CHAPTER XIV

RULES GOVERNING PENAL CODES AND THEIR VICTIMS

The rulers make penal codes for the regulation and control of the earth and all the property thereon—the earth which was made long ages before they were evolved, and will still remain ages after they are dust. Not only do they make these rules to control the earth for their brief, haughty lives, but they provide that it may pass from hand to hand forever. The generations now living, or rather those that are dead and gone, fixed the status of unborn millions, and decreed that they shall have no place to live except upon such terms as may be dictated by those who then controlled the earth. To retain all the means of life in the hands of the few and compel the many to do service to support these few requires the machinery of the state. It is for this that penal laws are made, and the effort of the despoiled to reach out in their despair and obtain a small portion of the natural heritage of all, is directly and indirectly the basis of all property assaults.

Every person who has observed cattle knows that if the pasture is good the animals are quiet, and will stay where they are placed; but let the pasture grow thin until hunger comes and they will learn to jump. There were never cattle so quiet and well behaved that they could not be made to jump, and never cattle so breachy that they could not be made tame. Even successive generations of starving and abuse will not so far pervert their nature but that successive generations of kind treatment will bring them back to a peaceful, gentle life. Human beings are like cattle in a field. They are cattle in a field. Give them a chance to live and prosper, and violent acts will be unknown; but bring them close to the line of starvation or want and their natural rights assert themselves above the forms and laws that man has made to hold the earth and enslave his fellows. Of course here and there may be found cases where generations of outlawry and exploitation have left their marks upon men, until they seem to prefer this life; but in those cases fair treatment would generally remove this in the first generation, and always before many generations had come and gone.

All energy manifests itself along lines of least resistance, and the first energies of man are devoted to the procurement of the means of life. It is only where organized tyranny has made violence and force the line of least resistance that men will deviate from the normal path, and so long as the cupidity and brutal selfishness of man shall make this the line of least resistance, all the laws on earth cannot overcome the primal instincts and feelings upon which life depends. A race that would starve, or beg, or accept alms before violating the brutal laws that fence the children of nature from their source of life, would quickly degenerate into abject slavery and finally into nothingness. All so-called criminals do not reason out the cause that placed them where they are. Instinctively they feel that they are doing what they must. This class have generally lived for years, sometimes for generations, so near the border line, have lived such precarious lives that their callings and avocations have grown as natural and normal as monopolizing the earth has grown to another class. They are fully aware of the dangers incident to their craft, of the scanty recompense that their lives afford, and, like all other men, would at once abandon their calling for an opportunity to lead more normal lives. They are in no sense devoid of these common instincts of humanity upon which nature rests all life. Given a child falling into a river, an old person in a burning building, a woman fainting in the street, and a band of convicts would risk their lives to give aid as quickly at least as a band of millionaires.

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Nature takes little account of atoms, her operations are on a wide field, a broad scale. She brings famine, a million men must die; she does not seem to pick out the individual men—she draws a straight hard line, and those who step across cannot return. Nature and man combine to make hard the condition of human life for the great majority that live upon the earth. A very few choose the roads of luxury and ease; the vast mass are scattered in all the avenues of life; some serve by abject toil; some enter the hazardous callings of the railroads and the mines; some the extra hazardous of making gunpowder and nitro-glycerine; and some the still more hazardous—these are thieves or burglars or robbers or prostitutes, as the case may be. Conditions improve, and man moves up in the scale; the toilers have greater luxury; those in hazardous callings take an easier place; the extra hazardous rise to the hazardous; and the still more hazardous to the extra hazardous. The conditions of life become more severe and the current flows the other way. It is then that the jails and the penitentiaries are crowded to the utmost limit they will hold.

Statistics have shown that the number of inmates in our prisons increases with every rise in the price of food. If a combination increases the price of flour a cent a pound and ten thousand men are sent to jail throughout the world, in the judgment of infinite wisdom and justice who will be held responsible for the crime? Every time that the trust raises the price of coal some poor victims are sent to jail, and at every raise in the price of oil some girls are sent out upon the streets to get their bread by a life of wretchedness and shame.

