., 1896-01-25
THE CURFEW CRAZE.
It Is Seizing Upon the People of
 the Northwest.
In Minnesota and the Dakotas Children Must Keep Of the Streets at Night Revival of an Inquisitor-
 ial Custom

Tn our western states there is so much faith in the mysterious power or legls- lation that not merely commercial ad- vantage and political honesty arc 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 ot them. The latest of these experiments is the Minnesota process for making children good. It is a revival of the curfeyv 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 a Minnesota editor, who hit upon the discovery that ch11' dren of evil inclination will change 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-lre law which was borrowed from or else gave rise to the military institution ot 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 judgmentln in the ordering of their home government.
 Without considering the prerogative of parents the mass of the common councilmen, preachers and editors of the state declare the system an excel lent one, as it undoubtedly is if the rights of the parents and of the lndl- vidual generally are not worth con- sideration. The new practice has spread into South Dakota, where four or five towns have already adopted 1t, and it is prophesied that by next Jan nary 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 ot the rising generation"
 In some of the towns and cities the church bells arc 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 l Then, where the law is cnthusiastical 1 ly enforced, a stern search and chase after children is begun. They arc pur sued along the streets, and barns and sheds are ransacked for them. The police turk near their hauntS, and, nc matter how innocently they may b' spending their time, they arc caugh and warned and dragged off to the sta tion houses. The ordinances prescrib' the ringing of the hour, which is nine o'clock in some towns and tel o'clock in others, but the law is usuall. clear in its declaration that the hour and not the notice of its arrival, shal be needed. No boy or girl can cscap arrest by reason of deafness or tn bare assertion that he or she did no hear the alarm. This custom ha not spreal in this way without the ac compartment of protest. Men hay declared in print and in emphati speech that the curfew ordinance is no only unconstitutional, but that it productive of worse conditions tha
 those it seeks to cure. They hay
 shown that it is born of a populatio
 wherein some other element-whethe
 Scandinavian or whatever-is stronge
 than the Anglo-SaxOn with its unaltel
 able love of individual liberty. The
 have argued that it is as un-America
 as it is unprogressive. The essence
 the new rule has been shown to h this: That if a child roams the street 2
 night he is in danger of becoming
 criminal. and in order that this narro view shall triumph the law slips in an
 makes him criminal by arresting hi ard locking him up in the company (
 hardened characters and with a stai upon his reputation. But these protes
 have made no impression upon ar
 common council because the new idt
 has been adopted with enthusiasm, e
 peciallv by the half million foreig born persons in the Minnesota popul
 tion. ''What if it is unconstitutional
 they ask land this question is repeatt
 editorially in the country press). Tt not more unconstitutional than mar
 another statute that graces the la
 books, and it is good thing because
 x.f ho6 al : dren."
 Q An Ideal Community.