Increasing Homicide

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 19, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 45.

Increasing Homicide

Increasing Homicide.—The New York Sun says homicide, from deliberate murder down to manslaughter, is entirely too common in the United States. According to the American Prisons Association's committee on criminal procedure, homicidal crime in the United States has increased 450 per cent since 1889, and the ratio of convictions is less than ten per cent, while in Germany the ratio of convictions is ninety-five per cent. Homicidal crime in the United States, according to the same authority, exceeds the total of that of any ten civilized nations outside of Russia. Nearly thirty persons are murdered every day in the United States, not including Alaska and the island dependencies, while not one out of four murderers is brought to trial; and out of twenty-five brought to trial, only one receives the death sentence. Ten thousand homicide crimes are committed in the United States each year. In Chicago, in 1909, 118 homicide crimes were committed; and for the same time in London, 20; in New York last year, 119. Surely these figures are appalling.

The President-elect of the United States, Dr. Woodrow Wilson, now Governor of New Jersey

Born December 28, 1856; son of Rev. Joseph Ruggles Wilson and Jeanette Woodrow Wilson; 1865, entered private school, one of his classmates being Joseph Lamar of the United States Supreme Court; 1873, matriculated at Davidson College, North Carolina; 1875, entered Princeton with 133 other young men; distinguished by his ability in debate; 1879, graduated from Princeton; 1879-1880, studied law in University of Virginia; 1880-1881, opened a law office in Atlanta; 1883, advanced course in history under Richard T. Ely at Johns Hopkins University; 1885, graduated from Johns Hopkins; published his first book on congressional government; 1885, married Miss Ellen Louise Axton, of Atlanta, Georgia; 1885-1888, professor of history and political economy at Bryn Mawr; 1888-1890, taught the same subjects at Wesleyan University; 1890, accepted chair of jurisprudence and politics at Princeton; 1902, elected president of Princeton University, extending elective courses and increasing number of instructors; 1907, urged democracy in student life, and opposed control of college social system by exclusive clubs; 1910, September 15, nominated for governor of New Jersey; September 22, retired as president of Princeton University; November 8, elected governor of New Jersey; 1912, November 5, elected president of the United States, the first Democratic president since Cleveland.

Mr. Wilson tells us that he comes into the presidential chair under obligations to no men or interests whatsoever. Previous presidents have yielded more or less to religious influences, notably that of the Roman Catholic Church. If President-elect Wilson holds to the following principles set forth by him in Denver, Colorado, April, 1911, the country need have no fear in that respect:

"Up to the time of the translation of the Bible into English, it was a book for long ages withheld from the perusal of the peoples of other languages and of other tongues, and not a little of THE HISTORY OF LIBERTY lies in the circumstance that the moving sentences of this book were made familiar to the ears and the understanding of those peoples who have led mankind in exhibiting the forms of government and the impulses of reform which have MADE FOR FREEDOM AND FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT among mankind.

"For this is a book which reveals men unto themselves, not as creatures in bondage, not as men under human authority, not as those bidden to take counsel and command of any human source. It reveals EVERY MAN TO HIMSELF AS A DISTINCT MORAL AGENT, responsible not to men, not even to those men whom he has put over him in authority, but RESPONSIBLE THROUGH HIS OWN CONSCIENCE TO HIS LORD AND MAKER. Whenever a man sees this vision he STANDS UP A FREE MAN, whatever may be the government under which he lives."