ve to capture a
stronghold, the possession of which will put us in much better position
to treat in detail the general evil.

Why should we tolerate any longer a professional criminal class? It is
not large. It is contemptibly small compared with our seventy millions of
people. If I am not mistaken, a late estimate gave us less than fifty
thousand persons in our State prisons and penitentiaries. If we add to
them those at large who have served one or two terms, and are generally
known to the police, we shall not have probably more than eighty thousand
of the criminal class. But call it a hundred thousand. It is a body that
seventy millions of people ought to take care of with little difficulty.
And we certainly ought to stop its increase. But we do not. The class
grows every day. Those who watch the criminal reports are alarmed by the
fact that an increasing number of those arrested for felonies are
discharged convicts. This is an unmistakable evidence of the growth of
the outlaw classes.

But this is not all. Our taxes are greatly increased on account of this
class. We require more police to watch those who are at large and preying
on society. We expend more yearly for apprehending and trying those
caught, for the machinery of criminal justice, and for the recurring
farce of imprisoning on short sentences and discharging those felons to
go on with their work of swindling and robbing. It would be good economy
for the public, considered as a taxpayer, to pay for the perpetual keep
of these felons in secure confinement.

And still this is not the worst. We are all living in abject terror of
these licensed robbers. We fear robbery night and day; we live behind
bolts and bars (which should be reserved for the criminal) and we are in
hourly peril of life and property in our homes and on the highways. But
the evil does not stop here. By our conduct we are encouraging the growth
of the criminal class, and we are inviting disregard of law, and
diffusing a spirit of demoralization throughout the country.

I have spoken of the criminal class as very limited; that is, the class
that lives by the industry of crime alone. But it is not isolated, and it
has widespread relations. There is a large portion of our population not
technically criminals, which is interested in maintaining this criminal
class. Every felon is a part of a vast network of criminality. He has his
dependents, his allies, his society of vice, all the various ma