That these property laws are purely arbitrary is shown by the slightest thought. The criminal statutes forbid extortion and swindling, and yet the largest part of business is extortion, and much of the balance is swindling. When the law forbids extortion and swindling, it simply forbids certain forms and methods of these acts, and these forms and methods are the ones not practiced by the ruling class. They are so small and insignificant as not to constitute business but only petty annoyance to the ruling class. To go directly to a victim and by threats of violence compel him to pay more for some commodity than it is really worth is generally extortion, but this is a very clumsy and infrequent act. Real extortion is taking for any service more than it is fairly worth by means of agencies created by the extorter to despoil his victim, and this is the business of the business world. Nearly every street-car line and every gas plant in the world operates its business by means of special privileges, and from one-half to three-fourths of the money they receive is extorted from that portion of the community that has no redress. The railroad companies, who, through watered stocks and bonds and combinations, charge the consumer twice and more the value of the service given, touch the pocket of everyone who lives in a modern state. The production of iron, clothing, many kinds of food, in fact the largest part of what is used in daily life, is controlled by combinations whose sole purpose is extortion; they scheme to absolutely control the market and take from the consumers what they have. And yet for this extortion which reaches every home and despoils every fireside, the law furnishes no redress. Either it does not come within the provisions of the law or else those who are charged with its enforcement do not care to reach this sort of extortion which is the only kind that really affects the world. In either case it shows that the penal code is made and enforced by the ruling class, not upon themselves, but to keep the weak at the bottom of the social scale.

The law forbids swindling at least in certain ways, and yet a large part of business consists in making the public believe that they are getting more value for what they give than the tradesman can possibly afford. The daily papers are filled to overflowing with lying advertisements, each contradicting the other. Our fences, rocks and buildings are defaced with vulgar, hideous lies in order to swindle men out of their much coveted cash. All our merchants and tradesmen frantically call out their lies in every form, that they may sell their wares for a larger price than they are really worth. And yet, to all of this, the criminal code has no word to say. This is not the class of swindlers it was made to reach. The man who can buy the space of a great paper to tell the wondrous qualities of the wares he has to sell is not the sort of man to come within the meshes of the penal code.

People in the jail and people out, when reproached for certain conduct, almost invariably respond that they have done no worse than some one else who stands uncondemned, and this retort is true when motives are fully analyzed and conduct thoroughly understood. The actions of men are wondrously alike. When we look at the criminal in the jail, or at our enemy in the street, we do not see the man. This is not due to him. It comes from the malice, the hatred, the want of human charity that dwells in our own hearts. Through this fog and mist there can be no clear true sight. “To the pure all things are pure.” To the just all souls are really white.

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The web of the law reaches so far that there are very few who have not in some way been touched by its meshes. One infallible proof as to the real nature of crime and the character of the criminal is open to almost everyone who wishes to observe. Few men are so poor and outcast as to have no friends. The victims who cluster around the corridors and entrances of our jails are as pitiable as those who dwell inside. To those friends who know him the criminal is a man, a man for whom they will sacrifice time, money, sometimes honor and even life. If it is nothing but a poor wife, or a helpless child who has known the kind heart of a husband or a father, these are there to prove that the wretch is not a monster, but a man—these are the ones who knew him, who saw his life, who touched him on the human side, the side that shows the real true kinship of man. Judges, lawyers, clergymen, physicians, all classes of men readily come forward and tell of the virtues of the criminal whom they know, they tell of the extenuating circumstances that led to his act, or they show that, in spite of these, they understand the worth of the man. The criminal is always the man we do not know or the man we hate—the man we see through the bitterness of our hearts. Let one but really love his fellow and he knows full well that he is not a criminal. He sees his pulsing heart, he knows his weak flesh, his aspiring soul, his hopes, his struggles, his disappointments, his triumphs and his failings, and he loves the man for all of these.