Same story, practically.
He plays on the tenement staircase--cuffed off the staircase.
He plays ball in the street--cuffed, if caught by the policeman.
He swings on the area railing, trying to exercise his stunted
muscles--cuffed again.
In burning July, with shirt and trousers on, he goes swimming in
the park fountain--caught and cuffed and handed over to "the
society."
A few months in a sort of semi-decent imprisonment, treated in a
fashion about equivalent to that endured by the sea turtle turned
over on its back in the market.
He escapes to begin the same life once more.
He tries for work.
"What do you know?"
"I don't know anything; nobody ever taught me."
He cannot even endure the discipline of ten hours' daily
shovelling--it takes education to instil discipline, if only the
education of the early pick and shovel.
He has not been taught anything. He has been turned loose in a
city full of temptation. He had no real start to begin with, and
no effort was ever made to repair his evil beginning. ----
"What's the charge, officer?"
"Attempted burglary; pleads guilty."
"Three years in prison, since it is his first offence."
In prison he gets an education. They teach him how to be a good
burglar and not get caught. Patiently the State boards him, and
educates him to be a first-rate criminal.
There's your first-rate criminal, Messrs. Bishops, good men,
politicians and benevolent women. ----
Dear bishops, noble women, good men and scheming politicians,
listen to this story:
In the South Sea Islands they have for contagious diseases a
horror as great as your horror of crime.
A man or woman stricken with a loathsome disease, such as
smallpox, is seized, isolated, and the individual sores of the
smallpox patient are earnestly scraped with sea shells--until the
patient dies. It hurts the patient a good deal--without ever
curing, of course--but it relieves the feelings of the outraged
good ones who wield the sea shells.
You kind-hearted creatures, hunting "crime" in great cities, are
like the South Sea Islanders in their treatment of smallpox.
You ardently wield your reforming sea shells and you scrape very
earnestly at the sores so well developed. ----
No desire here to decry your earnest efforts.
But if you ever get tired of scraping with sea shells, try
vaccination, or, better still, try to take such care of youth, to
give such chances and education to the young, as will save them
from the least profitable of all careers--CRIME. ----
Rich good men, nice bishops, comfortable, benevolent
ladies--every man and woman on Blackwell's Island, every wretched
creature living near a "red light," would gladly change places
with any of you.
Scrape away with your sea shells, but try also to give a few more
and a few better chances in youth to those whom you now hunt as
criminals in their mature years.
God creates boys and girls, anxious to live decently.
YOUR SOCIAL SYSTEM makes criminals and fills jails.
THE WONDERFUL MAGNET
HOW WILD SUPERSTITION SETTLES DOWN INTO SCIENTIFIC REALITY
Everybody knows something of the peculiarities of the magnet. As
a boy you led tiny painted ducks around the water basin, holding
a magnet in your hand, or you owned a horseshoe magnet that would
pick up nails and needles.
You know now in a general kind of way that the magnet is a very
useful as well as a somewhat mysterious thing.
The old Greeks and Romans simply knew that some remarkable iron
ore found in Lydia, near the town of Magnesia, and hence called
magnet, was capable of drawing and holding pieces of metal.
The ancients had the wildest theories concerning the magnet, just
as we have wild theories about things that are new and strange to
us to-day.
They thought that the magnet could be used in cases of sickness,
that it could attract wood and flesh, that it influenced the
human brain, causing melancholy. They believed that the power of
a magnet could be destroyed by rubbing garlic on it, and that
power brought back again by dipping the magnet in goat's blood.
They believed that a magnet could be used to detect bad conduct
in a woman; they believed that it would not attract iron in the
presence of a diamond. They believed much other nonsense quite
as ridiculous as the nonsense that we believe to-day. ----
It must have seemed a great waste of time in wise men in the old
days to discuss the magnet or think about it at all. Please
observe how the apparent nonsense of early speculation finally
ripens into actual utility, and learn to respect those who deal
as best they can with questions that seem beyond our
comprehension.
First the magnet was made actually and wonderfully useful in the
compass. Who discovered the compass nobody knows. It was
probably invented by the Chinese and brought to Europe through
the Arabs. Anyhow, some genius found out that a small needle
brought in contact with the so-called lodestone, or magnetic ore,
absorbs the qualities of the lodestone, and when placed on a
pivot will always point to the north.
In the magnet there were and there still are many mysteries. A
form of perpetual motion seems to be embodied in the principle of
magnetism. One strange fact is this, that the weight of the
metal is exactly the same before it is magnetized and after it is
magnetized.
Early students thought that the magnet pointed toward some
particular spot in the sky, perhaps some magnetic star. One
genius felt sure that there must be huge mountains of lodestone
near the North Pole. This suggestion was followed by ingenious
yarns to the effect that in the extreme North ships had to be
built with wooden nails, instead of iron nails, as the magnetic
mountains would draw the iron nails out of the ship.
After this came the more rational conception that our own earth
is a great magnet, and that the little magnet in the compass
simply obeys in pointing, the greater force of the earth magnet.
----
This editorial generalizing on the magnet is brought about by an
incident telegraphed from Vallejo, California. John Gettegg,
apprentice in the Navy Yard, had imbedded in his cheek a flying
piece of steel. To get it out would apparently have demanded a
painful and difficult surgical operation, as the piece of steel
had entered the bone. But the head electrician, Petrio, simply
placed near the wounded boy's face an electro-magnet capable of
lifting five hundred pounds, and the sharp piece of steel
instantly flew out of the cheek and attached itself to the
magnet.
So much for one proof of the value of developing what may seem at
first to be a foolish set of experiments.
In thousands of ways to-day this magnetic power is utilized.
You can buy strawberries in baskets very cheap, partly because
the baskets cost very little for labor. The man who tacks them
together uses a magnetized tack hammer. This magnetic tack
hammer picks up the tacks of its own accord, and the man drives
them in the basket as fast as he can touch the magnet to the
heads of the tacks and strike the basket.
In the great steel works where armor plate is made powerful
magnets are used to carry the hot plates from one place to
another. The magnet lifts up the hot, soft metal without denting
it or damaging it and drops it down where it is wanted. The
power which moves trolley cars through the streets is nothing in
reality but an application of the force of the magnetic
principle. ----
That the earth itself is a great magnet cannot be questioned.
And there is no doubt that each of us human beings is a compound
magnet on his own account, depending for his welfare on magnetic
force.
The millions of red corpuscles in the blood, each with its
infinitesimal particles of iron, absorb in the lungs and
distribute throughout the body the electric forces on which we
depend, and with which we do our work.
When you read of men and women dealing in a blundering kind of a
way with abstract, abstruse speculations and problems, do not
laugh at them too heartily. They are no more ridiculous than the
old Greeks who thought that a magnet could be regulated by garlic
or goat's blood. And their wild theories of to-day may settle
down into great utility centuries from now. This applies to
Christian Science, faith cures, telepathy, and the many other
speculations of the present day. There is unquestionably much
future fruit and value in many or all of them.