Читать книгу Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World - Clifton R. Wooldridge - Страница 94

In the Municipal Court in South Chicago three extremely mean swindlers have been fined $25 and costs. It is unfortunate that they could not have been sent to the Bridewell without the alternative of paying the fine.

For these swindlers were coal dealers who robbed the poor that bought coal by the basket. They STOLE money from their customers, just as the short-measure milk trust conspirators robbed their patrons. We repeat that they ought to be in the Bridewell.

Giving short measure is the dirtiest, smallest, most cowardly form of commercial rascality. The hold-up man who takes his life in his hand and robs on the public highway is a model of decency and courage as compared with the pitiful rascal who steals the pennies of the poor by selling coal or milk or any other necessity of life by short weight.

Short weight is larceny. It ought to be treated as larceny by law.