The public should be chary in bestowing charity, and especially
to able-bodied men who appear blind, deaf and dumb, or are still
claiming to be victims of some recent disaster. Most any one who has charity
to bestow can easily think of some deserving and honest unfortunate
in their own neighborhood.
PARALYTIC A BAD ACTOR.
The most
transparent fraud on the streets of the great cities is the pseudo-paralytic.
At almost any street corner can be seen what purports to be a trembling wreck
of a man. His legs are twisted into horrible shapes. The hand which he
stretches forth for alms is a mere claw, seemingly twisted by pain into all
sorts of distorted shapes, trembling and wavering. The arms move back and
forth in pathetic twistings as if the pains were shooting up and down the
ligaments with all the force of sciatica.
The head bobs from side to
side as if it were impossible to keep it still. And the words which come from
the half-paralyzed mouth are a mere mumble of inarticulate sounds, as if the
tongue, too, were suffering torture.
A more pitiable sight than this
could not be conjured up. And the extended hat of the victim of what seems to
be a complication of St. Vitus dance, paralysis, sciatic rheumatism, and the
delirium tremens, is always a ready receptacle for the pennies, nickels and
dimes of the thoughtless. This is one side of the picture; now look on the
other.
It is dusk. Just that time of day when the lights are not
yet brightening the streets, and when the sun has made the great
tunnels between the sky-scrapers, ways of darkness. Detective Wooldridge
is watching. He has been watching two of the deplorable fraternity for two
hours. As the dusk deepens he sees them both arise, dart swiftly across the
street and board a car. By no mere chance is it that they are both on the
same car. The detective follows. Before a low saloon on the West Side the
victims of innumerable diseases descend from the car, walking upright as
six-year soldiers on parade. They enter the saloon. They seat themselves at a
table behind an angle in the back which conceals them from the street. The
detective loiters down to the end of the bar and watches. From every pocket,
even from the hat rim, pours a pile of coins.
The two sort out the
quarters, the nickels, the pennies. The heaps are very evenly divided over
two or three cheap whiskies or a couple of bottles of five-cent
beer.
Then the real finale comes. Detective Wooldridge gets busy, and
a goodly portion of the spoil finds its way out of the hands of
the sharpers in the way of a fine.
But for every one of these
paralytic frauds caught there are dozens, even scores, who get away
unscathed. It is the estimate of the best detectives that not one in a
thousand of these paralytic beggars is genuine. It is one of the most
bare-faced cases of deception of the public which comes under the notice of
the police.
EASY MONEY FROM KIND HEARTS.
Charity covers a
multitude of sins, almost as many backs, and quite a bit of
graft.
Thoughtless giving is almost a crime. It serve to encourage
idleness, and idleness is at the bottom of more crime than any other one
thing, unless it is poverty.
Here is a story, given in the words of
the man himself, which shows how the charity graft is worked in a number of
ways. It covers several fields, and is so dramatic that it is given as the
best example of all-round charity grafting:
"In experience in
charitable work last summer I discovered some of these truths. It was
the first time in all my life that I ever engaged in any charitable
enterprise, and the needy that I sought to relieve was
myself.
"Any one will beg, borrow, or steal in the name of
charity. They may be as personally honest as a trust
magnate--and they would be horrified at the idea of begging or
stealing for themselves, but charity makes them respectable. At
least this is the theory I worked on.
"I was broke and far from
home. I decided that I would starve or steal rather than beg. Then a
fellow I met accidentally put me on to a way of making a
living.
FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE HEATHEN.
"He had a lot of
literature either really from a big church, charitable organization, or
fraudulently printed, and he explained to me that I was to sell these 25
cents a copy for the benefit of the heathen somewhere, or home
missions. I was to get 25 per cent of the money resulting from such
sales.
"About a week later, when I had received $12 besides
a little expense money from him. I discovered that he was
keeping all the money. I took the rest of the literature and destroyed
it. Three days later, when I was hungry, I rather regretted destroying
it.
"I joined a circus that was moving toward my home town
in Western Iowa, intending to leave it there and quit being a
tramp. I was then down in Eastern Pennsylvania. I was a canvas hand. We
went west by a tortuous route, and I never could accumulate enough coin
to pay my way home, so was forced to stick to the place for many
weeks.
