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 politicians,
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
smallpox patient are earnestly scraped with sea shells--until the
patient 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. ----
Rich good men, nice bishops, comfortable, benevolent
ladies--every man and woman on Blackwell's Island, every wretched
creature living near a "red light," would gladly change places
with any of you.
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