Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/303

Rh policemen and the police magistrates. If the state, through these its representatives, gives object lessons in corruption, the classes that tend to criminality cannot but infer that the state is fundamentally as criminal as themselves; that, in short, criminal instincts are universal, the only differences being that they are concealed by varying degrees of hypocrisy, and their activity attended by varying measures of success. This conviction, that crime is all pervasive and that government is simply one of the tricks in the trade of dog-eat-dog which all are playing, will paralyze the conscience quicker than any other belief that can take possession of the human heart. Let that conviction become thoroughly rooted and it will take a long term at a very excellent and presumptively a very expensive reformatory to get it out.

And yet what other thought can be instilled into the mind of a young man whose wildness has not yet ripened into crime? He can get his drinks on Sunday in violation of the law, perhaps because money is paid the police, and perhaps because the saloon-keeper that he patronizes is a city alderman. The gambling den to which he goes is immune from interference, the light in the passageway leading to it shines out on the pavement where brass-buttoned policemen walk with eyes that see not, because the man who runs the establishment is the Republican committeeman from that ward. Of the houses of prostitution with which he is acquainted many are "pulled" but few are closed. Some are even free from annoyance or danger in this regard because their managers have made their peace with the officials by money payments or otherwise. He may even know that the degraded street-walker who solicits himself and others without shame and without fear divides her earnings with the policeman on her beat which is also his. He finds that many of the police arrests are "fakes;" formalities gone through with to satisfy the "dear public," to make a record for some department, or some captain or some patrolman. When certain of his cronies are arrested on rather serious charges he finds that the police court is presided over by a man without dignity and