"The second week one of the canvas hands came to me
and asked me to circulate a subscription paper among the men for
the benefit of one Will Turner, a member of the band, who, he said, had
dropped off the train while running over from the last stop, and badly
injured himself.
GAVE THE MONEY TO CANVAS BOSS.
"I
circulated the paper. The man told me he already had collected from the
band on another subscription paper, so I needn't go to them. The man
subscribed over $40 to help Turner, and I gave the money and the paper
to the canvas boss who asked me to make the collection.
"He
took it, and remarked gratefully that he would make it all right with
me. I didn't catch the significance of the remark then. About a week
after that the same canvas boss came again with another subscription
paper for the benefit of John Kane, who, he said, was a gasoline lamp
tender and had been horribly burned and taken to the hospital. He
told me a graphic story of the accident that aroused all my
sympathy. I took the paper and worked hard on it during the afternoon
and evening performances, and, as it was the day after pay day, I
collected nearly $100.
WORKED THE GAME ONCE A MONTH.
"I
got a shock when I took the money to the canvas boss. He gave me $50 and
said:
"'That's your share. We'll work it again next pay
day.'
"Then I went at him, and we had quite a fight. We were
both arrested, and at the hearing next morning I learned that he
had been working the game with that same circus about once a month.
There were so many with the outfit and so few of them knew each other by
name, and accidents were so numerous, that no one suspected him. He had
grown afraid to work it for himself and used me for a tool.
"The show had pulled out and the boss and two others who had been
arrested with us took the first train back to it. I used the $50 to pay
my fine and get home, where I found work and honesty--and, as soon as
possible, I sent to the chief horseman with the show $50, to be added to
the fund for the benefit of the next person really hurt, telling
him the entire story. He wrote that he had been among those who
helped kick the canvas boss out of the car after he read my
letter."
IN NAME OF CHARITY.
There are probably more "touches"
perpetrated in Chicago by professionals in the name of charity than under any
other guise. In this matter, more of the protection of honest charities than
for the protection of the public, the police have taken a hand and done
a great deal to weed out and punish the solicitors for fake charities. An
imaginary home for epileptics was one of the favorite plans. There was a home
for this class of unfortunates that was honestly run, and the peculiar
sympathy enlisted by the mention of the word epilepsy was seized upon by
dishonest schemers. Professional women solicitors were garbed as "nurses" and
sent forth. They were mostly austere-looking women and silent. Their work of
nursing epileptics was supposed to produce this austere silence. This
supposed charity appealed with uncommon strength to most people because these
"nurses" were supposed to be performing the most unpleasant work imaginable
amidst the most grewsome surroundings. Large sums were collected in this way,
the promoter keeping everything above the liberal commission paid
to solicitors.
[Illustration: RACHEL GORMAN]
THIS ONE MADE
FORTUNE.
Rachel Gorman was the originator of the "nurse for epileptics"
graft, and raked in thousands of dollars before she finally was rounded
up by the police. Not one cent of all the money collected by her and her
garbed and hired solicitors ever got past their pockets. In this case the
most shining marks were selected. William Jennings Bryan was touched for
$100. as was the Governor of Illinois, and many others. This money for
imaginary epileptics came so easily that the Gorman woman confessed that it
was almost a shame to take it.
There is little excuse, however, for
Chicago men and women allowing themselves to be talked out of money for
charity. In no great city are the charity working forces better organized or
better known. For virtually every form and case of need there is in Chicago
a distinct form of honest, well-organized charity. This condition grew out
of necessity, and promiscuous giving to "touchers" who plead as qualification
charity cases is dying out as the public comes to know more of the
comprehensive systems for the help of the worthy and unfortunate.
It
took the hotel detectives years to check the "toucher" with the fake bank
account that operated largely in the hotel lobbies. Now he works in other
places. He carries a bank book that has all the superficial marks of
genuineness. He engages you in conversation, and at what he considers the
right psychological moment, he drops a feeler like this:
"It's h----
to be without money when you've got plenty, isn't it?"
