The Devils Lake world and inter-ocean. (Devils Lake, N.D.) 1915-1920, 1915-10-14
MANUFACTURING
CRIMINALS

"The greatest crime in the United
States is the wholesale manufacturing
of criminals" says Henry B. Hyde in
the Chicago Tribune, writing of the
great number of useless laws passed
by state legislatures and city councils
each year. And to support this in
dictment Mr.. Hyde marshals an array
of facts which fiction cannot match.
Commenting editorially on Mr..
Hyde's charges, The Tribune says:
obviously, what Mr.. Ryde calls
the wholesale manufacture Of Grim
inals" is one of the unexpected results
of our uncritical reliance upon legis-
lation as a cure-all. When the An,eri-
can sees anything he doesn't like, his
first impulse is to pass a law against
it. If there ar emo statutes against
gravitation enacted at the vocjferous
behest of Americans who have slipped
up or a winters day, it is an over
sight which will be corrected in due
time.
"This is an American failing which
is often commented on. Less often do
we ponder the moral phase of the Am
erican habit of passing laws.
Undoubtedly we have been passing
through a period of acute social self
consciousness. Many things which
were ignored by our fathers we UNI
derstand or think we understand the
evil of, and in attempting to express
our new sense of responsibility and
correct the newly discovered faults by
our favorite method of law-making
we have not only outstripped u ca
pacity for the more difficult task of
administration, but we have developed
a taste for correcting what seems to
be our neighbors errors which bids
fair in turn to include everything from
his choice Of neckties to his religious
creed.
"This taste for censorship is not
discriminating. What seems to the
great mass of a given community as
at worst harmless or inconsiderab]c
seems to some moral specialists helm
Jus and deeply demoralizing. In no
country of the worl dtoday, we be-
lieve, are there SO many good people
who happen to be passionately, ener-
gized owe some particular fact Of GU,
fallable human nature. The United
States is one huge example of Her
bert Spencer's smile on reform. 1t is
a titanic sheet of metal on which the
dinges are being furiously beaten
down with the inevitable result thai
with almost every blow of our blum
dering hammers a new dinge is made
as the old M disappears.
"In this period of san awakened So
cial conscience" we show collectively
a tendency to neurasthenia in reform
and Individually a supersensitiveness as
to other peoples errors. If a good
many of our efforts at lettering the
world owe night could be treated with
a dose o fhumor and sense of proper.
ton, a deal of unnecessary suffering
could be avoided and some very Ger.
ious social reactions escaped.
"But more is needed even than the
perfecting Of law enforcement and ad.
ministration-a thing more difficult tc
attain. We need a check upon oul
growing tendency to force our neigh
bors into compliance with our owr
special standards. If we are to az.
cept a sterner and more detailed so.
cial discipline, let us at least see that
it is shaped by the common conscience
and based on the broad and settled
convictions of the community. Let us
no longer subject the individual to the
heterogeneous tyrrany Of innumerablf
~minorities. Too much of our pena
law j" under the cover of pubicl indif.
ference by that species of man or wo'
man who would have us all run into
the mould Of his or her own convic'