Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 May 1911 — LET’S HAVE THE STORY FIRST. [ARTICLE]

LET’S HAVE THE STORY FIRST.

It is reported that petitions for a permanent parole for C. L. Bader, the convicted bridge grafter, will be circulated at once. Before any reader of The Democrat puts his name to such petitions he would do .well to ponder over the following words from President Taft in refusing a parole for John R. Walsh: “But it must be judged with Reference to the right of society to have the law vindicated and crime punished, no matter how influential the convicted person or how many friends his present pitiable condition may lead to speak in his behalf. “The opportunity to commit such crimes is only afforded to men who have enjoyed high position in society and have secured the trust and friendship of many. Every case of this kind, therefore," must present some such considerations as those referred to, and if the executive on an appeal for clemency should yield to them, it would defeat the object of the law and present a demoralizing difference between the punishment meted out to the ordinary criminal whose circumstances have naturally led him into crime, and one whose position in society should have made for him strongest restraint against violation of the law.” • We should be just before we are generous, and while we may feel sympathy for Air. Bader and his family, the ends of justice and the moral effect would be w*holly lost by his release from prison. If he was led into this —although he was a man of good intelligence and had reached the age of discretion —as many people seem to think; if he wanted at first to be honest but was prevailed upon to become crooked, and was thrown down by his associates in crime and made the “goat,” then he is justified in making a clean breast of the whole thing. The public can best judge whether ’he is entitled to sympathy after hearing his story, and that there is a story back of - this there can be no more doubt than there is that Bader is guilty of tne crime for which he is now paying the penalty—although, perhaps, not alone guilty. ________