Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/467

 than the population is a vicious argument and the conclusion a false one.

The high crimes are those that have been always recognized as crimes. The crime of drunkenness and other crimes belonging to liquor legislation are modern, and in the light of this statement the table receives valuable explanation. In Massachusetts the prohibitory law of 1855 was in force until 1868, when a license law was passed. Under the former the vigorous prosecutions of 1866 and 1867 caused the number of sentences to increase rapidly, and this led to a repeal of the prohibitory law and the enactment of the license law of 1868. The friends of the license law insisted upon its vigorous enforcement, and this action carried the number of rum convictions of all grades still higher, when another reaction secured the re-enactment of the prohibitory law, which went into effect July 1, 1869, and under the application of this law the lines of figures representing drunkenness and liquor offenses went to their highest point in 1872. In 1870 the Legislature allowed the free sale of “ale, porter, strong beer, and lager beer,” everywhere, unless prohibited by a vote of a city or town. This law was repealed in 1873. From the year 1873, either through the effect of the repeal of the beer law or of waning interest in the prohibitory law, resulting in decreased vigilance in prosecutions, the lines of figures dropped till 1875, when the prohibitory law was repealed. From 1876 to 1879, the last year named in the table, the figures constantly decreased.

It would be interesting in this respect to inquire whether the figures representing rum crimes are due to legislation wholly, or to vigorous or weak execution of law alternately applied, or to the positive decline of drunkenness through the efforts of reform movements. It is true that sentences for minor crimes and misdemeanors, and even felonious assaults and aggravated crimes, have risen or fallen, as indicated by the barometer of sentences for rum crimes alone. Legislative crimes—offenses which have been named crimes by legislative enactment—should not be used to show increase of crime in volume. Civilization has raised many things formerly considered as, perhaps, immoral and as offenses against the moral law to well-defined crimes. The result is, that we are constantly increasing the work of criminal courts; the number of sentences is thus increased comparatively, even when the volume of crime, as shown by the comparisons of crime per se, may decrease. So truthful statistics may show absolutely false conclusions, unless the elements are intelligently and honestly used.

Many illustrations as forcible as those cited might be drawn from the statistical work of the State and Federal Governments, but those given are sufficient to illustrate how dangerous truthful