The Oregon daily journal., January 19, 1908, Page 25, Image 25

)
ft-
1
V' ; ' PORTXANQ, OREGOIV SUNDAY; MORNING, JANUARY 19, , 1903 ;
PHI
- 1 . s .. ' - ' t i . . -1 , l L ,t f , t 1" ... , I
., L' i i i ii' i' ri v , ; i ." i f . -t i i ii
Is Human Mfe Held YMpfce.
CheaW in -Dfet Africa ?
1
A
NATION of poisoners! tl liw,Ui dodderingly:-behind ,,c!ence tod
r,,., ttfirtW' Arr,wttm,t dnltioiL , It 1$ a completely doubtful legal
Iruly a startling arrairnmenr. ..vft-..'
-this, which is brourht .aratnst the imrlr. to dump' barrel of typhoid germs into
0tf 0 J5r lTif 53 JV Atf officials a town Teserroir and etart. an. epidemic proving
most distinguished in the sdferuarding of, " thouaand people,; the , lawt, would
t Mi0HU - :r --'V-consent to Jang:iiin.Av1-?vvi i v;,'
,'"-Tf it is: only One degree 'more shock- general principles ' df justice after tho law had
the: charge which, for many t - imposed, a-fine-of $50 on' hi
tng
years, has been regarded by every com
try of Europe as having t been proved
against uithc charge that toe are, pre
eminently, a nation of murderers. r
, That . was a conviction ; upon the plain
face of facts, for' Judge Marcus Kava
nagh, one of our. own leading jurists,
speaking in Chicago on "The Enforce
ment of the Lata in Large Cities," in No
vember, pointed out the statistical record:
T1iat, during the preceding year, 8760
persons were murdered in the United
States, while, but 317 murders occurred in
all England and wales; and that, in the
course of five years, the murders here
amounted to 45,000 a number greater
than the total of deaths from typhoid
feverS y -
But it was an indictment mild enough
to justify acquittal when compared with
the charges of wholesale, wilful, premed
itated murder, committed annually by 'the
scores of thousands, under the condoning
guise of " accidents accidents of land
and water. ', and : especially "accidents" of
the rail which were the outcome of causes ,
whose effects were and are so assuredly
known, deliberately and with complete
aforethought set in motion to accomplish ,
homicides as so many essential incidents
to the procuring of money. .
But all these murders taken together
-the slayings in "which some men actual
ly wielded the weapons w"hich deprived
their fellqwmen of life, and the slaughters
in which stockholders ; and officials; con
spired to kill as niany of their fellows as
could not escape their grade crossings and
their faulty rails-remain, almost negli
gible in importance when contrasted with
the terrible toll of death taken by the
average citizen today who, in his private
as well as his public capacity, appears as
the arch poisoner of all the ages.
' him for .polluting a
water supply ; but 1 the law would still : demur ,
against any indictment of murder, because the
prosecution duld not- produce "in evidenoe the
identical typhoid germ by means of which John
Doe, the defendant here charged with wilful and
deliberate homicido, did actually and with mali
cious intent poison, kill and murder the deceased
Bichard Roe. , t ;
Because thb law of our national childhood
still governs the growing intelligence of the'
ration's maturity, the minds among the people
that, with infinite courage and by infinitesimal
stages, dr ag . our laWs up to the level of our
civilization, are now agitating for. new laws,
for laws which shall see as far beyond the legal
nose as the laws we have today see beyond the .
puffed cheeks' and purblind eyelids of the Dog- '
berrys of tho past. . , .
; Those men,' belonging- to the- type on whose
' ! " Jr -'U
1 mmvte 1 '
fit!
-I
Hi
-i rzl
j -
. 1 1 '.in.
.1
' 1
f5f f ffi
'Vr
"tr
ill
I i
r
0,
0
1
r" . 1.. ! '
.V f
'JJtJl. w; w , f v--r-f " r- t rT TV'S 7 7T7 "
JL f C- -vt. U . . t. it ' t t '.i v . :.... .' : J ? 1 ,
1
till- v
Till.
rr-r
iiCiv''-rl.VC:V TOPI 'f .'H
1!
IV.
L
dient.
AJV, which ought to .be' justice and so
eternal, is known by every lawyer to bo
merely a very faulty imitation of jus
ticeto be simply an opportune expe-
That is because law is man's 'application of
the principles of"justice to the essentially tem
porary conditions existing when he makes any -
law. Laws that were just centuries, ago re .,
known to be most cruelly unjust now; and laws
which would have been unjust then are the.
