Los Angeles herald., 1909-06-14
PLEADS CAUSE
0E NnaAHlAiAHC
vi CNllVIIIVHLO
G. ]. GRIFFITH ADDRESSES THE
LIBERAL CLUB
Compares Americas Treatment Of
Prisoners with That Melted Out by
such coantries as Russia
and Japan


At the regular weekly meeting of the
Los Angeles Liberal club last nigh
Col Griffith j. Griffith spoke on the
subject, Criminals: How We Trea1
Them and How They Should B'
Treated" He said in part:
deal tonight with a subject wherein the
facts OF life are in sharp contrast with all
our ideals Of life; and men always en-
deavor to bring their lives into harmony
with their ideals. this is a subject on which
radical action cannot be much longer de-
layed.
There are certain facts we know today.
We know that the true criminal codes Of the
past have failed, we dare not act up TO
them in public No public man dares pro-
pose that executions shall be again per-
formed as they used to be, in public, IN
order that the populace may be deferred
from crime by Witnessing the tortures or
the dying. Though there is much torture
stlll inflicted in our prisons, every eifort
is made to keep the matter quiet; whereas
II we really believed in the deterrent phi
losophy, we should b. all means parade the
torture.
Although. therefore. in our hearts we are
ashamed OF the barbarous PHILOSOPHERS OF
the past l propose to show tonight that
in practice we are still pursuing paths that
can only land US deeper in the slough we
hold up our hands and thank God We are
not as Russia Is. We forget that Russia,
with all her faults, is striving hard to re-
deem her eonvicts by leading them into
the path Of useful industry. as, for ex-
ample, in the penal settlement OF Sagha-
len, of which an eminent authority Dr.
Howard. remarks: Convict labor has
added to the Russian empire an island the
length of England. not an acre of which
was previously under cultivation. we
forget also that Siberia, like the Australia
- MnT1N md ran
" improved by released conviets, many OF
whom were murderers and that the testi-
mony of travellers is that these men, being
given the opportunity Of becoming self
sustaining colonists, rarely relapse INTO
crime. and that life there is sinsnlarly
safe.
1t is hard to make the resident Of the
Pacific coast feel otherwise than that our
civilization is far superior to that or
Japan. yet such competent writer as IL.
Norman reports, the result OF his inves-
tigation of the principal prison at Toxic,
that he found the inmates were put TO the
highest class Of industrial work they were
capable Of learning, and that out Of total
Of 2coo only 20 were employed on nnskilled
labor In the whole prison there was only
one punishment cell and 1t had not been
occupied for a month.
Thus we discover that nations regarded
by US as greatly our interiors have aoan-
doned the utilities of revenge and deter
renee and applied themselves TO the more
modern and humane concept of reformation
and opportunity; and that they are doing
this successfully with material much IN
ferior to that which lies ready to our
own hand For / hold a profound con-
yiction that the American who has been so
unfortunate TO fall into the clutches OF
the criminal law has in him much better
stuff than has the Japanese or the Russian.
Talent Rotting in Jail
What sort of men are those who, in most
alarming increasing numbers, are crowding
our jails and how are they being handledT
In the preparation of this address / have
had reason to run through piles of manu-
script from the pens Of many who are re-
garded by their jailers beyond hope, and
who have been placed by the authorities in
conditions where hope seems hopeless.
Among these communications is one from a
man who narrowly escaped the gallows; for
whose blood an excited populace clamored
long and loudly. It was written under
such conditions that the author, who en-
titles his essay 1.-The Court OF Rehabilita-
tion," could have been actuated by only
one of two motives-philanthropic desire to
improve existing abuses, or intellectual dis
gust with the stupidity that prevails, nus
plea being for the indeterminate sentence,
of which I am a persistent advocate. Re
viewing the practices in vogue. their cost
10 the taxpayer and their confessed futility,
he asks: HAS not the state, so clear in de-
fning the duties Of the individual 10 itself,
thinlv it would be hard to put this most
crucial question in more succinet sober
language and / claim that men who are
capable of such thought and expression are
material that can be put to much better use
than the gallows or the solitary cell; the
straitjacket and the whipping post; life
without hope possibility OF usefulness
In all this we are much behind other ma
tions that are otherwise not nearly so ad-
vanced as we ourselves.
Living most simply and in much poverty
near Los Angeles is former San Quentin
convict who, released after long years Of
imprisonment seems to me to have gifts
Of song and feeling not greatly inferior to
those of Oscar Wilde. whose Ballad OF
Reading Gaol'' you doubtless know have
many Of his poems. and I quote the two
closing verses from his ode, THE Garden Of
Death" as a fair sample of his powers.
Through old San Quentin's garden
They led him to his doom;
While rose and lily sighed for him
An exquisite perfume.
And in the prison yard beyond
Men spoke with bated breath,
OF laws that mock the law of God
And strangle men to death
or men VINO send God-given life
To Goddess, brutal death.
Ger old San Quentin's garden
A stately pine tree sighE;
A lonely captive from the wild
Where Tamalpais lies
And seated by its rugged trunk
A convict, old and wan,
Was reading from a little book
He held in palsied hand
And on the title page I read;
1.-THE Brotherhood OF Man"
There is at once intense feeling, beauty Of
form and satire in that such satire as lies
in Wilde's celebrated stanza closing his
description OF the execution. where he says:
The chaplain would not lxneel to pray
BY his dishonored grave;
Nor mark it with that blessed cross
That Christ for sinners gave.
Because the man was one of those
Whom Christ came down to save.
Deserve Better Fate
maintain NTH r,rofni1nd rnnuictinr 4Lnt