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.