It is to be
expected that with our Chinese, "greaser," and half-breed
population in the West, our Black Belt in the South, and our
Sicilian and South Italian immigration in the North and East,
our murder rate should exceed those of the continental
nations, which are nothing if not well policed.
But of one thing we can be abundantly certain without any
figures at all, and that is that our present method of
administering justice (less the actions of juries than of
judges)--the system taken as a whole--offers no deterrent to
the embryonic or professional criminal. The administration of
justice to-day is not the swift judgment of honest men upon a
criminal act, but a clever game between judge and lawyer, in
which the action of the jury is discounted entirely and the
moves are made with a view to checkmating justice, not in the
trial courtroom, but before the appellate tribunal two or
three years later.
"My young feller," said a grizzled veteran of the criminal bar
to me long years ago, after our jury had gone out, "there's
lots of things in this game you ain't got on to yet.
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