The times., 1900-12-23

large railroad police force. where he had
a chance to investigate prisons. jails, and
| other places into which, tramp. he
could have entered only in a professional
capacity which might not have been
pleasant. He got the information he
sought, and much of it-mcst of it that
| can be put into prints inside the two
covers of this book.
| The book is one of the most valuable
| works of the kind that can be found
| among recent publications. and nothing
| more important has come out since Rils
widely read account of How the Other
| Half Lives Walter Wyckoff's expert
| ences are amateurish beside those Of MIR.
| Flynt, and the latter has some well-de-
| fined conclusions at the bottom of his
| collection CT observations, which was more
| that Mr.. Wyckoff did. The latter was in
| clined to be optimistic; MIR. Fiynt thinks
| that there are some things in this coun-
| try which are badly in need of attention,
| and does not hesitate to say so. His gen
! eral opinion is pretty well summed up in
| the closing paragraph of his introduction:
Until the general public takes an interest in
making police life cleaner and in eliminating the
| professional offender and the dishonest public
| servant from the problems which crime IN th's
country brings up for solution. very little can be
| accompanied by the police reformer or tue
penologist.>
The general public it may be said. is
/ not very well informed on the criminal
| problem. and one would suppose it would
want to be. 1t is probably true that COM
| paratiyely few people whom one might
meet in everyday life have any
| idea of the proportion which the criminal
| population of the country bears to the
whole On this point Mr.. Flynt has infor-
nation CLEANED from detective. who
said, when asked how many professional
criminals there were in the land:
Do you mean the whole push, or just the
Number One guns II you mean the push, why,
you're safe in saying that there are 100000 in the
whole country. but the most OF them are pretty
poor lot. Ii you mean the really good people,
1900 will take 'em all i'll.
The author has testimony on the Grim
inal problem from people whose opinion
is worth haying-the criminals them
selves, and the detectives and police A
policeman whom he met in the course of
his wanderings, and who has, Mr.. Flynt
naively says. remained honest in spite OF
his profession, sums up the criminal sit
uation in New York after this manner:
The world is graft; fash enough Doodle under
nine noses out OF ten, and you can do as you like
with them. Take New York, for instance.
could clean up that city in week if the people
would stand by They wouldn't do il.
Enough would tumble down in front OF sor1e
fxer to queer everything that ] might do You
can't do anything worth while in the police
business unless you've got the people behind you,
and they are as tickle as a cat. Why. if / were
chief of police in New York. and should clean
up the city thoroughly. there is class of busi-
ness men who would come TO me and say that was
taking away some of the main attractions OF the
city, and that they going to make a kick
about it. Heaven knows that the police cor
rupt, but tell you that the public is corrupt
too. See how things are up in Canada | have
just come back from there, and can assure you
that there is no such sneak work going On up |
there as there is with Their police courts are
as dgniffcd almost Is olr Supreme Court, and II
a crook gets into Of them they settle him. |
How many crooks get what they ought to in this |
country? About one in Ten. and he could get off |
with light sentence if he had money enough |
TO square things. Il
One of the things which Mr.. Flynt en-
phatically urges in the way of reform is |
the separation, absolute and effectual, of |
the older from the younger criminals.
Another problem, different from that of |
the criminal. is the tramp problem. and |
there is one feature of it not usually |
recognized. to which Mr.. Flynt calls at
tention. This is the "gay-cat." Since it
is likely that the average reader will
not know what gay-cat is, 1t may be ex-
planned that he is an unemployed man
who works when he likes and tramps
when he feels like it. He is usually young, |
and the fact probably is that he is a vic
tim of that Wanderlust which his richer
fellow citizens work off in more reputa-
BILE, or at least more conventional ways.
One of this class expressed his views of
life as follows, and his remarks are so
typical that they may well be quoted and
studied:
Oh. can live all right but this countrys got
to give me somethin' more'n livin', before IN
work hard month in and month out ! amt
goin' 10 slave for anybody. ! got as good rights
the next man to enjoy myself. m when / want
off trim n pfrtf int IN
TO work hard all my life an have nothin' but
money at the end Of it. ! want TO live ] 20 !
along, and | like hittia the road every now and
then
This plan of life is, Of course, unortho-
dox, since the proper course for the
young man in question would have been
to settle down at eighteen or twenty.
work hard at his trade, marry some girl
in his own neighborhood and rear fam
lily. But, after all, why should he not
spend a few years in living as he goes
along" as well as the young fellow who
does not settle down to business till he
is nearly thirty? The reasoning is GER
tainly straight, from his point Of view.
Moreover, who is going TO preach to him?
The man who has, perhaps, lived on an
fortune till he got ready TO set
tie down in life? The gay-cat at least
earns his own living, II it is not very
luxurious one.
The number of queer characters whom
Mr.. Flynt met in his wanderings were, of
course, innumerable, among them being a
man who had spent ten years in pen
itentiary where the prisoners did no
WORK, and who had put in his time read
ing himself blind, as be expressed it,
Among the books which he absorbed at
that time were Burton's Melancholy
and Kants "Critique of Pure Reason"
(Boston: L. c. Page & Coz
"Hypnotism in Mental and Moral Gull
ture," by John Duncan Quackenbos. is a
small book treating mainly Of the thera-
peutic aspects of hypnotlsm. It will be in
teresting to all who are interested in such
matters, and, incidentally it explains most :
Of the phenomena claimed as religious
miracles by the Christian Scientist. The
author firmly believes that hypnotism is
beneficial az a mental and moral agent, IN
the curing OF certain nervous diseases and
the prevention Of crime. He does not be-
lieve that there is anything supernatural
Or uncanny in this science, but that 1t is
merely the exclamation of psychological | ,