A Judge's Experience

From my experience as a judge in pólice courts. 1 ehould Bay that laziness ia the chief cause of crime The young man who is Inberently lazy will steal rather than work. Accordlng to the Scriptures a man should earn nis bread by the sweat of bis brow, but in our large cities there are thousands oí men who will do neither mental nor manual work. and who prefer to get thoir living by preying upon the community in wme fora. or other Young criminal are born bad. You cannot expect that the sons or the daughters of a thief or a burglar will be naturally good. Their whole surroundlngs are bad, nearly every influence that is exerted upon them from childhood np tends to make them as bad as their progenitor. Even girlp and boys incHued to be good may, by contagión, become bad. BKFOKMATION OF CKIMINAJ-B. We have many institutions in this city for the reformation of crimináis of botn eexes. but I thlnk that very few of the vicious are reformed In sucb places. My experience witb law breakers justifies the truth of the saying "Once a thief always a thief;" once let a boy get contaminated with the poison of crime and he will live and die an outlaw of society. In the court room 1 can teil at a glance children who have been brought up in reformatories - their manner is deceitful and they have a hang dog, crouching expression of countenance. In my official career I have met a great many crimináis, and I must confess that among them I have never known of a genuine case of reform. Quite a long time may sometimes elapse between their terms In the peu'teutiary or state's prison, but tbey are sure to return for some new offense soouer or later, more hardened than ever Once in a great while a man who haa gone wrong wül attempt to reform, but that is exceptional. Burglars wül die burglars; pickpockets cannot be reformed, and confidence men would rather get half a dollar by practicing their beguiling methods than earn $5 honestly in the same leugth of time. It is indeed true that to them stolen fruit is always the sweetest Crime, however. is no more prevalent In New York than it is in any country village in proportion to the population. I have visited every large city in the Dnited State, and most of the large cities oí Kurope 1 have made Lnquiries in regard to crime and I have come to the conclusión that New York. notwithstanding that it la a rendezvous for crimináis from all parts of the world. is comparatively as free from crime as any city in the universo. CIÏRAP LOI'GIXQ HODSES. What is called the tenement house system causes au immense amount of crime. In tenement houses people are obliged to berd together in sucb a way that the rising generation cannot help wituessiug the rneretricious relations that exist between the sexes in these dwellings FVee reading rooms, lectiires, etc, dimiiiish crime to a certain extent, but the ten cent lodging houses more than couuterbalance the good done by all the former Such lodging houses have caused more destitu tion, more beggary and crime than any other ageocy 1 know of Mechanics and laborera were better off years ago when they nad to pay f rom $2.50 to $5 a week for tbeir board In regular boarding houses Mechanics nowadays seem to have got into Bohemian habits, they are like the gypsies. they are shiftless and love to wander from place to place, content if tbey can supply the absolute needs of the passing moment. I think that the cbeap lodging liousea onght to be abolished by _ the board of healthJ believe, however. that promiscuons alms giving is wrong The public would be showing more charity and humanity by giving nothing to street beggars, because if a tramp can make a dollar or two B day by begging he will not work I ■would liks to see a stringent law passed making it obligatory upon every able bodied man, rich or poor, to perform some kind of work Every man in the commu nity should be compelled to produce something la my opinión the saddest sight to be seen in a large city like this is the number of idlers, young and middle aged men. lookiug out of windows on such thoroughfares as Broadway and Madison avenue - club men. sighing for some new pleasure. men who uever did a stroke of peai work and who never had a dozen original thoughta in their Uves It would be a good thing if such men, even i f they are the sons of rich parents. were com