Los Angeles herald., 1910-10-09
TAFT'S ADVICE

" RESIDENT TAFT warned the
- delegates to the prison congress
4 not to make the jails so comfort
able that they will be calculated to tn-
crease crime. In making use of this
expression, the president showed that
both his information and thought on
this subject are superficial. Nobody
will maintain that our prisons or jaiis
have been brought to such state that
they can be called comfortable, yet
crime is startingly on the increase, as
the reports to the prison congress
showed.
~ the president had been better in
formed Ut a deeper thinker he would
have followed a different line in his
address. He would have devoted his
mind to a study of the causes Of crime
increase in this country, which is
matter of grave Concel.- to all students
of events. 1t is barely possible that
Mr.. Taft would have found in our
nomc and social conditions a pro-
life cause of the increase. And the
cause of that cause, it may be, will be
found in the privileges enjoyed by
class with which, until elections made
him see more light, Mr.. Taft has al
lied himself.
AS the struggle for existence becomes
harder for the masses nothing Is more
to be expected than that the least sta
BILE of the strugglers will resort to out
lawry of varying degrees in the effort
l. - fha HifHpnlfipS
der which they live. Ninety million
people in this coun-.y can be classed
as poor. They depend on their daily
wage for subsistence. With prices in
creasing out of all proportion to wages
they are finding it correspondingly diff
ficult to lay by anything for the fu-
ture. When their employment is in
terrupted through sickness, or business
depression, or what not, they are set
back into debt for actual necessities.
An instance of this is to be found
in the cases Of some of the survivors
of the recent disaster in this city, who
are reported to be in actual need. They
are merely representative of the con-
dtion of the average wage-Worker' S
family-nothing on hand, after paying
for food, rent, doctors bills and the
score of other things that eat up In
come, with which to meet a crisis,
Ninety millions of our people belong
to this class-for the most part indus
trious, thrifty and honest, but can't
get ahead under the struggle for a
living. The other ten millions include
our prosperous class, from the we'll
to-do to the very ii L. This is a fact
that our well-paid, well-groomed and
well-fed statesmen do not seem able to
grasp. They seem utterly incapable
of visualizing these conditions, so they
can't humanize the laws they pass,
and for a -olf century they have
gone on with legislation planned to
make the well-to-do 10 per cent more
comfortable.
After Aldrich and Cannon and their
like have amassed great fortunes out
Of a legislators salary, and trusts have
been protected in exploiting the ninety
millions by a high tariff, Mr.. Taft's
party proudly strikes an attitude and
says: "See the prosperity we have Gre
ated" Meantime the social gap has
been widening to gulf. Rich men
ask why the poor are coming to hate
men of wealth" and the president goes
before a serious boa Of men and tells
them not to make the prisons too com
Portable. He knows, although he prob
ably did not reflect on the fact, that
the men who are driven to the jalls
through cXistinr social and economic
conditions arc the poor and not the
rich, no matter what the crime of the
rich legislator or trust magnate may
be-
The relation between living condi-
tions and the increase Of crime and
graft is absolutely traCeable Tens of
thousands Of Americans are kept des-
perate with the struggle for existence
and with debts. Race suicide is one
logical outcome. Employment OF wom-
en- and children who ought to be in
the home and school is another.
Under the present system it can safe
ly be predicted things will get worse
instead of better. Crime is only an
extreme manifestation OF the growing
social and economic unrest. Mr TAFT
can find ways of approaching the SER
ious problem better than the one he
took before the prison congress.