Los Angeles herald., 1910-02-28

as hideous as those made familiar to
us by the history of the Spanish in
QUESTION, and Weir Russell and others
aver that they are so utilized by the
police. The recent record in Spokane,
where l. w. W. members were, sub
mitted to the freezing torture, is
case in point.
Did space permit I could multiply in
definitely instances and proofs of my
contention. But / simply repeat that,
to my mind, the charity method has
failed in this department also.
We shall never solve social prob
lens correctly while we take onesided
views and confine our attention to
single factor 1 make this wise reflec-
tion because 1 do not hold police or
wardens wholly to blame-if, indeed,
the word "blame" is to be used at all.
They have task to fulfill which Is
well nigh impossible and is growing all
the time in difficulty. 1 shall quote
Mr.. Russell again, because I cannot.
do better. In the series of articles now
running in Success" and entitled
1.-THE Power Behind the Republic"
he tells us of his experience while sit
ting on the bench beside police magis-
trates and judges of the higher Grim
inal courts; and he remarks that he
vince him that S5 per cent of the cases
came from the slums and slum condi-
tions.
Tenement House Products
Russell describes the characteristics
which, to the expert, stamp a man or
woman infallibly as being the product
of the slums, and says: "As a rule
there appeared among them only q
an flf of
very often they were cruel, manifest
ing kind of pleasure in giving or
viewing pain; if they laughed it was
in a brief, evil guffaw at something
either brutal or filthy Even the
youngest showed savage hatred of
authority; the policeman on the beat
was his mortal foe. Among boys of this
order 1 have known some startling,
abnormal beings-boys who from an
innate prompting thought with COM
placency of taking human life and
looked upon crime as the normal career
all of these the products of the tene-
ment house."
1t is not a pleasant picture, is it?
Indeed it is most alarming one,
viewed merely from the standpoint of
self-preservation. For the growth of
these conditions presages-as Mr.. Rus
sell shows by the use of some astound-
ing uthorities-revolution, in the
bloody acceptation of the word. And If
anyone is curious to obtain more
comprehensive view of the manner in
which these slum conditions are mass
ing themselves for trouble in the i'm
mediate future I recommend him to
read Ernest Poole's recent article, "a
Blind Revolutionist" in Everybody's,
which is not an Anarchist magazine.
Chaos in the Future
4,
set out in all it's nakedness. The slum
district is unquestionably increasing
in every city, under the pressure of
certain economic conditions. With the
increase of the slum district comes an
increase both of the poverty that in
cites to crime and on the individual
types that take to it as naturally as
a duck takes to water. And these con-
ditions, while threatening to bankrupt
us in the present, menace chaos in the
not distant future.
To my thought all attempts to Danish,
or even control, crime while preserv-
ing intact the conditions that give it
birth are the widest of Utopian
dreams. 1t comes from the slums, and
the slums come from-shall we call
them defective" social arrangements?
The correction, therefore, of these social
defects is the first item in the pro-
gram of the genuine criminologist
But Mrs. Booth thinks she can solve
the riddle by prayers and convict
homes.
Some years ago wrote sarcastically
of those who can find it in their hearts
to visit the workers of the slums and
the prisoners in the modern hells we
call 'penitentiaries,' and exhort them
to thank God for his mercies." 1 now
tell Mrs. Booth that l expressed most
accurately the view of the average
convict.
Furthermore, as regards the convict
home solution of the question, I re-
peat what wrote quite recently in an
other publication: "They Convict
homes) may be the best things pos
sible under existing conditions, but to
my mind it is clear that the salvation
of a discharged convict will be found
in restoring him to fellowship with or
dinary people, and not in throwing him
once more into the companionship of
those with whom he shared the peni-
tentiary life. To mass weak people is
but to accentuate the general weak
ness, for everybody knows from his
own experience that energetic company
begetS energy, and vice versa"
I doubt, therefore, the beneficence of
Mrs. Booths work even in the matter
of convict homes, and l am profoundly
convinced that she is misleading the
public when she uses her great gift of
eloquence to hypnotize it into the sup
position that the crime problem can be
cured by individual penitence, induced
by prayer. 1t cannot. 1t Is a natural
growth, and of all the truths the pub
lis is called on to face courageously
this seems to me the most imperative
1t is because, alone of all kindred as
sociations, the Prison Reform league
appears to me to grasp this truth, that
I stand by it and foresee for it a certain
future, however great may be the diff
ficulties that atterd its infancy.
ACCAllClAROQEE