Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

fully given it was that, before this law could go into effect, there would have to be a jail and prison capacity in the city of Detroit three or four times greater than that which it possesses.

The Prohibition law has created a criminal class from formerly law-abiding citizens. Bootleggers abound and, in the majority of cases, go scot-free with their ill-gotten gains. The law is powerless to cope with the number of its infringers, while more and more of the taxpayers' money is spent to increase the strength of the police.

When one has been associated with a prison he cannot but realize that we are beginning at the wrong end in trying to diminish crime. We have never taken the trouble to determine the causes, our one thought being to catch the offender and lock him up where he can no longer harm society.

In the majority of cases he is set free again and if the same circumstances prevail which deprived him of his liberty, with the added handicap of a prison sentence to his discredit, there is little doubt but that he will offend again and frequently more seriously.

There is rarely a reform in a prison. Locking up a man and taking away everything in life that he desires is not conducive to a frame of mind which will bring about a reformation.

This being the case, is it not stupid on the part of society to deal with this subject so superficially?

We spend huge sums of money for the isolation of disease germs and for hygiene to ensure physical health, but we accept crime as an incomprehensible thing coming from no ascertainable cause, and show our helpless bewilderment by our inability to cope with it. Locking a man or a woman behind bars is merely an acknowledgment of our weakness and lack of intelligence.

I was invited recently to sit down at a long table in the Detroit prison in the

women's department. One woman explained to me that this was the bootleggers' table and they would like to ask me a few questions. Looking around, one could see that here was a new type of criminal, manufactured by us with our Prohibition law. The huge gains to be made by selling liquor, and the strong probability of not being caught, were two elements beyond the power of certain kinds of people to withstand. The question was, 'Why are we here, when the judges on the bench, the police, the rich in their homes, the frequenters of high-priced restaurants and hotels, are at large while having and enjoying as much liquor as they see fit to buy?'

This is a time-old question, merely fitted to a new issue. There was only one answer, 'Because you are poor, without influence or power of any kind.' We may have gained in prohibition but we have lost in temperance. A very respectable class of persons who once regarded liquor as something to be avoided now consider a social gathering incomplete without its exhilarating accompaniment. Add to this the undermining of the public service and the demoralizing devices resorted to by the police to entrap makers of homebrew in their homes, and we have a miserable spectacle in which mothers are torn from their children and families completely disorganized.

A law, to be successful, should be in accordance with the instinctive sympathy of the mass of the people.

In our prison we have a population of entirely new criminals, bootleggers and other liquor violators, while our disorderly drunken charges are not diminished.

Add to this the tremendous expense incurred by the government in its efforts to enforce an unpopular law and the crimes of homicide and murder which have followed in the wake of the

bootlegger, and one is inclined to believe that the 'cure' is worse in its effects than the disease.

Often the criminal is insane or feebleminded and should be put in an institution for such unfortunates, or he is the product of a social or economic condition existing in the country where he has been reared. Legislating against crime will never do away with it. Repressive measures only increase the trouble. A doctor who treated a deepseated malady with outward applications alone would not stand well in his profession. But that is exactly what the legislators are doing when they pile up repressive laws for the cure of criminals.

We have made a beginning toward better things with the psychopathic clinic which examines the 'patient' as to his mentality. But this science is hardly a science as yet. It is too stereotyped and inflexible. The human brain is not a mere machine, and the so-called 'tests' are absurdly inadequate. Be sides, if a criminal is reported as seven years of age, mentally, the law takes no note of that. He must still pay the penalty imposed upon a full-grown man. There will have to be radical changes in the law before the psychopathic examinations will be followed by scientific treatment of the patient.

[blocks in formation]

many as is at all compatible with public safety. We should then get about the business of why we have criminals and try to remove the causes. The criminologist, Ferri, in his book, The Positive School of Crime, declares that crime has its root in 'anthropological, telluric, and social causes.' We may not be able to change the first two, but the last is one which should engross the attention of all criminologists.

As a matter of fact, the Detroit prison might easily be called the poorhouse. The man or woman with more than a few dollars to his credit is so scarce that he is a curiosity. There seems little doubt that poverty breeds crime. Housed in squalor, crowded in tenements, ignorant and often diseased, these victims of economic maladjustment live by their wits and in the majority of cases end in the clutches of the law.

The improvement of economic conditions, by which a man can be fairly certain of a livelihood and not be the football of fluctuating markets which throw him out of a job at a moment's notice, would be a big factor in stabilizing the character of men and keeping them from crimes against property.

In spite of ignorance and lack of advantages generally, the average person in prison realizes the terrible gulf of inequality which separates the rich and the poor. He knows that justice is not blindfolded, as the courts would have him believe, but fully awake to the individual with whom it is dealing. He knows that a great number of laws are made to protect the rich and that to him that hath shall be given. He knows that if he had been able to employ an expensive lawyer he would probably have been free, or that if he had had influential political friends many strings might have been pulled in his behalf. Knowing all this, he believes himself a victim, rather than a

culprit. He justifies his lawless act, whatever it may have been. If he is strong he determines to 'get even' when he is freed, if he is weak he descends to self-pity and becomes more and more demoralized. Any effort at reformation on the part of prison officials he secretly regards with contempt. Any form of punishment is merely adding fuel to his flaming grudge against society. There is no doubt but that the world has advanced in this last respect, though punishments and some forms of torture still exist.

At present we are reaping the aftermath of war in the crime wave of banditry which has swept the country. Training hundreds of thousands of young men to kill and applauding them as heroes in war would naturally lead to the lawlessness and disregard of human life which we are now obliged to endure. Having sown the wind we should not be aghast at the whirlwind which follows. Add to this the lawlessness resulting from the Prohibition amendment and we understand certain phases of our condition to-day.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

What, then, can be done by way of structive measures, when we know that betterment?

