RELICS OF THE DARK AGES.
By George B. Thompson
UNDER the above heading, the New York World, in its Sunday issue of May 20, 1900, speaks editorially as follows:— "It is easy to understand and to sympathize with the indignation of the Federation of Women's Clubs of New Hampshire over the discovery that in this fine old colonial State it is still the custom to restrain the insane by chaining them to convenient posts and ring-bolts in the county farms. "The Federation of Women's Clubs should start a campaign of education to instruct the lawmakers of New Hampshire in the progress which has been made all over the civilized world since the days when the insane everywhere were treated as they are treated now in New Hampshire. But New Hampshire should not grieve too deeply over the exposure of its backwardness, nor fancy that it is the only State which perpetuates barbarous and medieval conditions in an age of civilization. "It is only recently that the Empire State of New York relegated to innocuous desuetude the paddle and the other forms of torture at Elmira. We still cling to imprisonment for debt as a legacy from the Dark Ages. 'And there are others.' In New Jersey the Gummere decision assessing the value of a child's life at a maximum of $1.00 remains unreversed, the cruelties of the State Reform School for girls are officially indorsed by the governor, and a father with political influence (and money) may have his son imprisoned at pleasure, in the absence of any law on the subject. "In Connecticut the running of trains on Sunday and the iniquitous vending of milk or chewing-gum are crimes prosecuted as severely as they were in New York City under a reform police rule. In Delaware the revival of the whipping-post meets with general approval. In Pennsylvania an intelligent and important and perfectly competent witness was recently shut out from testifying to matters within his knowledge because he was an agnostic. "New Hampshire may be a hundred years or so behind the times in chaining its lunatics, but it is not alone in its backwardness." It is worthy of notice that Connecticut is not the only State which has a Sunday law, and if it is a relic of the Dark Ages in Connecticut, it is the same wherever it exists. In Maryland, honest and peaceable citizens have been fined and incarcerated in jail for no other reason than for doing honest labor to provide the necessities of life on Sunday, in violation of that "relic" of the Dark Ages—a Sunday law—which is on the statute-book of that enlightened State. In other States, for the same reason, law-abiding citizens have been incarcerated in foul prisons and worked in the chain-gang with brutalized criminals. Their only crime was doing honest work on Sunday. Is it not time that this "relic" of the apostasy of bygone days be wiped off the law-books of a free people? G. B. THOMPSON.