Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/391

 THE GREEN BAG Train of New York City in a volume entitled "The Prisoner at the Bar," consisting of a series of popular magazine articles explaining the usual course of a criminal case in a large city, recently published by Charles Scribner's Sons. One of the most striking, as well as practical, suggestions in the line of modern izing our ancient criminal practice, to make it more justly,apply to modern conditions, is in line with the thought frequently expressed by recent writers that our modern standards fail to recognize the danger to the public from what may be generally termed as " business frauds." Yet our criminal statutes, which have descended, with slight modifications, from an age when physical violence was the greatest public peril, still make a distinction in classification of crime and punishment be tween the common thief and the modern "grafter." Mr. Train says " There is no practical distinction between a man who gets all of a poor living dishonestly and one who gets part of an exceedingly good living dis honestly. The thieving of the latter may be many times more profitable than that of the former. So long as both keep at it systemati cally there is little to choose between the thief who earns his livelihood by picking pockets and the grocer or the financier who swindles those who rely upon his representations. The man who steals a trade-mark, counterfeits a label, or adulterates food or drugs, who makes a fraudulent assignment of his property, who as a director of a corporation declares an unearned dividend for the purpose of selling the stock of himself and his associates at an inflated value, who publishes false statements and reports, makes illegal loans, or who is guilty of any of the thousand and one dis honest practices which are being uncovered every day in the management of life insur ance, banking, trust, and railroad companies, is precisely as ' real ' a criminal as one who lurks in an alley and steals from a passing wagon. Each is guilty of a deliberate viola

tion of law implying conscious wrong, and each commits it for essentially the same reason. "Yet at the present time the law itself rec ognizes a fictitious distinction between these crimes and those of a more elementary sort. The adulteration of foods, the theft of trade marks, stock-jobbing, corporation frauds, and fraudulent assignments are as a rule only mis demeanors. The trouble is that we have not yet adjusted ourselves to the idea that the criminal who wears a clean collar is as dan gerous as one who does not. Of course, in point of fact he is a great deal worse, for he has not the excuse of having a gnawing at his vitals." The author shows that the professional criminal class constitutes but a small fraction of the law-breakers, and that it is not from them that we have most to fear. " Our real danger lies in those classes of the population who have no regard for law, if not an actual contempt for it, and who may become crimi nals, or at least, criminal, whenever any sat isfactory reason, coupled with adequate oppotunity, presents itself." " The man who deliberately violates the law by doing that which he knows to be wrong is a real criminal, whether he be a house-breaker, an adulterator of drugs, the receiver of a fraudulent assign ment or a trade-mark thief, an insurance ' grafter,' a bribe giver, or a butcher who charges the cook's commission against next Sunday's delivery. The writer fails to see the slightest valid distinction between them and believes it should be made possible to punish them all with equal severity. There is no reason why one should be a felon, another guilty of only a misdemeanor, while still an other is guilty of nothing at all. The cause of crime is our general and widespread lack of respect for law, and this in turn is largely due to the unpunished, and often unpunishable, dishonesty which seems to permeate many phases of commercial activity."