FORETOKENS OF OUR LORD'S RETURN
By Prof. George W. Rine
CRIME; OR, THE REIGN OF LAWLESSNESS.
WHAT does it all mean? Are our people losing not merely their respect for law, but their very sense of what law means?" This question, throbbing with the pain of despair, was recently asked by the editor of the Indianapolis News. In essence, the same question is instinctively leaping to the lips of thousands of thoughtful, patriotic men. Alderman Mavor of Chicago said recently that we are experiencing the results of a widespread contempt for law and authority. "No one respects law; no one respects the courts. The courts do not respect themselves." This generalization is probably too sweeping to be accurate. But does it not rest upon a basis of fact? Testimony of Reputable Witnesses.
The New York Evening Post tells its readers that President Henry Hopkins of Williams College, in an address on "Suggestion and Crime" delivered before the members of the Patria Club, last autumn, declared that the prevalence of crime, especially in America, is greater at present than ever before, and that the very foundations of our national life are seriously threatened. Among other statements pertinent to his theme, Dr. Hopkins said: "There are some very ugly features in the present situation. There is abounding evidence of an alarming increase in crime, of crime of every sort, but especially of the kind that undermines honesty, chastity, and respect for law. We have been discussing and revising penal codes, improving our houses of correction, and correcting our prison discipline, and in the meantime crime has been multiplying." Chief Justice Charles B. Lore, of the Supreme Court of Delaware, said before the members of the Universal Peace Union: "Lawlessness pervades the land. . . . Gigantic frauds are palmed upon the people as successful business enterprises. Our greatest financiers are racking their brains to circumvent the law and the people, and by lawlessness achieve wealth, being careful only to keep outside of actual violence and the common jail. When their cunning evasions of the law are crowned with success, all men are tempted to lawlessness. Captains of industry, how much of the unrest, the mob violence, and the labor troubles of the time, have been bred and fostered by your methods? We ask for an answer." The following outspoken testimony is from an editorial in the Chicago Record-Herald, Sept. 21, 1904: The sweep of crime over the whole city arouses citizens. Need of remedy for present reign of lawlessness is held by all to be urgent. With the city so held in the grasp of criminals that for neither life nor property is there security, the people are becoming aroused to one of the most serious problems that can confront a municipality. Full appreciation of the gravity of the situation was expressed yesterday by many men, and in the main it was held that an appeal to public sentiment was the only way in which the wave of crime now sweeping over Chicago could be checked. These men declared conditions to be perilous, in that murders and robberies were startlingly on the increase, tho the real reason for the hold-up man and the burglar—early winter—had not yet arrived. . . . Acting Mayor McGann declared that matters had come to such a pass that to-day crime and criminals form the greatest question before the people of the nation. Professor W. D. Sheldon, of Girard College, not long ago wrote: There is a vast amount of lawlessness among us, in fact more than in any civilized country of Europe, with perhaps the single exception of Russia. This disregard of law shows itself in various ways. . . . Not a few laws placed upon the statute-books by the chosen representatives of the people, and many of them essential to the well-being of the community, are practically a dead letter, or only partially enforced. This dereliction of duty on the part of those elected to execute the laws is another common phase of lawlessness. . . . There is a general restiveness under legitimate restraint. Juvenile crime has long been on the increase. Of the one hundred thousand or more convicts in our prisons, . . . the majority are under thirty years of age. The San Francisco Evening Post says editorially: In the course of its duty to the community as an advocate of good government "The Evening Post" has been forced of late to call attention to certain reforms that must be put into effect if the security of individual rights, guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, is to be preserved. Crimes have been committed in this city that threaten the very foundation of our liberties, wrong-doings that if unpunished, promise eventually to overthrow the very nation itself. Mr. W. D. Morrison, an eminent British penologist, strongly maintains that crime is on the increase in England, and supports his contentions with an abundance of official statistics. Regarding Mr. Morrison's figures Dr. Josiah Strong says: "If statistics are to be allowed any weight at all these figures incontestably mean that the total volume of crime is on the increase in England as well as everywhere else." The great statisticians of the other European countries tell the same dire story with respect to the increase of crime on the Continent. Dr. Mischler, of Vienna, and Dr. Von Liszt, of Marburg, draw a deplorable picture of the growth of crime in Germany and Austria. In a recent article, Professor Von Liszt maintains that 15,000,000 persons have been convicted by the German criminal courts within the last ten years; and he makes the outlook for the future appear forbidding in the last degree. In France, M. Henri Joly declares that the criminal problem is just as formidable and perplexing as it is in Germany. He estimates that crime has increased in France 133 per cent. within the last half century, and is still steadily rising. An Epidemic of Homicides.
