STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 341 



We charter the foulest dens of vice, hot-beds of productive corruption, 

 and then build prisons to coop the victims in that are decoyed and ruined 

 by those same chartered dens. Yes, we charter men to spread ruin around, 

 then take those ruined and degrade them still deeper in our foul prison 

 cells. 



Such as modern Christians make, 



To reform a wayward brother ; 

 Such as would make a devil quake, 



Or its stench and filih would smother. 



Our jails are horrible dens of torture, and our State prisons so many 

 slave pens, where victims are compelled to labor for years, and often for 

 life, without one cent of reward. Their labor made a source of State or 

 national revenue, regardless of suffering families at home. 



A like disgrace attaches to the drunkard and the prison convict, and 

 alike the families of each lose caste and sympathy in society, and why? 

 The chartered rum-seller ruins the reputation and morals, the court 

 judge condemns to prison or to death. Therefore the disgrace attaches 

 to the victims and their families alike, the ruin being all done by State 

 oflBcials — came of a corn;pt source, and therefore disgraceful. But who 

 put forth the tempting lure? The people did it. And to what end? 

 To get revenue. And what that revenue costs, let us see. 



To draw revenue from the dens, we annually sacrifice the happiness 

 of a million of families; we donate 600,000 men for drunkards, 50,000 for 

 murdered victims, 200,000 to fill prisons, 10,000 to fill insane asylums, and 

 500,000 more as paupers. The ruin all done officially, for which the 

 people are responsible. And ♦'o all this ruin a disgrace attaches, and 

 they who did it stand high in the respect of society, and simply for 

 the reason that their calling is legal; but not so if the plunderer or assas- 

 sin does the deed without a charter; then the disgrace attaches, not to the 

 victim as in the other case, but to the one who committed the crime, as 

 it should. But what is the moral of the nation? It is the letter of the 

 law, and no matter how corrupt that law, the enormity of a crime is not 

 a question; but was the act done legally, and if so, no blame attaches, no 

 matter how base the deed; but if done illegally, no matter how humane 

 and virtuous the act, you will find legal convict hunters on the track, for 

 it is not crime that shocks communities and calls out our legal peace- 

 makers. It is acts of illegality, as we shall demonstrate. 



Take for instance the abuse of married women by their husbands. But 

 few crimes of wife abuse are known to the law, and those few exceptions 

 seldom come before the law venders, and simply for the reason that the 

 penalty is so small, and so seldom enforced, that the outraged seldom 

 ask redress, so hopeless such pleas. Wife abuse in a thousand forms is so 

 common, that society feels but little sensation at the development of the 

 most brutal of acts. 



The moral is, the marriage ceremony gave the man the right to enforce 

 his demands. Certain the majority of men take power and enforce it, 