If you have met
this type of "toucher" before, you instantly see it coming and chase off to a
most important engagement. If not, you only can agree. Being without money
when you have none is bad; being broke when you have money is
worse.
"Look here," says the "toucher," "here is my bank book. Look at
this balance?"
OFTEN WORTH THE PRICE.
A glance seems to
show that the bank owes your new acquaintance many thousands. He then tells
how it happened, how he came to be without a cent when he was so far to the
good with his banker. It's a complicated tale, too long to tell here. There
are lost letters, the cashing of checks for friends and, confidentially, a
touch of the pace that flattens bank accounts. By this time you see your
finish. When you seek to escape you find yourself backed up to the wall with
no chance to sidestep. The best you can do is to scale the original
touch from $1 to 50 cents, thereby making 50 cents for yourself and 50
cents for the "toucher."
To "stand for" all the "touches" that are
made in Chicago one would require an income far in excess of that enjoyed by
most. Those that are responded to are those in cases where the donor
generously thinks that the "toucher" really needs the money. Probably in the
vast majority of cases there is no delusion as to the fiction woven
in order to drag forth the nickel, the dime, the quarter or the
dollar. Often it is worth the price to hear the fiction.
But after all
one feels refreshed when a frank but hoarse and trembling hobo
says:
"Say, Mister, me t'roat is baked and me coppers sizzlin'. Gimme
de price of a drink. Did you ever feel like jumpin' from de bridge
fur lack of a stingy little dime fur booze?"
Here, you feel, is no
misrepresentation. Here you may invest a dime without feeling that you have
been stung.
RAFFLES BANK ROBBERY.
One of the most annoying of
small grafts is the raffle, as conducted for gain. It is bad enough to be
held up for 25 cents or 50 cents for a ticket which entitles you to a chance
on a rug or a clock when you reasonably are sure that the proceeds will go to
charity, but no man likes to be fooled out of his small change by a cheap
grafter, even if the grafter happens to need the money.
A story is
told of two printers who lived for a month on a cheap silver watch which they
raffled off almost daily until they had "worked" nearly all the printing
offices of any size in town. These typographical grafters are unworthy of the
noble craft to which they belong. They pretended to be jobless on account of
last year's strike, and unable to live with their families on the money
furnished by the union.
HOW SKIN RAFFLE IS WORKED.
During
the noon hour, or about closing or opening time, one of the men would saunter
into a composing room and put up a hard luck story. He had an old silverine
watch that he wanted to raffle off, if he could sell twenty tickets at 25
cents each. He usually managed to sell the tickets.
About the time the
drawing was to take place the confederate entered and cheerfully took a
chance and won the watch without any difficulty. Thus, they had the watch and
the $5 also. They would split the money, and on the first convenient occasion
the raffle would be repeated at another place, and by some trick known to
themselves the drawing was manipulated so that the confederate always won the
watch.
A South Side woman recently had 500 raffle tickets printed, to be
sold at 10 cents each, the drawing to be on Thanksgiving day, for a
"grand parlor clock," the proceeds to be for the benefit of a "poor
widow." As the woman herself happens to be a grass widow, and as the place
of the drawing could not be learned, neither could there be obtained
a sight of the clock, it is not difficult to guess the final
destination of $50 for which the tickets were sold.
POPULAR GAME
IN SALOONS.
At many saloons and cigar stores there is a continuous raffle
in progress for a "fine gold watch." It is well for those who buy
chances to inspect the time piece with a critical eye. One of these
watches was submitted to a jeweler by the man who won it. "It's what we
call an auction watch," said the expert. "It is worth about 87
cents wholesale. The case is gilded, and the works are of less value
than the movement of a 69-cent alarm clock. It was keep time until
the brass begins to show through the plate, and it may not."
One of
the attractive forms of the raffle ticket game is valuing the tickets at from
1 cent up to as high as desired. The man who buys a chance draws a little
envelope containing his number. If he is lucky and draws a small number he is
encouraged to try again. This is a sort of double gamble, and many men cannot
resist the temptation to speculate upon the chances, simply in order to have
the fun of drawing the little envelopes.
