Читать книгу Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World - Clifton R. Wooldridge - Страница 95

Living by one's wits has become a fine art, and it is a profession that is more liberally patronized than any other by the present generation. One of America's leading detectives remarked that there were about seventy-five thousand people in a city the size of Chicago that would bear watching. There isn't a bank, insurance office, dry goods store, restaurant or hotel that does not employ men to watch their customers, and there is hardly a business house in the country that has not some system of watching its employes. Everybody at this day seems to be afraid of everybody else.

Professional criminals pride themselves quite as much upon their ability as men engaged in legitimate occupations. A thief, for instance, is as vain of his superiority over other thieves as a lawyer, politician, or clergyman might be whose talents had elevated him to a commanding position in the eyes of the people. And the talented thief is as much courted and sought after as the successful man in the honest walks of life. The other thieves will say: "He is a good man to know; I must make his acquaintance." But the thief who has earned a reputation is particular about the company he keeps, and is scornful in his demeanor toward another thief whom he does not consider his professional equal. Caste exists among criminals as well as among other classes.

Men and women who are not living merely for today must be deeply interested in the efforts which practical philanthropists are making to discover the causes of crime and to remedy the mischievous conditions which now prevail to such an alarming extent. Hidden away to a considerable degree in the great mass of figures which came into being through the operations of the census bureau, are facts that should shock every good citizen. With all the warmth of eulogy the story of wonderful progress has been told again and again, but only a few references have been made to the abnormal growth of what may be termed by the criminal class. Forty years ago there was but one criminal to 3,500 good or reasonably good citizens. According to the last census the proportion was one in 786.5, an increase of 445 per cent in a period during which the population increased but 170 per cent. Never in the nation's history has educational work of all descriptions been nearly so active as at present, yet the increase in the number of those who were confined in penitentiaries and jails and reformatory institutions is almost twice as rapid as the growth of population.