Only a few years ago, in civilized countries, larceny and many offences even below larceny, were punished by death; and yet the number of thieves and criminals of all grades increased. Traitors were hanged and quartered or drawn into fragments by horses; and yet treason flourished.
Most of these frightful laws have been repealed, and the repeal certainly did not increase crime. In our own country we rely upon the gallows, the penitentiary and the jail. When a murder is committed, the man is hanged, shocked to death by electricity, or lynched, and in a few minutes a new murderer is ready to suffer a like fate. Men steal; they are sent to the penitentiary for a certain number of years, treated like wild beasts, frequently tortured. At the end of the term they are discharged, having only enough money to return to the place from which they were sent. They are thrown upon the world without means—without friends—they are convicts. They are shunned, suspected and despised. If they obtain a place, they are discharged as soon as it is found that they were in prison. They do the best they can to retain the respect of their fellow-men by denying their imprisonment and their identity. In a little while, unable to gain a living by honest means, they resort to crime, they again appear in court, and again are taken within the dungeon walls. No reformation, no chance to reform, nothing to give them bread while making new friends.
All this is infamous. Men should not be sent to the pentitentiary as a punishment, because we must remember that men do as they must. Nature does not frequently produce the perfect. In the human race there is a large percentage of failures. Under certain conditions, with certain appetites and passions and with a certain quality, quantity and shape of brain, men will become thieves, forgers and counterfeiters. The question is whether reformation is possible, whether a change can be produced in the person by producing a change in the conditions. The criminal is dangerous and society has the right to protect itself. The criminal should be confined, and, if possible, should be reformed. A pentitentiary should be a school; the convicts should be educated. So, prisoners should work, and they should be paid a reasonable sum for their labor. The best men should have charge of prisons. They should be philanthropists and philosophers; they should know something of human nature. The prisoner, having been taught, we will say, for five years—taught the underlying principles of conduct, of the naturalness and harmony of virtue, of the discord of crime; having been convinced that society has no hatred, that nobody wishes to punish, to degrade, or to rob him; and being at the time of his discharge paid a reasonable price for his labor; being allowed by law to change his name, so that his identity will not be preserved, he could go out of the prison a friend of the government. He would have the feeling that he had been made a better man; that he had been treated with justice, with mercy, and the money he carried with him would be a breastwork behind which he could defy temptation, a breastwork that would support and take care of him until he could find some means by which to support himself. And this man, instead of making crime a business, would become a good, honorable and useful-citizen.
As it is now, there is but little reform. The same faces appear again and again at the bar; the same men hear again and again the verdict of guilty and the sentence of the court, and the same men return again and again to the prison cell. Murderers, those belonging to the dangerous classes, those who are so formed by nature that they rush to the crimes of desperation, should be imprisoned for life; or they should be put upon some island, some place where they can be guarded, where it may be that by proper effort they could support themselves; the men on one island, the women on another. And to these islands should be sent professional criminals, those who have deliberately adopted a life of crime for the purpose of supporting themselves, the women upon one island, the men upon another. Such people should not populate the earth.
Neither the diseases nor the deformities of the mind or body should be perpetuated. Life at the fountain should not be polluted.
V. HOMES FOR ALL.
THE home is the unit of the nation. The more homes the broader the foundation of the nation and the more secure.
Everything that is possible should be done to keep this from being a nation of tenants. The men who cultivate the earth should own it. Something has already been done in our country in that direction, and probably in every State there is a homestead exemption. This exemption has thus far done no harm to the creditor class. When we imprisoned people for debt, debts were as insecure, to say the least, as now. By the homestead laws, a home of a certain value or of a certain extent, is exempt from forced levy or sale; and these laws have done great good. Undoubtedly they have trebled the homes of the nation.
I wish to go a step further. I want, if possible, to get the people out of the tenements, out of the gutters of degradation, to homes where there can be privacy, where these people can feel that they are in partnership with nature; that they have an interest in good government. With the means we now have of transportation, there is no necessity for poor people being huddled in festering masses in the vile, filthy and loathsome parts of cities, where poverty breeds rags, and the rags breed diseases. I would exempt a homestead of a reasonable value, say of the value of two or three thousand dollars, not only from sale under execution, but from sale for taxes of every description. These homes should be absolutely exempt; they should belong to the family, so that every mother should feel that the roof above her head was hers; that her house was her castle, and that in its possession she could not be disturbed, even by the nation. Under certain conditions I would allow the sale of this homestead, and exempt the proceeds of the sale for a certain time, during which they might be invested in another home; and all this could be done to make a nation of householders, a nation of land-owners, a nation of home-builders.
I would invoke the same power to preserve these homes, and to acquire these homes, that I would invoke for acquiring lands for building railways. Every State should fix the amount of land that could be owned by an individual, not liable to be taken from him for the purpose of giving a home to another, and when any man owned more acres than the law allowed, and another should ask to purchase them, and he should refuse, I would have the law so that the person wishing to purchase could file his petition in court. The court would appoint commissioners, or a jury would be called, to determine the value of the land the petitioner wished for a home, and, upon the amount being paid, found by such commission, or jury, the land should vest absolutely in the petitioner.