Of course, many of the
raffles are for cases of genuine charity, and it is an easy way to raise a
fund for some worthy object. Many a person would not accept an outright gift,
even in case of sickness or death, will permit friends to raffle off a piano
or a bicycle for a good round price in order to obtain a fund to tide him
over an emergency. To buy tickets for this kind of a raffle is
praiseworthy.
RAFFLE IS LOTTERY BY LAW.
But sharpers are not
above getting money by the same means. If a strange man, or a doubtful
looking woman, wants to sell you a chance for the benefit of "an old
soldier," or a "little orphan girl," or a "striker out of work," it might pay
you to investigate.
But here is where the easy money comes in for the
sharper. It is too much trouble to investigate, and the tender-hearted person
would sooner give up the 10, 25 or 50 cents to an unworthy grafter than
to take chances of refusing to aid a case of genuine need.
Then, too,
there is what might be called a sort of legitimate raffle business. Of
course, the raffle is a lottery under the law, and, therefore, is a criminal
transaction. But in many cases goods of known value, but slow sale, are
disposed of through raffles, and the drawings conducted honestly. A North
Side man disposed of an automobile in this way. It had been a good wagon in
its day, though the type was old. He wanted to get a new one, and as the
makers would not allow him anything in exchange for the old. He sold raffle
tickets to the amount of $500, and the winner got a real bargain--the
losers paying the bill.
RAFFLES THAT ARE STEALS.
A group of
young men who wanted to build themselves a little club house in the Fox Lake
region, resorted to a raffle that was almost a downright steal. They had the
printer make them tickets, and each one went among his friends and organized
a "suit club," selling chances for a $30 tailor-made suit. Of course those
who invested understood that the suit probably would be worth about $18, but
they were satisfied to help build the club house on that basis, and besides
they thought they had a fair chance to get the suit.
It was learned
afterward by accident that there were twenty "series" of tickets sold by
these young men, and instead of each series standing for a suit, only one
drawing was held, and only a single suit made for the entire twenty series of
tickets. In other words, they sold $500 worth of tickets for a $30 suit of
clothes. They built their club house, however, and laughed at the man who
kicked because he thought he did not get a square deal for the half dozen
tickets he bought. They thought it was a good joke.
GRAFT OF TRAIN
BUTCHER EASY.
In these days if anything gets past the up-to-date train
butcher it isn't because the public knows any more than it did in Barnum's
time. We get a customer every minute by the birth records.
For a
genuine, all-round, dyed-in-the-wool separator of coin from its proud
possessor, the train butcher is the limit. Here is a word for word story by a
train "butch" of how the thing is done. He excuses his tactics much the same
way that the little rogue does who points out that the giant malefactors are
doing the same thing, but "getting away with it." Enter Mr.
Butch.
"I got back yesterday from a two days' trip--out and
in. I had $29.65 to the good, and the company satisfied, and
nary a kick from the railroad. At one little place down the line,
though, a railroad detective got aboard and tried to detect.
"'Say, young feller,' he said to me, 'I saw you go through here
yesterday lookin' pretty spruce, and I thought I'd better take a look
through yer grips as you came back. What yer got in there?'
"He kicked my grip, and I opened her up on the minute. He went through
it like an old goat through a cracker barrel, but he didn't find
anything--see? If he'd looked under the cushion of a seat in the smoker
he might have found a whole lot of stuff that didn't look like a prayer
meeting layout.
WHAT WAS HIDDEN UNDER SEAT.
"Say, I bet I
had fourteen $2 gold watches, twenty gold-rimmed spectacles that cost me
15 cents apiece, one dozen books, tightly sealed in wrappers, that
looked mighty interesting to the jay who couldn't see into the books,
and yet who had to do it finally at $2 apiece, and, as a topper
of it all, my three-book monte game. Did you ever see the
game?
"I've got a line of wild west books about two inches
thick, each, and costing me 40 cents a volume. They've got some great
pictures on the cloth covers, and maybe there's some hot stuff inside--I
don't know. But here's my unparalleled offer: I pick out my man and lay
these three volumes across his knees in the car seat and go after
him with some of the warmest kind of air about their interest,
the binding, and the illustrations.
