The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-08-18
PUNITIVE TREATMENT.

A press dispatch says that the De- partment of Justice is about to insti- ute wholesale prosecutions of the Industrial Workers of the World as d criminal organization and the Dis trct Attorneys have been instructed to have the ieadcrs arrested and pro- secuted under such conditions.
 Quite obviously if this is correct what the government wants to do is to eliminate the organization known as the Industrial Workers ot the World, and so to eliminate also the industrial disaflection which has been ideatihed with its name. Apart altogether from the justice or the moral considerations which may or may no. be involved in this proco- dure, as We ali know the stage has been prepared for this setting quite q while back.
 There has been q systematic cam paign carried on against the orga- nization in almost every state where it appeared And KrMinent public mon as well as pNUminent men ill business gave inspiring interviews on this head to the newspapers which added to the agony by long tiradea against the l. W. w menace.
 We find in the action decided upon irrespective of the patriotic motive at the back of it, by the Department of Justice a conclusive demonstra- ton how little the principles at the back of the legal procedure have altered as the times and the men alter.
 Over a hundred years ago bank bank notes were wont to bear upon their face the significant warning "To Counterfeit is Death. Over a hundred years ago capital crimes were quite numerous and from sheep stealing to highway robbery the Aaglo-Saxon system meted out the death penalty for all of these.
 The idea was that guilt was per aonal There was no concession made to the surrounding circum- stances. It mattcrcd not at all that only the poor and the starving stole sheep and did so under the despera- tely driving bangs of hunger. The man who had everything he needed was considered in precisely tho same position, before the lev, as the man who hadn't meal for week, and that it was the starving condition of the man and not his intention to be naturally lawless occasiOnCd his theft, cut no manner of figure when it came to sentencing him.
 Furthermore what compelled men 70 counterfeit bank notes and the like was that they might in this way make a living when other way there was none, and the melancholy fact was not noted in thcso cases of capi- sal crimes, that even the death sen ;ence did ont diminish their number or their frequency.
 It was in fact not the punishment which stopped the number and ire quency of crimes: the deterrent ef- feet of such punishment was neglig ible. but it was the improvement in conditions in the country where they had before been common that practi- cally removed them altogether from the criminal records.
 The view tha: severe punitive treatment and rigorous prosecutions have had a deterrent effect upon cer- tain activities regarded as anti-social IVES the old view. Modern investiga- ion which has had little or no eff feet upon modern procedure in he courts shows that the crimes have due to their economic environment or social environment often enough. But that in any event, it is very lit tic use prosecuting and punishing the persons assumed to be guilty if what drove them to guit in the eyes of their prosecutors, is to still remain grinding out further law breakers.
 We are not assuming that the In- dustrial Workers of tho World are guilty, although we might for the purposes of this article admit that they have been guilty of certain ac-