New-York tribune., 1910-09-18
Crime Congress
Fifty Nations Send Men to
Study Uncle Sans Prisons.

This Sunday evening, at S45 O'CLOCK
| there will leave the Erie station at Jersey
City, by special train, one of the most IN
teresting parties that this country has
over seen. The train itself, a Pullman
equipment from baggage car to observa-
tion coach, belongs for the time being TO
the United States. On board will be more
than one hundred men and women from
foreign parts, representatives of nearly
Fifty civilized nations of the world These
distinguished travellers are all guests OF
the United States. Uncle Sam has invited
them to travel free of charge through two
Thousand miles of our Eastern and Cen
trail states. Sitting in. the same or ad-
Joining sections will be delegates from
China Japan, Russia; from New Zealand,
Porto Rico, the Transvaal, Finland, Moroc-
co, Siam; from Argentina. Liberia. France.
in short from almost a half hundred ma
TORS.
Uncle Sam is taking them around the
country to show them his best prisons
taking them to Elmira Reformatory, to
Auburn N Y; to the Ohio State Rsforma-
tory, at Mansfield; to the Indiana Reform
atory, at Jefersonville: to Chicago to In
dianapolis, and incidentally to Niagara
Falls for change. These hundred foreign
ers, who have fifty Americans travel
! ling with them as a corps of nationa
guides, are representatives from the world
over, now in this country to attend the
coming session of the International Prison
Congress at Washington American gov
| ernors, mayors and chambers of commerce
have showered invitations galore upon this
body of visitors to cur shores. Two weeks
from to-day, at Washington, the President
of the United States will address them at
the opening meeting of the congress, the
first of its kind ever held in the United
| States.
| As usual, when the United States takes
| hold OF anything it manages to have The
| biggest yet of it's kind. This crime con
| gress is peculiar 1t is not massive in tbs
| number OF its attendants, although there
will probably be thousand visitors daily
| at tne sessions between October and 5
This is a congress Of representatives 1t
| corresponds. in way to our House of Rep
resentatives, in that a very few persons
represent whole state, or, in this case, q
nation. For instance. the one hundred
| delegates to this international congress
represent a billion and a hair o. civilized
people. The delegates are not all Chris
tians; the followers of the Nazarene will
treatment of the criminal with the follow
ers Of Mahomet, while the student of Con-
fucius will debate with the adherent OF
| the Greek Catholic Church as to the value
of the irdeterminate sentence and parole
In short, this is a world congress to study
crime and to consider means for it's reduc-
ton.
Crime costs the people of the United
States probably $1,000, ,ooO, 900 year, direct
ly and indirectly. 1t takes a heavy toll
of human lives, not so much in the num-
ber of persons VINO are murdered but in
the families that are broken up, in the de-
generates that are bred by crime, in the
inmates of our prisons, many of whom
are physically weakened by long terms OF
Imprisonment, and in general by the fact
that crime drives its devoteeS into bad, i'm
moral and unhealthy conditions of life that
in the end react upon the body and fire.
quently bring disease and death.
There are about one hundred thousand
prisoners in our American prisons to-day.
About third of them are discharged each
year, and another third take their places.