The Chanute times. [volume] (Chanute, Kan.) 1897-1913, 1897-11-12

OF one of our great cities, and the afr
was like that of the Black Hole of Cal
cutta. AS the air swept through the
wicket 1t almost knocked me down. No
mitted their first crime crowded in
among old offenders. / 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 aims
house, 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 vermin-
covered blanket over them. Those
people, crowded, and wan, and wasted,
and half-suffocated, and Infatuated. l
said to the men, How do you stand 1t
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 places I
know of to manufacture footpads,
vagabonds and cut-throats. Yale Col
lege is not so we'll calculated to make
scholars, nor Harvard so well calcu-
lated to make scientists, nor Prince
ton so we'll calculated to make theolo-
gians, as the American Jail is calcu-
lated 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 hour these jails
stand they challenge the Lord AL
mighty to smite the cities. / call upon
the people to rise in their wrath and
demand reformation. I call upon the
judges OF our courts to expose the in
fanny | demand, in behalf of those in
carcerated 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
lnsufferable stencil and sickening sur
roundlngs of some of the prisons, there
is nothing but disease for the body,
ldiocy for the mind, and death to the
soul. Stifed air and darkness and YER
min never turned thief into an hon
est man. We want men like John
Howard and Sir William Blackstone,
and women like Elizabeth Fry, to do
for thu prisons of the United States
what those people did in other days
for the prisons of England. l 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 radical before upon our
cities will come the blessing of him
who said: 81 was in prison and We
came unto me-"
In this class Of uprooting and de-
vouring population and Enthusiastically
officials, Woe unto thee, o land when
thy king is child, and thy princes
drink in the morning' 1t is a great
calamity to city when bad men get
into public authority. Why was it
that in New York there was such un-
paralleled crime between 1866 and
1871? 1t was because the judges of DO
lice 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 cleo
ton frauds, assassination and forgery.
We had the Whisky Ring" and the
"Tammany Ring" and the Erie
Ring" There was one man during
those years that got one hundred and
twenty-eight thousand dollars in one
year for serving the public In few
years it was estimated that there were
fifty millions of public treasure squan-
dered. In those times the criminal had
only to wink at the judge, or his law
yer would wink for him, and the uues-
ton was decided for the defendant. OF
the eight thousand people arrested in
that city in one year, only three thou
sand were punished. These little mat
ters were fixed up" while the inter-
ests of society were fixed down." You
know as well as that criminal who |
escapes only opens the door of other
1t is no compliment TO
public authority when we have in all
the cities Of the country, walking
abroad, men and women notorious for
unwhipped of justice. They
are pointed out to you in the street by
day. There you find what are called |
the Fences" the men who stand be-
tween the thief and the honest man.
sheltering the thief, and at great price
handing over the goods to the owner
10 whom they belong. There you will
ind those who are called the Skin
lers," 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 flu
leral thieves, the people who go and
lit down and mourn with families and
)ick their pockets. And there you
ind the confidence men," who borrow
money Of you because they have a
lead child in the house, and want to
bury it, when they never had a house
Tor a family, or they want to go to