The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-08-04
Pinkenon Says Picture Shows
 Foster Crime
Not All of Them, But Scenes Which Depict Crime Have
 Bad Tendency


 was showing a paper knife swiftly | through the letters that formed q | pyramid on his desk.
 Crime wave here? Nothing of | the sort New York city is all right.
 It is one of the best governed cities | in the world
 "Yet crime is known to exist''- Human nature is here, some good, some bad, and there's a lot of each. Deputy Commissioner Dougherty says that many of the criminals are l boys"
 l Easily accounted for, and what | he states is true. Blame the bad
 moving picture shows for that and
 blame the rob stories written in vel | low journals glorifying and special l izing on young moral idiots and the | older and hardened ones. No doubt this boy who murdered MT. Jackson 1 filled his foolish little brain with cheap tales of adventure and crime, picture houses which subsist by dis playing in a shockingly vivid way
 murders, train robberies, pocket pick
 ing, kidnapping and lesser enough de- ! plorable offences.
 "Why interview mel" the big de- tective asked suddenly, "I have been interviewed iuntih am tired to death.
 I don't want to talk any moreno | more at all.
 | He looked ever so stern in spite l necktie, his waistcoat and the merry | sparkle of a cluster of diamonds on 1 his little finger. The shirt carried
 a narrow c1aret-co1ored stripe, the
 necktie was of the same tone, the
 waistcoat lent a softening influence | being built of pale buff and orna- mented with turquoise buttons l His eyes are his own affair. He | doesn't talk with them. They are 1 impressive, apparently, and when ne
 ing up process is accomplished with a | system manifestly his own. His gray mustache doesn't droop so l much it conceals the firm lines in the corners of his mouth. When he speaks the words come out with a rush, then he closes his lips tight and never opens them again without good and sufficient cause. MT. Pinkerton wasn't in his regular office. That is located in Chicago, and distinguished as the great quake centre of criminals. He will move l has hundreds of letters which must be attended to first, letters that ar-
 rived while he was in London and
 he had only just returned; was in
 York branch at No. 57 Broadway. He picked up little white envel- ope. "Do you see that?" he asked.
 Touch that white surface with your finger. I'll put a powder over the impression and I'll get your correct finger print"
 Incidentally it may be we'll to bear in mind that when trying to converse with MT. Pinkerton, it is we'll to start in with a perfectly good, clean con- science.
 Finger prints prove the greatest and most effective way of catching criminals. Some who don't know assert the idea has been used only a comparatively number of years in
 London, NeW York city. y Chicago hi i.so,s and d
 true, but the Chinese practiced the
 system before America was discover ed, long before. We have had won derfu1 results with it, but it would take 9 year to tell the captures" Are you interested in the science of face reading in detecting crimin- a1s. which Police Captain Joseph A.. Faurot, of the Bureau of Criminal
 Identification, has gone to Paris to study?" I asked.
 tographs. I would like to show them to you, but they're in my trunk. On one card I have there are three ex- posures. You would think looking at them they were portions of the face of one man, but they are really face features of three men. The de- tectives will have to be educated to carry in their minds the written de-
 scription of men, all the peculiarities of the forehead, eyebrows nose and other features, as well as knowl- edge of the structure of normal faces,
 which haven't anything startling in theft makeup. We catalogue them all, through the Bertillon system, the finger prints, the photographs and de- scriptions of sections of the face, but Just that and some more." ffNO don't make a mistake about what I said concerning the demora1- izing effect on youth, especially the young men who frequent the moving picture shows. I am not condemn ing all shows-Some are educational and should be fostered and patroniz- ed by the public. I mean those that show travel in various lands. They are instructive, but there is nothing strong enough with which I can de-
 nounce the places that show slides on through every stage to the full fillment. I saw @ slide not long ago that revealed a train robbery abso- lutely true in every detail. Take a
 fiji his vision with such things, and what do we get. We have a crim- inal soon who amazes the world by his cold bloodedness and stoicism. Ideas of theft and murder are created the same way he went on. | hIOW SuSA1 O OOLo4IIOA "oolO COIuC to the country if this promiscuous moving picture business was not brought up sharply. At a meeting of the chiefs of police of this country held in Birmingham, Ala bama over a
 year ago, I offered a resolution call-
 ing on all the mayors of the United
 States to establish a censorship nov
 ing picture board in every city. The
 boards have done much to make the
 shows more wholesome and there is
 much more to be done"
 And another thing I want to be plain about. Crime increases with
 the sensational habits of yellow jour
 nals. Those weep stories written
 about murderer, no matter how atrocious the crime, tend in weak
 mentalities to regard the murderer as a poor delinquent a victim of
 inherent vice. or a martyr 'hero,'
 made to suffer for all the social sins in the past and in the present.
 Sorry I didn't have anything to say; I don't talk; Pm no talker at all and I don't like an interview, any
 how" and the venerable head of the greatest detective agency in this coun- try sank again into his correspon- dence.
 Do you think the efficiency of Scotland Yards
 No time to finish that question
 There's nothing better in the line of government in the world than you find right here."-New York Tele- gram.