"You pay me for the set," I
explain, "but in doing it I give you a chance to get the books for
nothing and at the same time double your investment.
HOW
THREE BOOK MONTE IS PLAYED.
"I take out three small, thin spelling
books, cloth bound, all alike as the bindery and the presses can make
them. Then, careless like, I take a $10 bill out of my pocket,
fold it across in a sort of V-shape and slip it into the middle of one
of the spelling books, so that just one corner will stick out, probably
a quarter of an inch. Of course, I haven't seen it! Sometimes the man on
the cars will try to say something about it, but I cut in and
drown him out with easy talk till he gets the idea that he might
as well have that ten and the books for five, and let it go at
that.
"But one corner all the time is torn off that bill,
and about a quarter of an inch of that bill is sticking out of
the center of one of the other books. Of course the jay hasn't seen
that!
SHOWS CORNER OF BILL.
"Well, I begin and shuffle
the books on the payment of the $5. As they are shuffled the corner of
the bill that is still attached gets turned around next to me, while
the corner that is torn off gets around next to the passenger,
whom I have cornered in the seat in a way that he can't see everything
that he really ought to see in order to save his money. When I hold out
the three books for the drawing I am in a position where I couldn't
possibly see the corner that sticks out, while he is where he can't see
anything else.
"And he draws the book with the corner sticking
out!
"I take it from him instantly, and hold it up with the
bill corner at the bottom, flipping the leaves through from
front to back and forward again. In the act the corner of the bill drops
out on the floor, where he doesn't see. 'Not here,' I says. 'You made a
bad draw. Here's the bill,' I says, taking up the book that holds it and
turning to the $10 bill, just where it lies. He doesn't know how it
all happened, but I console him that he has the three wild west
books for his library when he gets home.
ALL SUCKERS NOT IN DAY
COACHES.
"I don't find all these suckers in the day coaches--not
on your life. I found two pretty boys in the smoking room of a
sleeping car a week ago, and I had $7.50 from one of them and $5 from
the other, and they didn't know a line about it till they got together
after I had gone.
"Friends of mine have kicked because I get $2, or
$3, or $4 apiece for gold-rimmed spectacles that cost me $1.80 a
dozen. But where is the kick. I know men who have paid $10 or $15 for
glasses from an oculist when the glass was cut out of a broken window
pane. I save such people money, don't I?
"I am not out after
the old farmer with hayseed in his hair and leaf tobacco in his mouth,
chewing. There are a lot of gay chaps traveling these days who think
they've got the bulge on the train butcher by a sort of birthright
or something. They are after me, sometimes, till I can't go to
sleep after I come in from a run. For instance, the other day a chap got
into the train out of a little country town, intending to go to another
little town twenty miles away without change of cars. He had $2 cash and
a guitar when he got on the train, but I had both when he got off. He
wasn't mad at all; he just didn't understand it. For that reason
I'll see him again one of these days, and he will buck the game harder
than he did the first time. The trouble is he wants to vindicate
himself; he's one of these smart alecs that you couldn't down with a
crowbar--he don't think!
COUNTRY TOWN "SPORT" EASIEST
MARK.
"Just give me the dead-game sport as he comes from the
country and the country town. He's as good as I want. It's a sort of
charity to take his money away from him before he gets into real trouble
with it. One of them thought he had me the other day when I tried to
sell him a pair of my famous $4 glasses with the gold rims. His had
silver, only, but he told me mine wouldn't show a full moon after
dark.
"I asked him to let me see his specs and he handed
them over. I had a bit of wax out of my ear on the tip of my
little finger. I touched each of the glasses with the wax, smearing them
a little with it. That fixed his glasses for good, and don't forget it.
You can't get ear wax off a pair of spectacles with anything yet
invented; it's got a sort of acid that eats into the glass and won't
ever clear up again. The fellow got hot about it, but I didn't
know anything, of course, and finally sold him a pair of my
$1.80 a dozen glasses for $1.50 cash, net.
"O, some people are
almost too easy--I get ashamed of my calling!"
WOMEN VICTIMS
OF OLD COUPON SCHEME.
