inactivity. As it is, we have too many laws; wholesale measures only serve to keep alive an already overburdened penal code is sup that really criminal element which, though plemented by special penal acts—the State small, is a power for great harm. The social Charities Law—the Child Labor Law, etc. extinction of this small element is the only An intelligent and persistent application of way to salvation. Social and governmental a few provisions in the Penal Code of broad fostering of crime, as present methods might and general application, would yield better be called, must be put an end to. results than a plethora of dead or semiWe must recognize the criminal nature of dormant legislative specifics. certain children and apply against it severe Secondly, philanthropic effort is exercised social measures, severe not in a punitive on a fundamentally wrong belief that bad sense but in a socially defensive sense. To children and criminal or degenerate chil • let criminal acts go unpunished in chil dren, is to make recidivists of them. To dren can be treated by practically the sime exonerate them from guilt and return them methods and in the same institutions. In to their family, is a double social crime, for children, as in adults, we shut our eyes to besides being an invitation to repeat an evil the fact that there is a morbid element dis tinct and different from the merely irregular. deed, a return to their family is a return to that environment which probably caused the To that morbid element we give the treat act. Indeed, the one weak point in the ment that we give to the bad but redeemable element, thereby vitiating to a great extent system of probation and suspension of sen the results among those who are subjects of tence, lies in the fact that the accused is reform. generally left to go back to his old environ It is well to insist on the force of good ment. over evil, but this must not blind us to Legalized social and physical ostracism is our one great hope. It seems a very great biologic and psychic facts. Even the crim inal has rights, but the rights of the lawhardship, especially for the young: but it is abiding must not be sacrificed to the criminal. no greater hardship than the segregation of It is well to be merciful to the wicked, but the insane and the contagiously sick. The wages of sin is death even to the third are we to be unjust to the good? It is time that something be done for the. good chil and fourth generation. This is the universal dren to save them from the bad. Crime is law. If the criminal has so far escaped it. it fearfully contagious—are we doing our best is because society has protected him as far to prevent its spreading among the inno as it lay in its power, against it. And it has cent? Children born of unspeakable orgies, done so, mostly because penal law, with its children who, in tender years, look upon historic basis and its lack of rational criteria, suicide as a "good way out," juvenile alcoho!has judged legions of human errors as ists. boys recidivists at ten, boys and girls crimes. But when wiser laws will distin past-masters in loathsome vices—what hope guish the really vicious from the occasional of reform is there for these? If you say there wicked or the mistaken, and bend its ener is hope, then you do not know them. If you gies to reform the latter instead of punishing say there is hope, it is because you confound them, it will then be found that the really them with those whom an unscientific criminal, though beyond redemption, are and unfair legislation brands with the same ' numerically few. The duty of the social de name, because it judges from superficial simi larities. You are punishing too many; your fense will then be very plain.
