Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 133, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 December 1904 — NATION IN CRIME GRIP. [ARTICLE]

NATION IN CRIME GRIP.

Figures Show Startling Increase in Homicides in Recent Years. “There are at present four and a half times as many murders nad homicides for each million of people in the United States as there were in 1881.” With this statement of fact, based upon statistics. S. S. MoChife, in the cuuwit number of McChire’s Magazine, makes a startling showing of the increase of lawlessness in this country, and follows with a Stinging criticism of the reign of a “criminal oligarch)',” of chronic infraction of the law by many classes and of general failure in the enforcement of the statutes, to which causes tlie condition is attributed. Comments 011 the prevalence of crime and lawlessness. taken almost at random from representnfive and serious newspapers-and from published statements of judges and citizens, form the supporting'evidence. Conditions in Chicago are strikingly set forth by-comparisons with the criminal records of the two leading cities of Europe. London, with an area of 688 square miles and a population of 0,500,'OOO, had twenty-four murders last year. There was no “undiscovered crime,” as the murderers were 11 H arrested except in four cases, where they committed suicide. Chicago, with less than one-third of the population and area covered by the London or metropolitan police, had 128 homicides. In eighteen cases the murderers were killed at the time of the crime or committed suicide; four other cases were those of officers who did the killing in the performance of their duties, leaving 106 cases for the police to work upon. Out of that number thirty-four convictions were secured, while in nineteen cases no arrest was made, and in fiftythree cases arrests did not result in conviction. Only one man was hanged in Chicago. In Paris only fifteen murders or attempted murders were committed in the same period. More than eight times as many murders in Chicago as in Paris, six times as many as in London. In the United States last year there were 8,076 murders and homicides in a population of about 80,000,000. In 1881, when the population was 51,316,000, there were only 1,266 crimes of this class. The high record was reached in 1896, when there were 10,654 murders and homicides in a population of 70,000,000. In 1899 conditions improved, but since then they have steadily grown worse. The loss of life through crime is made more prominent when compared with fatalities in war and on railroads. In three years the homicides in the United States numbered 31,395. The British loss in the Boer war was 22,000. In the same period there were killed on railroads 21,847. These figures were given recently in a charge to a grand jury by Judge Thomas of Montgomery, Ala. Violence attending labor troubles, the burning of negroes, lawlessness in Colorado, riots and murders in New York are referred to in detail, and the following summary ,of conditions in a few localities is made: Pittsburg reports twenty-six murders between Jan. 1 and Nov. 12 last. In twelve cases there was no arrest. In San Francisco since Oct. 14.T898, there have been 114 murders, exclusive of Chinese killings. No one has been sent to the gallows, and in forty-seven cases there has been no arrest. In recent years there have been twen-ty-eight assassinations in one county (Breathitt) in Kentucky, the victims including three women. South Carolina had 222 homicides in 1903. A Georgia judge recently declared from the bench that more homicides were committed in that State than in the whole Britisli empire. There one person in a hundred is convicted and punished, while in England one in three is made to suffer.