There is another moss-grown swindle, which, like
hope, seems to "spring perennial" in the greater cities.
This is the
old-time coupon swindle. A suave young man appears at the door, inserts his
foot in the crack, if you try to slam it in his face, and rapidly begins to
explain that he has something to offer you for nothing. The housewife sighs
with resignation, and admits the suave young man, thinking that she might as
well get it over. But let the housewife herself talk. Here is the story of a
good woman who was caught by one of these pettifogging grafters:
"Since my husband died I have partly earned my living by renting
furnished rooms. This seems to be the first thing a woman thinks of
doing when she is left unprovided for, but it isn't a business of large
profits, and few of us ever cut 'melons.' My furniture, of course,
represented my 'plant,' and it was growing shabby.
"That is,
perhaps, why the glib agent got a hearing from me. He had a lovely
proposition. Opening a catalogue he showed me pictures of beautiful
pieces of furniture, made from expensive materials, just the kind that
would make my rooms attractive and easy to rent.
"'Now,'
said he, 'I am soliciting subscriptions for a weekly paper. This paper
will cost you 10 cents a number, and with each number you get a coupon.
When you have accumulated sixty-eight coupons you can bring them to our
wareroom and select any one of these elegant pieces of
furniture.'
"'Why,' said I, 'if these articles are as represented,
I couldn't buy them at any store in town for three times what
sixty-eight coupons would cost me--$6.80.'
THE OLD "WAREROOM"
TALE.
"'Call at our wareroom, lady, before you sign the
contract, and you will see they are just as described.'
"Well, I saw the articles, and they were all they were said to be. They
explained that they were practically giving them away in order to build
up the circulation of the paper. Everything appeared to be all right,
and I signed a contract. So did my widowed sister; so did some of
my neighbors.
"The paper was worthless, but I didn't care.
Sometimes I would buy several copies of one issue so as to make
haste toward getting my sixty-eight coupons. The time came when
I went around to select my furniture. I selected it, all right--a
handsome chiffonier.
"'This chiffonier calls for 360 coupons,' said
the man.
"'Why, your agent told me I could have any of these
pieces when I had accumulated sixty-eight coupons,' said I,
dismayed.
"'He couldn't have told you that,' said the man.
'Read your contract. You will see it says that when you have
sixty-eight coupons you may select any one of these articles, but that
means we will then hold the article for you until you have paid the
rest. Why, we have goods here that call for 600 and 700
coupons.'
"I saw how I had been swindled, and was furious. I told
him what I thought of him and his business, and he offered to
tear up my contract (which, it turned out, bound me to more than I had
dreamed of), if I would pay him an additional $2.50. I refused. He said
he would sue me if I didn't. I told him to go ahead.
"Shortly afterward a constable served a summons on me to appear at a
justice court at the other end of creation. I didn't go; and I don't
know whether the concern got a judgment against me or not.
"But I do know I haven't anything to show for the money I paid for those
coupons."
BOOK LOVERS EASY PREY OF FRAUDS.
BOGUS ART WORKS
FINE GRAFT.
Some of our citizens are paying a high price for education in
art and book swindles. People, generally, are becoming experts in
detecting small frauds and attacks upon their pocketbooks, and are becoming
wise to pious dodges that run into spiritualism, clairvoyance and
fortune telling, but when a large, smooth scheme is broached, they get
caught. It may be that we have concentrated our minds upon so many
trifling schemes to part us from our money, that we have laid ourselves
bare to big operators in big frauds like that perpetrated upon the
Patten family of Evanston. The clever fakir reached for $40,000 in an
"old book" game and came very near gathering in the pot. He did get
$2,600, which was a very neat job.
