Connecticut western news., 1897-11-11

had turned it's back upon you and left you to consort with vagabonds and wharf rats, how much better would you have been? I have no sympathy with that executive clemenoy which would let crime run loose or which would sit in the gallery of courtroom weeping because some hard hearted wretch is brought to justice, but I do say that the safety and life of the com munity demand more potential influ- ences in behalf of these offenders.
 The American Jail.
 I stepped into one of the prisons of one of our great cities, and the air was like that 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 offlpd- BITS. I saw there one woman, with child almost blind, who had been ar- rested for the crime of poverty, who was waiting until the slow law could take her to the almshouse, where she 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 vermin covered blanket over them. Those peo- pie, crowded and wan and wasted and half suffocated and infuriated. said to the men, "How do you stand it here?" "God knows" said one man; "we 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 arc the best place know of to manufacture tootpads, vagabonds and cutthroata Yale college is not so we'll calculated to make scholars nor Harvard so well cal culated to make scientists nor Prince ton so we'll calculated to make theelo- gians as the American jail Is calculated to make criminals. All that these men do not know of crime after they have been ill that style of dungeon for some time satanic machination cannot teach them. Every hour these jails stand they challenge the Lord Almighty to mite the oities I call upon the people to rise in their wrath and demand a ref ormation. call upon the judges of our courts to expose the infamy. I demand in behalf of those inosrcerated prisoners fresh air and clear sunlight and in the name of him who had not where to lay his head couch to rest on at night. In the insunerable stenoh and sickening surroundings of some of the prisons there is nothing but disease for the body, idiocy for the mind and death for the soul. Stuffed air and darkness and vermin never turned a thief into an honest man. 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 something more radical before upon our cities will come the blessing of him who said, "I was in prison and ye came unto me"
 Untrustworthy Omcials.
 In this class of uprooting and devour ing population are untrustworthy off cials. "Woe unto thee, O land, when thy king is child and thy princes drink in the morning." It is great calamity to a oity when bad men get Into public authority. Why was it that In New York there was such unparal- leled crime between 1866 and 1871? It was because the judges of police in that city for the most part were as corrupt as the vagabonds that came before them for trial. These were the days of high carnival for election frauds, assassina- tion and forgery. We had the whisky ring and the Tammany ring and the Erie ring. There was one man during those years that got $128, 900 in one year for serving the public. In few years it was estimated that there were $50, 900, 900 of public treasure squandered. In those times 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 that oity in one year only 5000 were punished. These little matters were fixed up," while the in- terests of society were fixed down. You know as we'll as that 8 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 notorious for criminality, 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 be- tween the thief and the honest man, iheltering the thief and at great price handing over the goods to the owner to whom they belong. There you will find those who are called the "skinners, ? the men who hover around Wall street and State street and Third street, with great sleight 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 oonf- dence men, who borrow money of you
 because they have dead child in the house and want to bury it, when they never had house or a family, or they want to go to England and get . large property there, and they want you to pay their way, and they will send the money back by the very next mall. There arc the harbor thieves, the shoplifters,
 the piokpookets, famous all over the cities. Hundreds of them with their faces in the rogues' gallery, yet doing nothing for the last five or ten years but defraud society and escape justice. When these people go unarrested and unpun- ished, it is putting high premium up- on vice and saying to the young crim- inals of this country, What 8 safe thing 1t is to be great criminal. Let the law swoop upon them. Let it be known in this country 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 le- niency to criminals is too great severity