People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 September 1895 — STRIKING CONTRAST. [ARTICLE]

STRIKING CONTRAST.

ONE LAW FOR THE RICH, ANOTHER FOR THE POOR. A Vivid Object Leoion —A Rich Girl Goes Unpunished for a Most Shoekinc Cold Blooded Murder- —Poor Girl Sentenced. A few’ weeks ago. an ignorant, passionate Italian girl employed in one of the sweat shops of New York, cut the throat of the man. who under promise of marriage had betrayed her, and then contemptuously refused to fulfill, his obligations, remarking: “Boys marry, men do not.” The girl was tried, and sentenced to death, and although 40,009 petitions have teen sent by men and women to the governor, urging pardon, or at least commutation of sentence, for a deed committed in the frenzy of shame and despised love, no hint or token has been given by the august executive that the law will relax its hold upon the girl’s life. On the second day of August. Miss Elizabeth M. Flagler, only daughter o 4 Gen. Daniel W. Flagler, chief of ordnance. U. S. A., shot and instantly killed a fourteen-year-old colored boy for stealing pears on the grounds of the Flagler residence. The boy it appears had walked out into .the country, and the fashionable suburbs where the Flaglers reside. Seeing the luscious fruit hanging temptingly near the fence, he yielded to the temptation, and put two or three pears in his pocket. From the second story window Mis?. Flagler observed the boyish act; filled with rage at the loss of her pears she fired: the bullet entered the boy’s heart, who fell to the ground and died without uttering a word. A meaner and crue-ler act was never committed; yet the verdict of the coroner’s jury acquitted Miss Flagler of criminal intent, and was couched in the following language: “We find that the said Ernest Green came to his death by a bullet fired front a pistol held in the hands of Elizabeth Flagler, but we do not think she did it with murderous intent. We believe that the shots were fired carelessly and indifferently, but upon the evidence we cannot hold her.” We are further told that the Flaglers are very prominent in army social circles; that they have a handsome house of an Italian style, beautifully furnished. and that Miss Flagler is tall and dignified. Gen. and Mrs. Flagler are in Washington, and Miss Flag.cr, when she recovers from the shock cf killing the colored boy, will accompany her par-’ ents on an extended trip abroad. Do we need anything more to convince us that the people have no rights that wealth is bound to respect; that in our class distinctions there is one law for the poor and another for the rich. One girl, Child of poverty, robbed of her only possession—her honor — maddened with shame and grief, slays her betrayer, and is sentenced to death. Another girl, proud daughter of wealth, is robbed —of her pears—by a foolish boy, and instantly kills the boy robber, but is acquitted on the ground that she “fired caieler.sly and indifferently.” One wretched girl in the death cham- 1 her awaits her doom; the other in a luxurious home is preparing for a trip abroad.

IMOGENE C. FALES.