Youthful Depravity

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 20, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 42.

Youthful Depravity

One of the most alarming symptoms of our time is the outbreaks of youthful depravity manifest in all parts of our country. Such bold badness on the part of young boys was never before known among us. This is especially seen in licentiousness and crime. Not long since one of the officials of the Southern Pacific, Mr. Krutschnitt, being absent from his residence in San Francisco, returned and found it robbed, looted, plundered of almost everything portable. What could not be taken was destroyed or injured. The damage all told amounted to about $1,000. Detectives found that it had been robbed by children from ten to fifteen years of age. The youngsters had divided the spoil, selling it to pawnbrokers or carrying it home to their parents, inventing some plausible story as to how they obtained it. Mr. K.’s wedding suit was divided among several fathers. Cloth for a dress for his wife was given out to be made up by a young robber’s mother. The children are said to be of respectable parentage. This is a wholesale example, but not an isolated one. Facts continually come before us which are simply appalling. Confiding parents seem to think that their children are as safe as they were twenty-five to forty years ago. Those who regard the moral characters or the eternal welfare of their children can not be too vigilant.