Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 109, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 May 1919 — MUCH LIKE THEIR FELLOWS [ARTICLE]

MUCH LIKE THEIR FELLOWS

Average Persons Behind Bars Would Compare Favorably With 'those Who Have Liberty. “Some people, ’.Bud,” said Leonard V. Whenne, according to Glenn M. Farley in the Seattle Post-Intelligen-cer,“seem to think the jails are filled with very dangerous anil very wild people. I suppo.se th- average' iHan or woman would no more think of mingling with these persons behind the bars than going Into the bear pit at Woodland park. As a matter of fact, there are about the same grades of society In Jail as out of it. Man and woman prisoners, go about their daily tasks quietly; they are as soft spoken and trivial In conversation as are the people outside. I have seen some mighty pleasant people in jail; men that could sit down and talk courteously and intelligently with you on any topic. And in general appearance they will line up with the average street exhibit. They don’t look dangerous, they don’t look wild. Not one in forty is a confirmed criminal. Most of them were caught off guard; they made a little slip when the judgment was asleep, and there they are. We ought not to be sentimental with these prisoners, nor should we hold them in horror. They are just a piece of the community, split off temporarily, mostly through their own carelessness. “We are all living over powder magazines; a man or woman may live for fifty years before an explosion comes, and it might never come. Many a man has been a model citizen, sober, decent, upright, fair and square with hie nelghbors r and in an unguarded moment lias destroyed it all. One little word will sometimes move a good citizen to shoot and kill. The human equation is a mighty complicated Instrument, set on a hair trigger, and some fool Is always fingering It, or examining It to see If it is loaded; we live in a succession of tragedies, though never expecting them. Even now the loom of time is weaving tragedies to come, with the sun shining and the birds singing and spring in the air; tomorrow, perhaps, a blow, a lapse from moral consciousness for a moment, and another respectable person will go wrong. “Bud, never be thankful you are not as other men; be thankful that nobody ever happened to set off an explosion under you, and If you pray, Bud, pray for strength to go puckered for ambushes until your time is up, and you lie down to sleep with your fathers. And, Bud, that’s about the only time you will be wholly safe.”