The representative., 1901-11-07
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crime with ease, was to be preferred to life
of honest toll, with poverty and privation
the universal lot of the toiler for daily
bread. They may also have observed that
it was only the petty thieves who seemed
to suffer at the hands of the law, and have
therefore decided that it was best to be a
great offender, if one hoped to secure i'm
munity from punishment.
ADVERSELY AND POVERTY.
The second class of criminals to which
attention is called is that very large num-
Der of men and women in every community
who have met with unlocked for adversely,
and have, through poverty or other misfor-
tune, become the victims of society,s un-
written law of exclusion and ostracisnl.
Their only crime is their poverty, and yet
the edict of society makes them convicts,
though violators of no statute law, and they
pay the penalty with life more barren of
sunshine than is that of the convict within
penitentiary walls. Their children are made
to feel their poverty, and are snubbed by
their more fortunate playmates, until i'll
sheer despair they drift, almost uncon-
sciously away from the bright and sweet
side of life into an environment which en-
bitters them against the world. 1t is but a
step from this condition to that of the COM
mon criminal, and from there to the peni-
tentiary, where they are used in turn,
through pernicious contract labor system,
to drive other men and women to despair,
and to make of them criminals in their
turn The contract labor system of many
states is crime against society which is
sure to come home to those who temporar-
lily profit by it. The employer of free la
Dor cannot hope to compete with the prison
contractor who has his power, light, heat,
shop room, and overseers furnished him by
the state, to say nothing of the advantage
in the price of the labor itself, which is rare
ly ever more than one-fourth that demanded
by mechanics on the outside. Here, again,
the incentive to wrong ones follows is the
almighty dollar, and with it society is max
ing criminals every day of the year.
And right here let us call attention to
few of the most notable crimes of recent
years in the United States-crimes which
are fresh in the minds of the present gener-
alton. Reference will be made to them
later
In spite of the boasted progress of Chris
tian civilization in this republic, we have to
record the assassination of two presidents
of the nation, one governor of state and
one mayor of great city. One of them was
the result of the passions born of war, the
other three of the lust for public Office and
the emoluments of the same.
Scarcely week passes without its record
of train and stage robberies, often within
the very limits of thickly populated city.
while the blowing up of safes, the killing of
bank cashiers in broad daylight, and the
holding up of citizens on the streets of the
larger cities, is also of daily. occurrence. The
incentive to this latter class of crimes is al
ways money. Ruloff hanged at Bingham
ton, N. Y, some thirty years ago, was a
university graduate, and the master of sew
en- languages. But he killed his own wife
and child, the wife and child of his own
brother, clerk in store he was robbing,
and finally, in an effort to get away, killed
his two companions in crime. And every
crime he committed was for the purpose of
gain. Holmes. the greatest criminal of