p. 66 | Increase of Crime

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 26, 1856

Increase of Crime.

It is a lamentable fact that crime throughout the country is on the increase. Murders for the mere purpose of plunder, highway robberies, and burglaries, are much more common now than they were forty years ago, and have increased in a ratio greater than the increase in the number of inhabitants. Without commenting upon the insecurity of life, there can be no doubt that the criminal attacks on property have multiplied of late. Once, it was hardly thought necessary to fasten the doors of a house in the night time—now, the common locks and bars are no security. There is hardly a week passes without hearing of some burglarious attempt in our city, and great care must be nightly taken to secure not only the doors but the windows.

One of the causes of the increase of crime may be owing to the relaxation of parental discipline. There are those in the community who endeavor to do their duty by their boys, to keep them from bad company, to make home so pleasant to them that they do not desire to wander in the night around the streets. But all are not so faithful. We fear that in many families, religious instruction, proper moral training, and effective parental influence, are all wanting. We judge so from the number of rude, profane, and rowdy boys that frequent our streets. Let any one go through the city and have his mind turned towards the subject, and he will be shocked at hearing the profanity which is uttered by even the small boys. He will see, from their oaths, their vulgarity, the cigars which even the little ones are sucking, their rude, rough conduct, that they are

preparing, not for a life of labor and usefulness, but for a reckless, rowdy existence, to swell the number of the inmates of the grogshop and the brothel, and to increase the ranks of crime.

This mode of early life shows that the consideration of principle, of right, of duty, and of conscience, never enters into their education. As soon, therefore, as want presses, or ungratified desires stimulate, these boys will be ready for plunder, for there will be no checks of early instruction to restrain them. The parents of such children have much to answer for, both to society and to God, for the consequences of their neglect. Many a crime will be traced back in its origin to the want of that early control and discipline which all parents are bound to exert over their children. To reform, then, the coming age, we should commence with the children and impress upon them early the feeling of responsibility, of duty and right. We should likewise exhibit to parents, in the most vivid colors, the importance of a greater control over their household, and the restraint of all those evil tempers, desires and habits which they ascertain are budding in the soul.

As long as our streets are filled with these incipient rowdies, the less our sons are in them, the better. We can at least keep them clear from these contaminations, and endeavor to prevent the early influence of evil example from rotting away the principles of right.

We need not wonder at the prevalence of crime when we see boys growing up in the reckless and vile manner in which too many are training themselves in the midst of us. A youth of rowdyism will be succeeded by a manhood of crime, before which the State prison or the gallows stands as the closing scene.—Conn. Courant.