It may challenge one's credulity to be told that there are now four and a half times as many murders for each million of people in the United States as there were in 1881; but official statistics prove it to be true. The ratio of murders and homicides to the population in 1881 was one to 40,534 inhabitants, while in 1902 it was one murder or homicide to 8,955 inhabitants. In his charge to the grand jury at Montgomery, Alabama, recently, Judge Thomas quoted figures to show that the number of homicides in the United States for three years was one-third larger than either the total number of persons killed on American railways in the same period, or the total losses of the British army in the South African War. The figures given by Judge Thomas are: Killed on railways, 21,847; British loss in Boer War, 22,000; homicides in the United States, 31,395, or a yearly average of more than 10,000. Of the 7,000 persons guilty of murder, in 1903, only 126 were legally punished. The News and Courier, Charleston, S. C., affirms that the safest crime in South Carolina is that of taking human life, and that murder and violence are distinguishing marks of our present-day civilization. "We do not enforce the law," declares the editor. He adds that the people have grown so accustomed to the miscarriage of justice in cases where human life is taken by violence that they excuse one failure and another, until it has become almost a habit; and society is beginning to regard the man who slays his brother as an incarnation of power. The fact that 222 homicides were committed in South Carolina during the year 1903 was recently pointed out by the New York Sun. Captain Charles Petty, of that state, was asked not long since what in his opinion were the causes leading to so somber a record. His answer was: "Our citizens were less shocked by the bloody record than those of other states, for we had by degrees got accustomed to homicides. It did not appear to be a phenomenal record, even to our law-abiding, conservative citizens. . . . It would be well for people outside of the state to learn that this record is only the logical result of many years' infraction of law." The Chicago Journal reports 118 homicides, besides a large number of deadly assaults, as the ghastly record for that city during the year 1904. The Chicago Daily News declares that not only are robberies increasing in number in the Lake City, but that highwaymen are more bold and desperate than formerly. During recent years there has been a marked change in the character of these crimes. "Formerly," says the News, "the footpad rarely resorted to violence save as a means of avoiding arrest. To-day the robber's weapon is used to injure, maim, and kill." The Pittsburg Gazette, November 12, 1903, informs its readers that during the previous ten months twenty-six murders had been committed within the Pittsburg city limits, and that the assassins of twelve of the victims had escaped the police and detectives. The Gazette does not hesitate to allege that the officers know, in some instances, who the slayers are, but are indifferent as to the execution of justice. Several months ago a Georgia judge declared from the bench that more homicides were committed in his state than in all of Great Britain. In Georgia one murderer in a hundred is convicted and punished, while in England one in three is brought to justice. He went on to say: "We do not enforce the law. We say by statute that murder must be punished by death, and murder is rarely punished by death, or rarely punished in any other way in this state,9or in any of the Southern states, except where the murderer is colored, or is poor and without influence. Now this state of affairs can not last forever." A San Francisco despatch to the New York Sun states that on the same day one assault, two hold-ups and two burglaries, were committed in San Francisco. The record of violent crimes is declared to be "remarkable" in that city. For a fortnight there was one homicide for every day. From October, 1898, to October 1904, 114 murders, exclusive of Chinese killings, were committed in the city by the Golden Gate. Yet not one of the slayers has yet been sent to the gallows. There were forty-seven murders for which no one was even arrested. Are not these harrowing facts sufficient to attest the awful prevalence of crimes of violence not only in this country, but throughout Christendom? Somewhat later in this discussion I shall try to make clear the meaning of this harvest of criminal violence, to the church of Christ and to the world. [The remainder of this article deals with the prevalence of other forms of crime, the growth of disrespect for law, some of the causes for the increase of crime, and the meaning of that increase as foretold in the Scripture.]