Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-03-01

methods OF crooks an exhaustive study. If crime
was committed in any part of the world always
made it business to obtain all the details of that
crime: born crook never reforms; so that by
studying their methods, each one having individual
ty could tell at according to the details of
crime. who had committed it Just to put Gordon
of police surveillance round big town is not
enough you must be prepared for the experts in
dishonesty outside the city walls: Before organ
eleven million dollars had been stolen there. All
asked for was private room in the Stock Exchange
and telephone. l was connected with all the big
financial institutions of New York all the while,
and by the character of theft l knew at once who
the thief was. The rest was easy Not ten-cent
piece stolen in Wall Street while l there.
know it.
Dishonest folks are like saucers: there are not
enough of them to make cup
What Anthony Comstock Thinks
A NTHONY COMSTOCK, the most abused of
full men, impressed me as being enthusiast,
capable of the mistaken zeal of men of his makeup.
but who, in the course of his aggressive
action against vice, was accomplishing distastefu
the motive justified the means
Il am interested in the boys and girls who
just budding into comprehension of honor and
dshonor, he said, after he had shown me the secret
museum of confscated goods, that had been manu-
featured and put the market with utter indiffer
ence to the common decences of humanity.
Since 1872, when made my first attack upon
these forms of insidious vice which certain books
of an immoral character impress upon young minds
l have spent my time challenging the enemies OF
decency. In that year / made the first seizure
of plates and engravlngs of a book that had
pestered the young and women of the factories
and shops for many years. These young people are
especially defenseless against dangerous literature
because their eagerness for fiction of any kind makes
them easy prey for the INSCRIPTIONS publisher OF
salacous stories. The greatest part of my labor
has been the destruction of books, pictures, illegal
drugs and implements.
How men can invent and manufacture such
things, and then find other to sell them
the open counters OF stores reach OF the children
and young people who 60 in and out of them,
der to me. The first thought of those who prepare
these pollutionS of honor and decency seems to be
solely the amount of money they can make. Their
ultimate effect the history of vice is matter
of no consideration to them. Vice has become
elastic that am sometimes constrained to make
the character of my prosecution extreme, that !
may remind people of its definition. There is no
compromise possible with any form OF it which
reach, and SO imperl, the young boys and girls in
school, in shops, in factories. The penal code,
specific and efficient it is, has become obsolete in
some of its values, for lack of application to
that involve young boys and young girls There
seems to me to be an increase of vicious instinct in
those who are minors in the eyes of the law.
ITO my mind the sense of honor In girl or boy
of fifteen should be more Vigorously compelled than
in later life, that they may be able to take up their
adult responsibilities with clean, vrIle OF
justice to themselves and to another. The men
ace in our Schools where there mixed classes lies
in the influence of bad boys who, by their environ
of communicating depraved instincts, by means OF
notes, improper rimes and pictures to their COM
rades. Frequently when arrest these young men
and young girls under fourteen and fifteen, there
the difficulty of avoiding compromise because OF
their years.
Because of my belief that the disgrace of pun
ishment is the only remedy, l never use halfway
measures / arrest first and after they released
ho, ed how ffop fO NV To