p. 16 | Increase of Crime by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 13, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 23.

Increase of Crime.

By Editor

The New York Independent of May 25 says editorially, "However the experts may differ about the causes of crime or the expedient methods of dealing with criminals, they agree that crime of the greatest description is rampant in American communities, and apparently is steadily increasing in ratio to population."

It further says: "The American public regards crime lightly. It is in fact amazingly indifferent to crime and its prevention."

Referring to the recent New York conference, the editor says: "Mr. Heney of San Francisco . . . made clear the absurdity of expecting to stamp out criminality among the ignorant, degraded, and poverty-stricken, so long as criminality among the powerful and socially respectable goes unpunished."

President Taft and Assistant District Attorney Nott, of New York, "were unequivocal in their showing that a percentage of American lawyers and of American judges [the percentage] by no means negligible, are themselves so thoroly criminal in character, if not technically at law, as to make our bench and bar largely and gravely responsible for the increase in crime."

In the same issue of the above journal Mr. J. C. Bayles, M.E. Ph.D., avouched by the editor as a high authority, declares that "crime [in New York] is notably on the increase, and vice . . . is better organized, more amply capitalized, and more lucrative than ever before. Very similar conditions are found in many cities. In Chicago, for example, they are worse than New York has ever known."

Doubtless, as above quoted, lawyers and judges are to an extent responsible; but what shall we say of the ministers of religion whose attitude toward God's eternal law is such as to foster sin and crime? If God's law is nothing, why should we regard the law of men? Yet these very conditions God has foretold. See 1 Tim. 3:1-5.