Why could not the government scientifically study this matter of crime

we are in a vicious and ever-widening circle which ends nowhere and, therefore, accomplishes nothing?

WILD HORSES

BY WILL C. BARNES

On the top of a small prairie mountain dotted with half a dozen wide-spreading cedar trees, a man armed with a pair of field glasses eagerly scanned the country below him. A short distance away his horse stood close to a tree as if to screen him from sight. For all the interest the animal took in his surroundings he might have been a graven image. His closed eyes, the pendulous lower lip lying loosely back from his teeth, the flopping ears, indicated very clearly that he was sound asleep.

Suddenly he raised his head in a startled way, looked off into the hazy distance, cocked first one ear, then the other, in the direction his eyes were taking, as horses always do when they discover some moving object coming suddenly into view. The change from complete indifference to an attitude of keen interest was remarkable. The rattling of the long chains on the heavy Spanish bit in the animal's mouth caught the man's ear. He glanced toward him.

'What you see, old fellow?' he queried. 'I haven't been able to get my eyes on a single movin' thing since we came up here exceptin' that skulkin' coyote down there on the flat watchin' for a dinner of fat prairie-dog. What you wigglin' them ears for?'

Taking a position before the horse, the man trained the field glasses in line with the pointing ears. 'H-m-m, shucks!' he said, beneath his breath.

I

"There's what ole Blue Jay's lookin' at. Beats all how quick a hoss will catch sight of anything a-movin'. That's either a "dust-devil" or the smoke from a bunch of runnin' hosses.' A minute's close study of the distant bit of yellowish dust; then 'No, 't ain't a dust-devil, for it strings along the tops of them trees 'stead of risin' straight up. Hosses all right, an' I reckon it's Bill, hazin' old Baldy along after a bunch of broom-tails.'

[ocr errors]

He turned to the horse. 'Come alive, old skate, for if I'm not mistaken you got a regular job cut out for you. If that there dust comes from a bunch of wild ones headed by that renegade gray hoss what got away from the schoolmarm last fall, it'll take some ridin' to head 'em into a corral.'

Rapidly he loosened the cinches, reset his saddle, threw the long reins over the horse's neck, and swung on to his back. Still keeping close to the trees as if to hide his presence, he scanned the point in the distance where he expected the bunch of wild horses to emerge from the shelter of the trees into the open prairie. Soon the leaders broke into sight, swinging along on a smooth, sweeping run, dropping at intervals into a fast trot, with necks outstretched, manes and tails flying in the wind. Twenty-seven grown animals he counted, all dark colors except the leader, a gray which he knew to be the notorious escaped saddle-horse 'Steeldust,' the animal every cowboy

on that range would gladly give a month's wages to capture.

The man smiled as he recalled the dramatic incident of Steeldust's escape from civilization. Caught three years before from a band of wild horses, broken, and fairly domesticated, the gray had been a gift from his captor to a young woman who came to the little hamlet in the valley to teach the dozen or more sons and daughters of the local stockmen their three R's, plus a little respect for discipline. She was an adventurous girl and one day riding alone, far out on the range, she saw a band of wild horses coming down the trail to water at a little prairie lake, and gave chase for the pure love of a wild, reckless ride.

From that first jump, her horse strained every nerve to overtake his former companions of the open ranges. For a mile or so she tore after them like mad. Steeldust, named after a noted Texas race stallion, needed no touch of spur or quirt. Twice the girl kept the band from reaching the shelter of a deep 'cedar brake' in which they would have buried themselves safe from pursuit. Her mount was too fast for them, and as she swung out to one side and waved her hat, the leader changed his course and raced away in the opposite direction, only to dash again for the cedars when she fell back a little.

Suddenly one of the band stumbled, lost its footing, and went headlong to the ground, rolled clear over, lay still for a moment, then was up on its feet, and with wild neighings raced after the rest. Almost on the instant, the girl realized the cause of its fall, for she found herself in the midst of a prairiedog village, the open holes dangerous pitfalls for a horse.

Her cowboy friends had always told her never to try to guide her mount through such a place — toʻgive him his head and trust to luck.' But instinct

prevailed. A huge hole, where some hungry badger had dug out a good dinner of prairie-dogs, yawned under the horse's feet. She gave a sharp pull on the reins. The next moment she went flying over his head to the bare ground of the dog town. When she recovered consciousness it was past midday, and there was absolutely nothing in sight but a saucy prairie-dog that sat atop of his family mound, scolding angrily at her for daring to intrude on his privacy.

Except for a cut on her forehead from a sharp rock, she was unhurt. Late that evening she was discovered by a cowboy who took her up in front of him on his saddle and carried her back to town, little the worse for her experience.

From that time on, every cowpuncher in the region wasted more than his share of perfectly good horseflesh in efforts to find her lost horse. Fortunately she was able to point out almost the exact spot where she had fallen. She recalled that as she went over the horse's head she had felt her saddle turn on his side and swing underneath his round belly. Not being used to carrying a saddle on that part of his anatomy, the horse had probably stampeded, incidentally kicking the saddle to bits. Half a mile from where she fell they began to pick up pieces of the wreck: here a broken stirrupleather; there a pair of saddle pockets; her saddle rope; the quirt Sandy Bowers plaited for her that was hanging on the horn; her slicker that was tied on the cantle; and finally the saddletree itself, a mere wreck of its former beauty, the broken latigo showing how the horse had finally rid himself of it. Minus this embarrassment, Steeldust, to quote one of the boys, 'surely quit the flats and went yonderly, headed for his old wild bunch.'

One of the girl's last gifts from an

« ElőzőTovább »