"I think no
more of killing a houseful of human beings, men, women and children,"
one of them was quoted as saying the other day, "than of crushing so
many beetles." How came such a monster to exist? Why, we bred him,
supplied him with the poisonous conditions that generate such beings and
can generate nothing else. He had intelligence enough to understand that
the established order made earning an honest living hard work; saw
thousands living well without labor apparently, other thousands robbing
under cover of legal technicalities; a legal profession living by
devising statutes to punish crimes and prosecuting the criminals thus
manufactured; often living better yet by teaching criminals to escape
the penalties which their law imposed. He saw reform schools which
instructed such children as he had been to become such men as he was;
prisons and penitentiaries which graduated such as he in the latest
devices of crime--and he made up his mind that goodness was at bottom
humbug, that only a fool would be honest or merciful when money could be
got by theft and murder.
We breed poisonous snakes and scorpions, give them no chance to be
anything but that, and then wonder they are not doves and butterflies.
Things like this gangster are infernal spirits, irreclaimable; but we
gain nothing by extirpating the individuals; the black stream which
carries them must be dammed at its source.
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