The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1897-11-12

IO06AA ~ SSAOA- SAS 0As 400oSS
and he said. you ought TO be hanged"
That is all they had done for him in
the way of reformation and salvation.
"Oh," you say, these people are in
c~orrigible." I suppose there are nun
dreds Of persons this day lying in the
prison hunks who would leap up at
the prospect Of reformation IL society
would only allow them a way into de-
cency and respectability. Oh" you
say, Il have no patience with these
rogues." I ask you in reply how much
better would you have been under the
same circumstances? Suppose your
mother had been a blasphemer and
your father a sot and you had started
life with a body stuffed with evil pro-
clfvities and you had spent much or
your time in a cellar amid obscenities
and cursing and II at 10 years or g
you had been compelled to go out and
steal, battered and banged at nights IL
you CAME in without any spoils. and
suppose your early manhood had been
covered with rags and filth and decent
society had turned it's back upon you
and left you to consort with vagabonds
and wharf rats, how much better
would you nave been? 1-have no SYM
pathy with executive clemency which
would let crime run loose or which
would sit in the gallery Of a courtroom
weeping because some hard hearted
wretch is brought to justice, but l do
say that the safety and life Of the COM
munity demand more potential influ-
ences in behalf of these offenders.
THE AMERICAN JAIL.
1 stepped into one Of the prisons Of
one of our great cities, n the air was
like tina of the Black Hole of Calcutta.
AS the air swept through the wicket it
almost knocked me down. No sunlight
Young men who had committed their
first crime crowded in among old Of
enders. / saw there one oma with
a child almost blind, who had been ar
rested for the crime of poverty, who
was waiting until the slow law could
axe her to the almhouse, where h
rightfu1ly belonged, but she was thrust
in there with her child, amid the most
abandoned wretches of the town. Many
of the offenders o f hat prison
sleeping on the floor, with nothing but
a vermin covered blanket owe them.
Those people crowded and wan and
wasted and half suffocated and infur-
lated. 1 aid to the men, how do you
stand it here?" God knows" said one
man; I'VE have to stand it," Oh. they
will pay you when they get out! Where
they burned down one house they will
burn three. They will strike deeper
the assassin's knife. They are this
minute plotting worse burglaries.
Many of the jails are the best place I
know of to manufacture f%ootpads, vag-
abonds and cutthroats. Yale college
is not so we'll calculated to make
scholars nor Harvard so we'll calcu-
lated to make scientists nor Princeton
so we'll calculated to max theOlOgianS
as the American Jail is calculated to
make criminals. All that these men
do not know of crime after they have
been in that style of dungeon for some
time satanic machination cannot teach
them. Every hou these jails stand
they challenge the Lord Almighty to
smite the cities. / call upon the peO-
pie to rise in their wrath and demand a
reformation. I call upon the judges of
u courts to expose the infamy. I de-
mand in behalf of these incarcerated
prisoners fresh air and clear sunlight
and in the name of him who had not
where to lay his head a couch to rest
on at night. In the insufferable stencil
and sickening surroundings of some of
the prisons there is nothing but disease
for the body, idiocy for the mind n
death for the soul. Sti1ed air and
darkness and vermin never turned q
thief into an honest We want
men like John Howard and Sir William
Blackstone and women like Elizabeth
FRY to do for the prisons Of the United
States what those people did in other
days for the prisons Of England. I
thank GOD for what Isaac T. Hopper
and DR.. Wines and Mr.. Harris and
scores Of others have done in the way
Of prison reform, but we want some
thing more radical before upon our
cities will come the blessing of him
who said, Il was in prison and We
came unto me-"
UNTRUS rWORTHY OFFICIALS.
In his class Of uprooting and de-
vouring population are untrustworthy
officials. WOE unto thee, o land, when
thy king is a child and thy princes
drink in the morning." It is a great
calamity to the city when bad men get
into public authority. Why was it that
in New York there was sue unparelled
crime between 1866 and 1871? It was be
cause the judges of police in that city
for the most part were as corrupt as
the v~agabonds that came before them
for trial. These were the days Of high
carnival for election frauds, assassi-
~AN AoASSAS wv Aoo AK WHO
key ring and the Tammany ring and
the Erie ring. There was one man dur
ing those years that got $12S, 900 in one
year for serving the public. In a few
years it was estimated that there were
SO. 0OO, 900 Of public treasure squandered.
In those time the criminal had only to
wink to the judge, or his lawyer would
wink for him, and the question was de-
cided for the defendant. OF the 5000
people arrested in hat city in one year
only 5000 were punished, These little
matters were fixed up" while
the interests of society were fixed
down." You know as we'll as I that a
criminal who escapes only opens the
door of other criminalities. It is no
compliment to public authority when
we have in all the cities of the country,
walking abroad, men and women 40
torious for c~riminality, unwhipped of
justice. They are pointed out to you
in the street day by day. There you
find what are called the fences" the
mon who cton1 hofuroor tho th;of o~I