Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

2 THE GEORGIAN’S NEWS BRIEFS Who Makes the “Criminals?” , Much interest just now in CRIMINALS. i Much horror aroused by depravity. F Many plans more or less appropriate for making the air pure. Many good men, politicians, women and bishops who spend the summer at the seaside are willing to spend a few days wip ing “CRIME” off the earth. What is CRIME? Who are the CRIMINALS? Who makes the criminals? Do criminals viciously and voluntarily arise among us, eager to lead hunted lives, eager to be jailed at intervals, eager to crawl in the dark, dodge policemen, work in stripes and die in shame? Hardly. Will you kindly and patiently follow the lives, quickly sketched, of a boy and a girl? THE GIRL. Born poor, bom in hard luck, her father, or mother, or both, victims of long hours, poor fare, bad air and little leisure. As a baby she struggles against fate and manages to live while three or four little brothers and sisters die and go back to kind earth. She crawls around the rooms of a small house, a good deal in the way. She is hunted here and chased there. She is cold in winter, ill-fed in summer, never well cared for. She gets a little so-called education. Ill-dressed and ashamed beside the other children, she is glad to escape the education. No one at home can help her on. No one away from home cares about her. She grows up white, sickly, like a potato sprouting in a cel lar. At the comer of a fine street she sees the automobiles pass ing with other girls in warm furs, or in fine, cool summer dresses. With a poor shawl around her and with heels run down she peers in at the restaurant window, to see other women leading lives very different from hers. Steadily she has impressed upon her the fact, absolutely un deniable, that as the world is organized there is no especial place for her—certainly no comfort for her. j She finds work, perhaps. Hours as long as the daylight. {• Ten minutes late—half a day’s fine. J At the end of the day aching feet, aching back, system ill- fed, not enough earned to live upon honestly—and that pros pect stretches ahead farther than her poor eyes can see. ^ ' - jt k “WHAT'S THE CHARGE, OFFICER?’’ Pl “Disorderly conduct, Your Honor.” There’s the criminal that Society is hunting so ardently. THE BOY. Same story, practically. He plays ball in the street—cuffed, if caught by the police man. He swings on the awning poles, trying to exercise his stunted muscles—cuffed again. In burning July, with shirt and trousers on, he goes swim ming in private ponds—caught and cuffed and handed over to the police. He tries for work. “What do you know?” “I don’t know nothin’; nobody ever taught me.” He can not even endure the discipline of ten hours’ daily shoveling—it takes education to instill discipline, if only the edu cation of the early pick and shoveL He has not been taught anything. He has been turned loose in a city full of temptation. He had no real start to begin with, and no effort was ever made to repair his evil beginning “WHAT’S THE CHARGE, OFFICER?” “Attempted burglary; pleads guilty.” In prison he gets an education. They teach him how to be a good burglar and not get caught. Patiently the State boards him, and educates him to be a first-rate criminal. There’s your first-rate criminal, Messrs. Bishops, good men, politicians and benevolent women. Dear bishops, noble women, good men and scheming poli ticians, listen to this story: In the South Sea Islands they have for contagious diseases a horror as great as your horror of crime. A man or woman stricken with a loathsome disease, such as smallpox, is seized, isolated, and the individual sores of the small pox patient are earnestly scraped with sea shells—until the pa tient dies. It hurts the patient a good deal—without ever curing, of course—but it relieves the feelings of the outraged good ones who wield the sea shells. You kind-hearted creatures, hunting “crime” in great cities, are like the South Sea Islanders in their treatment of smallpox. You ardently wield your reforming sea shells and you scrape very earnestly at the sores so well developed. No desire here to decry your earnest efforts. But if you ever get tired of scraping with sea shells, try vaccination, or, better still, try to take such care of youth, to give such chances and education to the young, as will save them from the least profitable of all careers—CRIME. Scrape away with your sea shells, but try also to give a few more and a few better chances in youth to those whom you now hunt as criminals in their mature years. God creates boys and girls, anxious to live decently. YOUR SOCIAL SYSTEM makes criminals and fills jails. Government Officials Protecting Crime L This is “The Caminetti Story”: A man in California was accused of a serious crime against a young woman. There was no apparent hope of his escaping if properly and promptly tried. His chief hope was in delay, sub terfuge and waning public interest, and, above all, DISHONEST OR INDIFFERENT PROSECUTION. The man accused and guilty, Caminetti, happened to have a father who held public office under the Federal Government. And this father was a friend of the Attorney General, Mc- Reynolds, appointed by Mr. Wilson TO ENFORCE THE LAWS j THAT CAMINETTI WAS SEEKING TO EVADE, AND TO | PUNISH THE CRIME OF WHICH CAMINETTI WAS AC CUSED. I There was delay in the Caminetti matter, and McNab, repre senting the Government as a prosecutor in California, resented the delay and denounced it. He showed that the Attorney General, McReynolds, sworn to enforce the law and punish violators of law, had, at the request of the criminal’s father, ACTUALLY DIRECTED THAT THE | PROSECUTION BE PUT OFF. That is to say, that every oppor- | tunity be given to the criminal to escape the consequences of his [ crime. This is a most shameful act on the part of McReynolds. It makes his dismissal from office a duty. If a man, to oblige a friend whose son is accused of a serious crime, interferes with justice, what will that man do when bigger and other crimes are committed, not by individuals against indi viduals, but by corporations against the entire people? If McReynolds, to oblige the father of Caminetti, interferes with justice, what will he do to oblige the father of some trust when the time comes? t Is such a man fit for office? f The amazing thing is that Mr. Wilson, instead of praising and thanking McNab, an honest official, who denounced the in famous delay and favoritism, actually rebuked that man and ac cepted his resignation from office. And now, as Senator Ashurst earnestly and justly points out, comes the culminating outrage—THE APPOINTMENT OF HAYDEN, A FRIEND OF CAMINETTI S TO ACT AS PROSE CUTOR IN THE PLACE OF M’NAB, THE CONSCIENTIOUS OFFICIAL. Senator Ashurst is to be thanked for his timely and vigorous protest against a shameful miscarriage of justice. In the first place, we have Caminetti, who should long since have been tried, gaining delay, at the request of his father, who is a friend of McReynolds. And now, when McNab, an honest man, is removed from the case, we have another friend of Caminetti, Hayden, put in as prosecutor. No collection of fine words or platitudes from McReynolds, President Wilson or anybody else will explain away an action such as this. It is not a matter of politics, as Senator Ashurst proves. He is a Democrat, but he knows that there is nothing to be gained for any party by leaving such an outrageous state of affairs un touched. As well talk of helping a living body by leaving a cancer free from molestation in that body as to talk of helping a political party by leaving unrebuked such a shameful Govern ment crime in the Caminetti case. It is bad enough when “friends in the Government” are used by men of the Archbold type, with the aid of their checkbooks, to permit extortion and robbery of the public. It is inconceivable and infamous that Government pull, the friendship of a papa Caminetti for an Attorney General McRey nolds, should be used to delay and perhaps frustrate the prose cution of a man accused of an infamous crime against a young woman. j Such conduct by McReynolds and Caminetti, condoned ap parently by President Wilson, does not fit in very well with the protestations that preceded the recent election.