The weekly times-record. (Valley City, N.D.) 1912-1922, 1922-02-09
ually it is found that deliberate
wrongdoers does not pay.
The Herald has no intention of dis

cussing separately and in detail the
sentences imposed by Judge Englert
at the close of the recent series of
| criminal trials in the district court
| here. Those sentences were in vary
ing degrees of severity. In several
| cases they involved penalties heavy
| enough to make them decidedly i'm
pressive. Most of the convicted Of
Tenders are quite we'll known in the
community. Some of them have been
very conspicuously known. And when
penitentiary sentences are melted out
to persons who are locally we'll
known, and whom our people have
been accustomed to see going and
coming with every evidence of COM
fort and prosperity about them, peo-
pie naturally sit up and take notice.
Without particularizing as to cas-
es, there are persons among those
,ust sentenced who have not done
an honest days work in months or
years; who have had no visible means
of support; yet who have been able
to live luxuriously and to entertain
themselves in expensive ways far be-
vond the reach of the ordinary res
pectabe working man, even If the
latter's tastes did run in the same
direction. The common understand
ing that these men were engaged IN
the regular and unlawful peddling OF
liquor for profit has been sustained
by the records of the court, and
heavier sentences have been for this
offense or from criminality growing
directly out of it.
The Herald has several times call
ed attention to the malignant in
fluence exerted on youth by Offend
ers of this class. The youth who IS
trying honestly to make a living by
honest labor, and who finds the way
none too easy, is not strengthened by
his own integrity by the spectacle of
others, often former companions, no
more capable than himself, living lux
uriously and without apparent effort
on the proceeds of an unlawful oc-
cupation which is as available to one
as to another. If the young man
were to look through to the end of
the course and foresee the inevitable
finish, the career would lose much
of it's attractlveness. But youth lives
largely in the present, and is i'm
pressed more by what it sees than
by distant possibilities.
We read great deal of the duty
of society to the individual in the re-
moval of conditions which prompt to
crime. Undoubtedly society has such
an obligation. But many of the re-
formers seem to take the position
that the way to make such abundant
provision for the the comfort and the
pleasure of the Individual without any
effort or any self denial on his part
that there will be no need for him to
.iolate law in order to obtain what
ever will minister to his pleasure.
Human nature and human society
are not so constituted that any maud
lin plan will work. The coddling pro-
cess never produced strong plant
for worth while character. Soci-
etys obligation to its members con-
sists, not alone in developing condit-
ions under which honest labor shall
receive it's fair reward, but in i'm
pressing on them at the same time
that without labor and sacrifice and
RESPECT for law and the institutions
of society those things which at first
may appear to be rewards must turn
to bitterness and ashes.
In the series of trials, convictions
and sentences we have seen some OF
the processes of human life at work.
The supremacy of law has been as
serted. A singing rebuke has been
administered to the tendency of the
idle and dissolute to live without la
Dor. Sad to say. the innocent and
worthy have been brought to suffer-
ing and sorrow, but that is as inevi-
table consequence of guilt which no
human wisdom can prevent.
1t is to be hoped that the lessons
taught will be thoroughly learned,
not alone by those who must now suf
fer the penalty of their misdeeds, but
by all who may be tempted into
ways of idleness and lawlessness.-
Grand Forks Herald.