Arizona republican., 1909-12-09
PHOENLX. ARIZONA, DEC. g. 1909
The Government as q Prosecutor.

me government as Prosecutor.
 If, as is recommended by Mir. Taft. the federal government is given pow CT to deal with the white slave" traffic which crosses state lines. that evil, which has grown to such\ pro- portions almost before the public was aware of its existence. will be speed lily broken up. At present the gov ernment can deal only indirectly with the evil through the immigration laws. at the time of whose enactment the traffic was not thought of The ac- tivities of the government are. more- over. limited to the cases of unfor- tunates of foreign birth.
 But these cases. with the accidental means at the disposal of the govern ment. are prosecuted with a vigor which ought to shame the state au- thorities, who have frequently neg lected the means at their disposal to reach the criminals in other ways.
 The federal government is a per sistent and relentless prosecutor. The local authorities are frequently de- tered by the matter of expense; they are sometimes influenced by friends of accused persons in their own neighborhood, with the result that crime is often permitted to go un- punished. There is often a neighbor- iy feeling on the part of a jury to- ward the accused. that counts for much in his favor in a state prose- cution. A jury sitting in a federal prosecution is strangely removed from the accused. It unexplainably be- comes a part of the relentless. unfeel- ing machinery which has been set in motion to test the defendant for guilt or innocence.
 The federal government is moved by neither of these considerations. Its agents take no thought of expense; they are apt to have no local rela- tions which will interfere with the discharge of their duties. The gov ernment prosecution is impersonal and machine-like. It is all one to the prosecutor whether the defend ant is crushed or escapes. There is no pity for him in the first case and no resentment against him in the second. The law has been employed to it's utmost: all has been done that could be done.
 The agents of the government also do what the local authorities have not the facilities for doing-collect evidence. and that is done regardless of expense.
 Altogether. the machinery of the government is more effective and less liable to Arrangement than the local machinery
 The Helpful Sugar Trust.
 The American Sugar Refining com pany is making a pretense of assist ing the government in the prosecu- ton of the company's employees who conspired to add millions of dollars to it's coffers by fraud.
 The rather irrelevant fact is brought out that the president of the com pany was instrumental in securing a witness for the government. The tes- timony of this witness, an employe in the office of the president, instead of strengthening the case against the defendants, betrays his own guilty knowledge of the conspiracy. He had warned one of the defendants of the dangerous course he was pursuing. This defendant. an employe of the company who could have had no financial interest in the matter. re- piled that he was too smart to get caught
 The witness thereupon concluded that his duty to the government had been fully discharged. He had done what he could by a timely hint of danger to stop the conspiracy. If it should be discovered. so much the worse for the man who was not too smart to get caught If it were not discovered, so much the better for the employer of them both. the Amer ican Sugar Refining company.