Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1902 — HARD TIMES MAKE CRIMINALS [ARTICLE]

HARD TIMES MAKE CRIMINALS

The Safety of the State Depends Upon the Prosperity of Its People. There is a relation between prosperity and morality, between poverty and crime. It is not affirmed that the rich are generally virtuous, or that the poor are generally vicious and depraved. Luxury has its moral diseases as certainly as penury. The vices of the rich have their source in selfishness, and are such as extravagance, gluttony, ostentatious pride and deficient social sympathy. The vices of the poor spring largely from physical wants, such as hunger and thirst, from conditions unfavorable to virtue or from desperate need. Every great panic, every period ot commercial depression, bringing with sit industrial stagnation, is marked by an immediate increase of crime. But note this, that the majority of those who join the ranks of the Criminals during hard times are offenders against property rather than against person. That is, their crimes are such as men commit who need money to buy food and to support their families, and not such as have their motives in brutal passions. Prosperity is not a purely material consideration. It touches the ethical life of the people, the integrity of manhood, the character of citizenship. To close the mines and the mills is to open the jails and prisons. To silence lathes and looms is to drive honest men to deeds their own souls abhor. The safety of the state is in the material welfare of the people. The very word “commonwealth” indicates a community of prosperous people, in which the weal of each is the care of all. —Saturday Evening Post.