Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/222

 of accuracy were those which arose in the desertion court over the quarrels between husbands and wives, and the maintenance of wives and children. The facts occurring in the privacy of home were always more or less obscure and difficult of proof. The history of the trials, impositions and failures which lead up to the catastrophe is often remote and seldom disclosed. In civil causes concerning the ownership of goods, the problems are carefully presented by counsel, and the court has the benefit of learning what other judges have thought in like matters. But the desertion cases were hurried through on Friday afternoons upon a list of perhaps a hundred, by Samuel E. Cavin, then counsel for the Guardians of The Poor, a man entirely capable and with a desire to do right, but deaf as a post and, therefore, unable to grasp the tale told by the witnesses.

I reached certain conclusions with regard to the administration of justice. Some of them may appear to be radical, but, being the outcome of experience, it may be that their presentation here may lead to thought resulting at some future time in useful modification of present methods.

1. There are entirely too many technical crimes and too much creation of crime by legislation. Every man who has some ends to serve and has sufficient influence goes to the assembly and gets the failure to do what he wants to have done enacted into a crime. To spit in a street car is an act of nastiness, to put catsup in a branded bottle is perhaps an infringement of right, to assist an ignorant man at the polls to perfect his ballot may affect the result of the election, the failure to pay customs duties to the Government may cause it inconvenience, but none of these constitutes a crime. To call them so only leads to confusion of thought and remissness of conduct. These examples represent a long category so extended that no citizen can ever be sure that in what he does he is not offending against some criminal statute. 208