Page:The plea of Clarence Darrow, August 22nd, 23rd & 25th, MCMXXIII, in defense of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr., on trial for murder.djvu/57

 teaching, still lives in the human breast. Without it there could be no human life on this weary old world.

Gradually the laws have been changed and modified, and men look back with horror at the hangings and the killings of the past. What did they find in England? That as they got rid of these barbarous statutes crimes decreased instead of increased; as the criminal law was modified and humanized, there was less crime instead of more. I will undertake to say, your Honor, that you can scarcely find a single book written by a student—and I will include all the works on criminology of the past—that has not made the statement over and over again that as the penal code was made less terrible, crimes grew less frequent.

Now let us see a little about the psychology of man. It is easy, your Honor. Anybody can understand it if he just looks into himself. This weird tragedy occurred on the 21st of May. It has been heralded broadcast through the world. How many attempted kidnappings have come since then? How many threatening letters have been sent out by weak minded boys and weak minded men since then? How many times have they sought to repeat again and again this same crime because of the effect of publicity upon the mind? I can point to examples of killing and hanging in the city of Chicago which have been repeated in detail over and over again, simply from the publicity of the newspapers and the public generally.

Let us take this case. Let's see whether we can guess about it. Still it is not a guess.

If these two boys die on the scaffold, which I can never bring myself to imagine,—if they do die on the scaffold, the details of this will be spread over the world. Every newspaper in the United States will carry a full