"Your honor," I broke in, thoroughly angry, "This is utterly unfair. He whines because the employees are not loyal. How much loyalty do they expect to buy at six dollars a week? They figure out just how little they can pay their people and keep them from the necessity of stealing. This time they figured too low, and are trying to put all the blame on the girl. If they paid honest wages they might have some right to come into court. But when they let their clerks starve they ought not to put silver in their charge. Its...."
"Hold on, officer," Ryan interrupted, "There's a great deal in their point of view. Our whole penal system is built on the deterrent idea. The state does not inflict penalties to repay the wrong done it by an act of crime, but to deter others from committing like crimes. As long as the complainants take this view of the case I cannot let her go without some punishment."
"Punishment?" I broke in again. "I hope we will never be punished so bitterly. The shame of her arrest and imprisonment is already far in excess of her wrong doing. The firm did not lose a cent and they want her sent to state prison."
"I won't send so young a girl to state prison," the judge said, "But I cannot let her go free. I'll send her to one of the religious disciplinary institutions."
I asked for a few days adjournment so I could lay the matter before the members of the firm personally.
"The delay would be useless," the attorney put in. "My clients have no personal feelings in the matter. It is simply a carefully reasoned business policy."
I persisted that I would like to try. The judge rapped with his gavel.
"Remanded till tomorrow morning."
As we walked out of the court room, the attorney condescendingly advised me not to waste much time on this case. "Its useless," he said. But I did not want to give up without a fight.
When I tried to see the members of the firm, I found that my opponent had stolen a march on me by telephoning to warn them of my mission. Their office secretaries told me that they were very busy, that they already knew my business and did not care to go into the matter with me.