Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1900-04-27

Washington Post.
Several hundred of our exchanges have
printed a paragraph to the effect that the
venerable Judge jackson, of the United
States Circuit Court at Wheeling, express
ed a pessimistic view of the state of the
public morals in charging a jury a few
lays ago. my experience on the BENCH
he said, mas not been a limited one, and
/ regret to say that crime in this country
is on the increase. 1 am unable to deter
mine whether It is a result of increasing
population or of the lowering of the stand
ard of public morality"
1t would be quite possible to have both
an immense positive and great relative
decrease of crime in the United States.
That there is more now than there was in
in 1890, when the first census showed our
population to be 1888, SS1, Is indisputable,
If there were not, the fact would be the
most notable one in the worlds history.
Undoubtedly there was less crime in 1880,
a date which many living Americans can
remember, when our population was 1885,
020, than there is now, when it is more
han five times that number. Indeed, if
there is no more crime now among our
$4,000, 900 of people than there was ten years
ago among the 6 2,623, $50, we are pushing
on toward the millennium.
The wonder is not that there is much,
but that there is no more crime in this
country. For many decades we had prac-
tically unrestricted immigration. While
it gave us millions of the best material for
the building up of the republic, it gave US
also much of the worst. Poor asylums
and jails were unloaded on our shores.
And we know of nc incidents in our his
tory that speak more eloquently in praise
of our institutions that the assimilation
of the heterogeneous and unsifted masses
which, for many decades, swelled the tide
of immigration. The republic, as it
stands to-day, challenging comparison with
any other nation on the globe in all the
elements of national strength and great
ness, is largely the product of alien human
material of a crude description developed
in this land of great opportunities. The
descendants of the poor immigrants, com
ing from the factories, the fields, the poor
asylums and the ja:ls, are as reputable,
as well educated, as prosperous and infu-
entail as the descendants of the founder
of the first colonies. There is crime in this
country-a great deal of it in the aggre-
gate-but where are the indications that
it keeps pace with the increase of the pop
ulation? Is there not, in the advancement
we are making in humanitariantsm, in
philanthropy, in sociology, in caring for
the bodies, minds, and souls of the people
is there not in all this something like proof
that we are steadily rising, that leach to-
morrow finds US farther than to-day"
One reason why crime appears to be on
the increase is that persons of mature age
forget how rapidly we are growing in num-
bers. We nave almost doubled in twenty
years, yet we doubt If the amount of crime
has grown 40 per cent. But publicity Of
crime has gained several hundred per cent
in these two decades. Improvements in
transportation, in ~facilit.s for collecting
and disseminating news, In the manufac-
ture of paper and in printing have more
han q~u.ntupled since 1870 the number of
sheets of paper used by the daily papers.
The man of seventy years in 1900 was a
young man of twenty in 1856, when we had
a population Of a little over %, 1000. Since
that time publicity of crime has Increased
ten tines more than our population. And
this is, we suspect, the chief reason why
persons of mature age are so often inclined
to believe that our civilization has had a
backset. The Post believes, and thinks 1t
knows, that in morality and intelligence
our course has been and still is upward and
onward. But we are free to confess that
there is great room for and need of i'm
provement in our criminal Jurisprudence.
The profession which more than all Others
is responsible for the enforcement of Grim
inal laws is not meeting reasonable expec-
tations in that regard. This is regretfully
conceded by many eminen. members of
that profession.