tending lawyers
can fight, not for justice, but to win. It is little better than the old
wager of battle where the parties hired fighters and the issue was
settled with swords. Oftentimes the only question settled in court is
the relative strength and cunning of the lawyers. The tribunal whose
duty it is to fix the future place and status of its fellowmen should be
wise, learned, scientific, patient and humane. It should take the time
and make its own investigation, and it can be well done in no other way.
When public opinion accepts the belief that punishment is only cruelty,
that conduct is a result of causes, and that there is no such thing as
moral guilt, investigations and sorting and placing of the unfortunate
can be done fairly well. The mistakes will be very few and easily
corrected when discovered. There will be no cruelty and suffering. The
community will be protected and the individual saved.

Neither will this task be so great as it might seem at first glance.
Trials would probably be much shorter than the endless, senseless
bickering in courts, the long time wasted in selecting juries and the
many irrelevant issues on which guilt or innocence are often determined,
make necessary now. Most of the criminal cases would likewise be
prevented if the state would undertake to improve the general social and
economic condition of those who get the least. Only a fraction of the
money spent in human destruction, in war and out, would give an
education adapted to the individual, even to the most defective. It
would make life easy by making the environment easy. Only a few of the
defective, physically and mentally, would be left for courts to place in
an environment where both they and society could live. Perhaps some time
this work will be seriously taken up. Until then, we shall muddle along,
fixing and changing and punishing and destroying; we will follow the old
course of the ages, which has no purpose, method or end, and leaves only
infinite suffering in its path.

XVII

REPEALING LAWS

It is comparatively easy to get a penal statute on the books. It is very
hard to get it repealed. Men are lazy and cowardly; politicians look for
votes; members of legislatures and Congress are not so much interested
in finding out what should be done, as they are in finding out what the
public thinks should be done. Often a law lingers on the books long
after the people, no longer believing the forbidden thing to be wro