It appears that there is a
wide-spread system under the operations of which Chicago book lovers, and
others all over the country, have been bilked out of a sum estimated at
hundreds of thousands of dollars. The same system is applied to paintings by
the "old masters," for which some Chicago men have paid fabulous sums, only
to find them imitations. The expert frauds are geniuses in their peculiar
calling, and would deceive the elect if listened to. A bright, smart,
well groomed man with letters of introduction from high quarters,
often forged, perhaps with a title, breaks into society and bides his
time to make a big haul. The vanity and foibles of the high-steppers
and nobility worshipers are pandered to with masterly skill, and then
a mere suggestion of untold values in books or paintings is breathed
in secret. Do the big fish bite? Some of them swallow the bait and it has
to be cut out of them before they will give it up. It is becoming so easy to
gull some people, that the crime should consist in the betrayal of innocence
rather than in the successful fraud. While guillible people continue to
parade their guillibility to the world, there will always be frauds to take
advantage of them. If anybody doubts the fact that people can be easily
defrauded, let him visit any old book store, antique furniture dealer,
oriental rug concern, even junk shops. He will find an amazing army of
faddists, who are willing to pay any exorbitant price for some cheap fraud
because a gentlemanly man, or an opium-smoking Chinaman, tells him it is the
real thing. When business is dull at the shops, agents visit front doors,
back doors, or invade society with some bogus job of "art" works
and realize enormous sums.
MISERABLE LITTLE SHORT MEASURE
THIEVES.
In the Municipal Court in South Chicago three extremely mean
swindlers have been fined $25 and costs. It is unfortunate that they could
not have been sent to the Bridewell without the alternative of paying
the fine.
For these swindlers were coal dealers who robbed the poor
that bought coal by the basket. They STOLE money from their customers, just
as the short-measure milk trust conspirators robbed their patrons. We
repeat that they ought to be in the Bridewell.
Giving short measure is
the dirtiest, smallest, most cowardly form of commercial rascality. The
hold-up man who takes his life in his hand and robs on the public highway is
a model of decency and courage as compared with the pitiful rascal who steals
the pennies of the poor by selling coal or milk or any other necessity of
life by short weight.
Short weight is larceny. It ought to be treated as
larceny by law.
CRIME A FINE ART.
Living by one's wits has
become a fine art, and it is a profession that is more liberally patronized
than any other by the present generation. One of America's leading detectives
remarked that there were about seventy-five thousand people in a city the
size of Chicago that would bear watching. There isn't a bank, insurance
office, dry goods store, restaurant or hotel that does not employ men to
watch their customers, and there is hardly a business house in the
country that has not some system of watching its employes. Everybody at
this day seems to be afraid of everybody else.
[Illustration: (Learn
to paint)]
Professional criminals pride themselves quite as much upon
their ability as men engaged in legitimate occupations. A thief,
for instance, is as vain of his superiority over other thieves as
a lawyer, politician, or clergyman might be whose talents had elevated him
to a commanding position in the eyes of the people. And the talented thief is
as much courted and sought after as the successful man in the honest walks of
life. The other thieves will say: "He is a good man to know; I must make his
acquaintance." But the thief who has earned a reputation is particular about
the company he keeps, and is scornful in his demeanor toward another thief
whom he does not consider his professional equal. Caste exists among
criminals as well as among other classes.
Men and women who are not
living merely for today must be deeply interested in the efforts which
practical philanthropists are making to discover the causes of crime and to
remedy the mischievous conditions which now prevail to such an alarming
extent. Hidden away to a considerable degree in the great mass of figures
which came into being through the operations of the census bureau, are
facts that should shock every good citizen. With all the warmth of
eulogy the story of wonderful progress has been told again and again,
but only a few references have been made to the abnormal growth of
what may be termed by the criminal class. Forty years ago there was
but one criminal to 3,500 good or reasonably good citizens. According
to the last census the proportion was one in 786.5, an increase of 445 per
cent in a period during which the population increased but 170 per cent.
Never in the nation's history has educational work of all descriptions been
nearly so active as at present, yet the increase in the number of those who
were confined in penitentiaries and jails and reformatory institutions is
almost twice as rapid as the growth of population.
CITIES BREEDING
SPOTS OF CRIME.
The true explanation of this unsatisfactory state of
things is not far to seek. It is almost entirely to be attributed to the
growing tendency of the community to become concentrated in large cities.
A highly concentrated population fosters lawless and immoral instincts in
such a multitude of ways that it is only an expression of literal exactitude
to call the great cities of today the nurseries of modern crime. Statistics
of all kinds show this, but it can easily be ascertained without the aid of
any figures. The aggregation of large multitudes within a very limited area
must increase the chances of conflict, and consequently multiply the
occasions for crime.
