Criminal Types

by V. M. Masten

Save their women, and say how much the minds of honorables of that kidney have “on” the criminal mind? Essentially how much have they, taking into account their blood and bringing-up, and the blood and bringing-up of the average criminal? How about the mind of a public servant who does not know a bestial, crime-breeding thing when he sees it: or, if he does recognize its basic baseness, still clamps moral handcuffs on his conscience in order to indulge a natural or acquired predilection for brutish expression?

May such an one be held safe either to help frame or interpret the laws of his land, on which the oncoming generations of American youth must guide?

Could any of the revered forefathers have been dragged to such as current “boxing exhibitions”—again, “don’t laugh”—other than in the same as chains? If they could not have been, were they mental, moral and physical “hayseeds” of their day: or, do certain of their successors fundamentally flout their oaths of office, through literally flinging the most pernicious of suggestion and example into the very faces of America’s budding lads and lassies?

To what, at bottom, more than any one other concrete cause, was the late debacle due, if not to Germany’s brutally-planned persistence in making brutish sport a part of the common and uncommon education of her young males? If you are inclined to pass the query, question closely any one of thousands of German ex-students and soldiers whose face bears cicatrized scars of the sword’s edge or point, and get your answer.

The reply of the sporting mad of America would be that Germany advisedly fashioned the minds of her lads for alleged defensive war with her enemies, real and imaginary; whereas such as prize fighting conserves the all-around stamina of American youth, to be employed in the pursuits of peace, and that it is meant to do no more.

Rot, that, just plumb rot! Rot of the kind no thinking man would dare attempt to justify on bended knee. Prize fighting “is meant” first, last, and all of the time, to pack the purses of human parasites; to pack purses that are unpacked to beat the law, both God-made and man-made, from every possible angle. To hold else is either not to know the game, or not to want to know it.

Prize fighting is war in miniature between two men. It is, moreover, up to the point of a killing, the most merciless of war. It is, because “top-notch” fighters of the several “weights” are rare birds who are practically unbeatable in their prime, so long as they hold to Nature’s laws. Those who go against them are usually as good as “licked” before they enter the ring. Therefore the hundreds of “marked” would be “cham-pee-ons” who eke out a living serving essentially as punching bags for their physical betters; and therefore the former are marked with such as ear drums put out of commission; broken noses, wrists and hands; impaired eyesight; and internal traumatic wounds that are fated to rise up and curse them along at about life’s middle course.

Pretty picture in so far as painted, isn’t it, with which to stir the imagination and ambitions of your boy? And mark you, the vicious by-products of pugism have been but barely indicated herein, as for instance: at least one-third of the sixteen-hundred-thousand dollars of gate money of the Dempsey-Carpentier fight will circulate as disappearing dollars. The bulk of them will disappear from legitimate lanes of trade and circulate through corrosive sporting channels, the which are a drag upon the general turnover of business. What’s more important, they will be placed so as to further menace the morals of the young. And all will be managed mainly by those who pack smug chuckles over the apish credulity of legions of the self-nominated august.

This seemingly misplaced diversion is meant to drive it home, with the final word, that sport overdone at once locks arms with the criminal, and undercuts at the foundation of the national structure.

No matter what form of expression the non-producer may affect; or by what specious arguments he seeks to establish that form of expression, he remains a non-producing leech.