Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/614

594 our land are due in a good degree to the swift changes in the material condition of our country. An increase of our numbers of more than 1,000,000 each year, of more than 2,500 each day, of more than 100 each hour, explains many of the causes of our overburdened system of penal laws. Framed for a different state of society, our perplexities are increased by the fact that more than one-quarter of this daily addition to our population is made up of those who come from other countries strangers to our customs and laws, and in many instances ignorant of our language. History gives no account of such a vast increase of the numbers of any country by constant peaceful action. Conquest rarely makes as many prisoners of war as we make captives to the peaceful advantages of our continent. They bring us wealth and power. They also bring us many problems to solve. British laws deal with British subjects. French courts decide upon the guilt or innocence of Frenchmen. Germany keeps by its usages and customs the ideas of right; and wrong in the minds of the Teutonic race. But we in America have to deal with and act upon all nationalities, all phases of civilization. While these facts palliate the defects of our penal laws and their administration, they certainly make more clear and urgent the duty that we keep pace with the swift changes going on around us. More than this, it enables us to take the lead in the great work of reform as we deal with more plastic materials than are found in the fixed conditions of older nations. Here, too, we have a broader field filled with men of varied phases and aspects of different civilization, in which we can study the wants and the weaknesses, the virtues and the vices, of the human race. For a series of years nearly 300,000 immigrants are annually landed at the harbor of New York. Disorder and crime are always active along the line of march of great armies. I believe there is no instance in history of a movement of the human race so vast and long continued. I am glad to state a fact which in some degree palliates the disgrace which attaches to the administration of justice and the conduct of public affairs in that great city, but I should fall short of telling the truth if I did not also say that the discredit of that great city mainly springs from the sad fact that its men of wealth as a body lack that genuine self-respect which leads to a faithful, high-minded performance of the duties each citizen owes to the public. Is there any other basis upon which we can found this great work of patriotism and philanthropy than the one contemplated by this Association? It may at first view seem to be limited to a small class, but it opens up into a broad field of unpartisan, unsectarian labor. The objects we have in view, although they make our prisons their starting-point, are so wide in their bearing that they brought together at the London International Association, in the interests of our common humanity, men of the best minds of most countries of Europe and America. These, in spite of the differences of religion, language, and form of civilization, could act in accord in devising measures to lift up