A population in this crowded condition has also to
be restrained and regulated at every turn by a huge network of laws, and as
every new law forbids something which was permitted before, a multiplication
of laws is inevitably followed by an increase of crime.
The prevention
of crime should be the great object with the philanthropist. The obvious
remedy is, if possible, to aid the individual in overcoming the temptation to
evil or to crime. The remedy must be general, gradual, and constant. It
consists in religious, moral, intellectual, and industrial education of
the children, especially of the poor and unfortunate and the
weakling classes. The most certain preventive is the early incarnation of
good habits in children, which, becoming part and parcel of their
nervous organization, are an unconscious force when passion,
perplexity, or temptation tend to make them lose self-control. Little can
be expected from palliative remedies for social diseases so long as
this educational remedy is not thoroughly carried out.
AMERICA'S
EDUCATED CRIMINAL CLASS.
The great mass of the American people, aside
from those who have had experience in hunting and shadowing criminals, labor
under the popular delusion that the most daring criminals of today are a lot
of tough, ignorant men, with little or no education at all, who would do
almost anything else than work honestly for a living. If people would
but stop to consider the subject a moment they would readily
discover their error. There are, it is true, a large number of
swindlers, thieves, pickpockets, thugs and criminals of a like class who have
but a scant knowledge of books, or literature, but they are only to
be found among the lower class of criminals. The most notorious
criminals the world has ever produced have been men and women of high
culture and refinement, well educated and thoroughly posted on all that
is transpiring. It is this class of people who make the most
successful, and at the same time most dangerous, criminals. It requires men
of education to swindle, crack a safe, rob a bank, jewelry store or
forge a paper. To be a successful confidence operator requires the man to
be well educated in matters of all kinds, to be a fluent talker, a
person of refinement and polite address, and a good judge of
character.
REFINED CRIMINALS MOST DANGEROUS.
Criminal history
shows that the most successful jobs are always planned and executed by men of
education; the details of some of the great forgeries that have taken place,
of the numerous bank robberies and burglar's exploits, all go to show the
direction of a brain of no ordinary person, being proof positive that the
persons planning the work possessed both education and talent. First class
criminals are exceedingly hard to cope with, and are the most dangerous to
handle by the officers. They do not generally do things in a rush or
by halves. Great care is given to all the minor details of their work, and
it often takes weeks and months before they are ready to put their plans into
operation. They study all the possibilities of the job; the chances of
success, and the way of escape in case of failure; how they can cover all
traces of the work and throw the guilt or suspicion upon the more unfortunate
of their class who have had reputations and who are likely to be brought up
and possibly convicted on suspicion of being the guilty parties. Educated
crooks are always to be feared, not only by the public against whom they are
constantly devising ways and means to relieve of their valuables, but by
detectives of a lesser grade. This class of crooks do not hesitate to
sacrifice the detective if their desired ends can be successfully
accomplished, while the detective finds it a task of no little moment to gain
even the faintest clue to their operations.
PRISON POOR CURE FOR
CRIME.
Locking a man up for committing a crime does not always cure him.
It is now proven that affixed penalties to certain crimes
accomplishes practically nothing, for it is based on a wrong principle. The
length of confinement ought, confessedly, to be adjusted to the needs
of the prisoner. He should not be discharged from his moral hospital until
there is reasonable assurance that he is cured. He certainly should not be
turned loose on society, on the mere expiration of a formal sentence, when it
is known he will begin anew on his old life. Protection to society, as well
as the reformation of the criminal, call for the retention of the latter
until he can be trusted with his liberty, and affords proof that he is fitted
to take his place in the world as a useful, law-abiding citizen. This system
alone permits the fullest scope to reformatory methods, and leaves to the
court the right of sentencing indefinitely, and to the tribunal which has to
do with the prisoner's release, to say when there is reasonable ground for
faith that if discharged he will not prove either a burden or menace to
society. Where conduct and character afford no such grounds he should be
incarcerated for life, just as we would retain hopeless lunatics in asylums. |
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