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Conclusions parallel to these are expressed by no less a citizen than Andrew D. White, long United States Minister to Germany, who, in the course of an address at a prominent university of America, in the year 1906, made the following bold remarks:
"There is a well-defined criminal cla.s.s in all of our cities; a cla.s.s of men who make crime a profession. Deaths by violence are increasing rapidly. Our record is now larger than any other country of the world.
The number of homicides that are punished by lynching exceeds the number punished by due process of law. There is nothing more nonsensical or ridiculous than the goody-goody talk about lynching. Much may be said in favor of Goldwin Smith's quotation, that 'there are communities in which lynch law is better than any other.'
"The pendulum has swung from extreme severity in the last century to extreme laxity in this century. There has sprung up a certain sentimental sympathy. In the word of a distinguished jurist, 'the taking of life for the highest crime after due process of law is the only taking of life which the American people condemn.'
"In the next year 9,000 people will be murdered. As I stand here to-day I tell you that 9,000 are doomed to death with all the cruelty of the criminal heart, and with no regard for home and families; and two-thirds will be due to the maudlin sentiment sometimes called mercy.
"I have no sympathy for the criminal. My sympathy is for those who will be murdered; for their families and for their children. This sham humanitarianism has become a stench. The cry now is for righteousness.
The past generation has abolished human slavery. It is for the present to deal with the problems of the future, and among them this problem of crime."
Against doctrine of this sort none will protest but the politicians in power, under whose lax administration of a great trust there has arisen one of the saddest spectacles of human history, the decay of the great American principles of liberty and fair play. The criminals of our city are bold, because they, if not ourselves, know of this decay. They, if not ourselves, know the weakness of that political system to which we have, in carelessness equaling that of the California miners of old--a carelessness based upon a madness of money equal to or surpa.s.sing that of the gold stampedes--delegated our sacred personal rights to live freely, to own property, and to protect each for himself his home.
THE END
