Their nature at times would cause a hardened desperado of the West to blush for shame.
One distinguished feature of city badness is the great number of crimes against women, ranging from robbery to murder. Now, the desperado, the bandit, the robber of the wildest West never made war on any woman, rarely ever robbed a woman, even when women mingled with the victims of a "stand and deliver" general robbery of a stage or train. The man who would kill a woman in the West could never meet his fellow in fair fight again. The rope was ready for him, and that right quickly.
But how is it in the great cities, under the shadow of the law? Forget the crimes of industrialism, the sweat-shops and factories, which undermine the last hope of a nation—the constitution of its women—and take the open and admitted crimes. One city will suffice for this, and that may be the city of Chicago.
In Chicago, in the past twenty-four years, very nearly two thousand murders have been committed; and of these, two hundred remain mysteries to-day, their perpetrators having gone free and undetected. In the past year, seventeen women have been murdered in Chicago,
some under circumstances too horrible to mention. In a list of fifty murders by unknown parties during the last few years, the whole gamut of dastardly crime has been run. The slaughter list is appalling. The story of this killing of women is so repellant that one turns to the bloodiest deeds of Western personal combats with a feeling of relief; and as one does so one adds, "Here at least were men."
The story of Chicago is little worse, according to her population, than that of New York, of Boston, of any large city. Foot up the total of the thousands of murders committed every year in America. Then, if you wish to become a criminal statistician, compare that record with those of England, France or Germany. We kill ten persons to England's one; and we kill them in the cities.
In the cities it is unlawful to wear arms, and to protect one's self against armed attack is therefore impossible. In the cities we have policemen. Against real fighting men, the average policeman would be helpless. Yet, such as he is, he must be the sole fence against the bloody-minded who do not scruple at robbery and murder. In the labor riots, the streets of a city are avenues of anarchy, and none of our weak-souled
officials, held in the cursed thrall of politics, seems able to prevent it. A dozen town marshals of the old stripe would restore peace and fill a graveyard in one day of any strike; and their peace would be permanent. A real town marshal at the head of a city police force, with real fighting men under him, could restore peace and fill a graveyard in one month in any city; and that peace would be permanent. If we wished the law, we could have it.
The history of the bloodiest lawlessness of the American past shows continual repetitions. First, liberty is construed to mean license, and license unrebuked leads on to insolence. Still left unrebuked, license organizes against the law, taking the form of gangs, factions, bandit clans. Then in time the spirit of law arises, and not the law, but the offended individuals wronged by too much license, take the matter into their own hands, not waiting for the courts, but executing a swifter justice. It is the terror of lynch law which has, in countless instances, been the foundation of the later courts, with their slow moving and absurdly inefficient methods. In time the inefficiency of the courts once more begets impatience and contempt. The people again rebel at the fact that their government
gives them no government, that their courts give them no justice, that their peace officers give them no protection. Then they take matters into their hands once more, and show both courts and criminals that the people still are strong and terrible.