The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-11-08


brought to justice; but l do say that the
safety and life of the community demand
more potential influences in behalf of these
offenders.
stepped into one of the prisons
of one of our great cities, and the air
was like that of the Black Hole of Cal
cutta 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
tenders. I saw there one woman, with
child almost blind, who had been arrested
for the crime of poverty, who was waiting
until the slow law could take her to the
almshouse, where she rightfully belonged;
but she was thrust in there with her child,
amid the most abandoned wretches of the
town. Many of the offenders in that
prison sleeping on the floor, with nothing
but a Vermin-cOVered blanket over them.
Those people, crowded and wan, and
wasted. and half-suffocat ted, and ipfur-
ated. l said to the men. How doAlou
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 assas-
sins knife. They are this minute plotting
worse burglaries. Many of the jails are
the best place ! know of to manufacture
footpads, vagabonds and cut-thrOats. Yale
College is not so well calculated to make
scholars nor Harvard 50 well calculated
to make scientists, nor Princeton so well
calculated to make theologians, as the
American Jail is calculated to make Grim
inals All that these men do not know Of
crime after they have been i'm that style of
dungeon for some time satanic machina-
ton cannot teach them Every hour these
Jail stand, they challenge the Lord AL
mighty to smite the cities. l call upon the
people TO rise in their wrath and demand
T4ff aafs ion I COLL
our courts to expose the infamy l de-
mand, in behalf of those iucarcerated pris-
Oners, fresh air and clear sunlight. and i'm
the name of him who had not where to
lay his head 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 idocy
for the mind, and death for the soul.
Stihed air and darkness and Vermin never
turned thief into an honest man. We
want men like John Howard and Sir Will
lam Blackstone, and women like Eliza
beth 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
Doctor Wines and Mr.. Harris and scores
of others have done in the way of prison
reform; but we want some thing more rad
ical before upon our cities will come the
blessings of him who said: Il was in
prison and We came unto me-"
In this class of uprooting and devour-
ing population are untrustworthy officials
"Woe unto thee o land when thy king
is child, and thy princes drink in the
morning.! 1t is a great calamity to a city
when bad men get into public authority
Why was it that in New York there was
such unparalleled crime between 1866 and
1871? 1t was because the judges of police
in that city, for the most part, were as
corrupt as the vagabonds that came be-
fore them for trial. These were the days of
high carnival for election frauds, assas-
sination and forgery. We had the "Whis-
ky Ring" and the '"Tammany Ring"
and the Erie Ring" There was one man
during those years that got one hundred
and twenty-eght thousand dollars in
one year for serving the public In a few
years it was estimated that there were
fifty millions of public treasure squan-
dered. In those times the criminal had
only to wink to the judge, or his lawyer
would wink for him, and the question was
decided for the defendant. OF the eight
thousand people arrested in that city in
one year, only three thousand were pun
ished. These little matters were fixed
up" while the interests of society were
fixed down" You know as well as I.that
a criminal who escapes only opens the
door of other criminalties. 1t is no COM
pliment to public authority when we have
in all the cities of the country, walking
abroad, men and women notorious for
criminallty, unwhipped of justice. They
are pointed out to you in the street day by
day. There you find what are called the
fences" the men who stand between the
thief and the honest man, sheltering the
thief, and at great price handing over the
goods to the owner to whom they belong.
There you win find those who are called
the "skinners," the men who hover around
Wall street and State street and Third
street, with great slight of hand in bonds
and stocks. There you find the funeral
thieves, the people who go and sit down
and mourn with families and pick their
pockets. And there you find the "confi-
denee men, who borrow money of you
because they have a dead child in the
house and want to bury it, when they
never had a house nor a family; or they
want to go to England and get a large
property there, and they want you to pay
their way and they will send the money
back by the very next mail. There are
the 'harbor thieves" the "shoplifters,"
the "plckpockets," famous all over the
cities. Hundreds of them with their faces
in the 'Rogues Gallery" vet doing moth
ing for the last five or ten years but de-
fraud society and escape justice. When
these people go unarrested and unpun-
ished, it Is putting a high premium upon
vice, and saying to the young criminals
of this country: "What a safe thing it is
to be a great criminal" Let the law swoop
upon them! Let it be known in this coun-
try that crime will have no quarter, that
the detectives are after It, that the police
club is being brandished, that the iron
door of the prison is being opened, that
the judge is ready to call the case! Too
great leniency to criminals is too great
severity to society.
Among the uprooting and devouring
classes in our midst are the idle. OF
course, do not refer to the people who
are getting old. or to the sick, or to those
who cannot get work; but l tell you to
look out for those athletic men and women
who will not work. When the French no
bleman was asked why he kept busy when
he had so large a property, he said, II
keep on engraving so l may not hang my
self" l do not care who the man is he
cannot afford TO be idle. 1t is from the idle
classes that the criminal classes are made
up Character, like water, gets putrid If
it stands still too long. Who can wonder
that in this world, where there is so much
70 do, and all the hosts of earth and heav-
en- and hell are plunging into the conflict,
and angels are flying, and God is at
work, and the universe Is a-quake with the
marching and counter-marching, that God
let's his indignation fall upon man who