If that terrible day should dawn in America, that would find the nation crippled and bleeding-when color is pitted against white-it would remember, as never a people remembered before, that no republic can live, no modern nation survive, in which race prejudice and color lines exist. America must stand united or die divided. A legal amalgamation of the races is essential to our national life.

CHAPTER VIII

CRIME, LAW AND PUNISHMENT

EYE FOR EYE, TOOTH FOR TOOTH. -The elements of crime are the same in essential features in every part of the civilized world. Since the tablets of stone were handed down from Mount Sinai there have been certain acts recognized by almost the whole human family as inimical to social order or individual rights.

In the various stages of human development divers forms of punishment for crimes committed have been devised and inflicted on the guilty.

False notions of religions have, for instance, been instrumental in some misguided, semi-civilized peoples in promoting crime, and also in applying methods of punishments, shocking in the extreme to all highly developed and more sensitive minds.

Many men, in different ages, have taken special delight in administering punishments for real or imaginary crimes committed by certain defenseless people. The Mosiac principles of punishment-eye for eye, tooth for tooth-has adhered to the practice of courts and juries throughout all the intervening centuries with

wonderful persistence. It is only within recent years that some states in America have ventured to relax the law of a life for a life in the case of murder.

It is not within the scope of this book to enter upon a thorough discussion of the law of crime and criminal procedure. Fact is, the writer is so absolutely opposed to the common method employed in the punishment of the criminal class, that to enlarge upon this subject would bring up a question that would require more space than could be allotted to it here.

PRAC

THE MOST OUTRAGEOUS TICE. It is hardly necessary to say that we are opposed to capital punishment for crimes committed. Our opposition is based upon scientific

reasons.

First, we maintain that most crime, for which punishment is inflicted, is committed by beings who are unfortunately developed, mentally and physically, and are consequently more or less irresponsible. To take their lives does not improve the morals of a people, while, if justly considered, it adds only another crime to the one perpetrated by the criminals.

Secondly, we maintain that crime is the result of the abnormal development of certain mental faculties in the brain of the criminal, and that all men possess these same mental elements in

a weaker or stronger degree, counter-balanced by other faculties promoting good, and that if a criminal, who is on the wrong side of mental balance, or out of self-control, is killed, the higher elements of his mind are also murdered. In other words, the good man in the criminal is killed along with the bad one. And no class of men, state or government, has a moral right to kill the good in the supreme economy of life, to rid themselves or society of the evil thereof.

Furthermore, we maintain that no human being should be thrust into a dungeon or locked into a prison for any considerable length of time. We consider this the most outrageous practice that has ever been contrived by monsters in human form. If there is a purgatory anywhere in God's universe, it has its counterpart most glaringly portrayed in the black dungeon and iron cage of the ancient and modern prison system.

HORRORS IN AMERICAN PRISONS. -A report published by the American Prison association is in effect an arraignment of the whole prison system in the United States. Two hundred and ninety institutions in 37 states were visited and carefully inspected. With a few exceptions it was found that all sorts of horrors existed which could not be justified under any statute ever enacted. Prisons were hotbeds of disease, dangerous not only to the inmates but

to the outside public. The character of the food and the way of serving it were revolting and demoralizing. Overcrowding was a frightful evil. In Birmingham, Ala, 240 men were found in seventy-two cells, and twenty-five women in ten cells. In Los Angeles 135 men were found in eighty-eight cells. One person to a cell, the prison association says, is all that should be allowed. "It is a strong temptation," says the report, "to specify particular cities where nameless abuses exist; where little children are kept in rooms with polluted and diseased adults; where a poor insane victim of brain disorder howls all night in company with ruffians; where an honest fellow, unable to pay a fine for a spree, is locked in with thieves. These are not pictures from novels; they are bald prosaic facts set down by honest eyewitnesses in answer to printed questions." Imprisonment without occupation, the report declares, is a straight path to insanity. In 143 jails the men prisoners have no occupation, while in 155 the women prisoners have nothing to do. The association is strongly in favor of labor colonies where persons may be taught in an intelligent way to lead better and useful lives. It favors keeping prisoners until their reform is reasonably assured, but it is insistent that where no effort at reform is made, the whole influence of jails is debasing. In many jails in