' perfection of justice today.
' Yet today the law cares as little for life as '
V it cares much for property. It will take a year.
to try to hang the mun who ' shoots, another
... -with 0 bullet which, produced in evidence, one
can see -and feel, while it refuses to be con-;
vinccd that ten .thousand murders can have bcen
committed by means of germs which it cannot
see and feel. . , , ' 1 " I
- . That is where, in the United State today,;
superior intelligence rests the whole .structure ,
in whch the -world has embodied its applicaticn
of justice unite now in demanding "recognition
of tho principle which the lows deny.
Yet so hidebound are the people in' confi
dence in the laws under which they grew up, and
so universal would be the condemnation if the
punishment were made adequate for the crime,
that even . these men dare not ask ' more than
that the principle of responsibility be ac
knowledged. , ' ' " 'v "
But they do not hesitate to aver we ore a
nation of poisoners, as our foreign critics and
our own judges already arer us to be a nation
of murderers. , , , "
In the latter part of the seventeenth cen
tury the beautiful MarquLs do . Brinvilli'ers,
convicted hi having poisoned her father and :
two-"of hrr. brothers,- of - having' administered
poison1 to her am. daughter and a number of
other people about her; TiaC her beautiful head -
' vfeiSlm
III I
expeditiously' cut off in Paris. , ' . '
And so did the sorceress and wholesale "s
eller of poisons to the nobility of France, La "'
Vpison. ' . '
But it was an era of poisoners; andMadama
de Dreux and the Duchesse do Bouillon,
who tried to poison their husbands in order to
wed their lovers, together with scores more of
'the most exalted folk in the kingdom who
poisoned as gayly as they flirted and courted, 1
were permitted to go as .scot free as do those ;
today who poison others with venoms as deadly,
and for motives which are even more abhorrent.
Then' the aristocracy 'made the laws,' while
the. democracy suffered from them; now, the
democracy makes the laws,- and does its best to ,
' keep the democracy from ever suffering again
through the agency of death. , ' 'a
But a number of millions of years ago,
Nature, which rules both aristocrats and dema i
gogues, made certain unalterable laws, to which
both orders of humanity must forever bow.
And one of those laws-relates to poisoning.
Dr. Samuel Dixon, president of the Acade
t-y of Natural Sciences,' of 'Philadelphia,' the
distinguished bacteriologist? who has inaugu :,
rated, as health commissioner of Philadelphia, -the
official attempt by the state to, use its titter
. ly inadequate statutes for .the, suppression 'of :
wholesale pofsoning of its citizens by their f el ,.
low-citizens, has formulated the' relation1 of the
law of nature to I the responsibilities. ,of modern ::
' democracy: t. . , . .,' '.
"Water is one of the necessaries of animal '
. life," he says. ;"The manner .in .which the -country's
water ' supplies tare- treated' by the
state and the' nation is-appalling to the modern te
intelligence. ",.'..,' f .'.
"Those -water; supplies are treated, at
though they werejnatural sewers." The waste of -the
animal economy - is something which is
thrown off because it is a poison to the animal
that makes' it;- and that waste, that poison, is
being fed by 'Americans, as individuals and as
communities, to their neighbors.. .
"Few .'individuals and few political bodies, -in
the sense of the individuals acting as- com
munities,' ever' seriously review the results of.
their -existing -systems for. the disposal of hu- '
man waste, , and all regard" with horror the re ,
ports that come from savage lands of the atroci
ties, perpetrated by cannibals. Yet the Teviled
cannibal docs not lose in contrast with us.
."Simply, look -over the-conditions prevail-' -iug
in our own communities and, in the light of
simplo . justice ' to' our -neighbors, observe our'
practice. of deliberately discharging the deadly '
poison6f our waste body products,, the empty
ing of ourv sewage filled with the germs of dis
ease that meaii untold suffering and well-nigh
countless 'deaths,, into, the .drinking .water that
- must bo consumed by our neighbors,
1 We claim Jto bo, our brother's keeper. Yet
oua brothers our sisters,- our parents and our
children are those whom we deliberately poison.
, "And the solo reason is that, knowing we
are committing" these- real, prcmcdiuled, dohb
' erate murders we continue to commit thoin b
' cause -we 'wish to practice, tho ecouoiny we
. believe to be wcalth. " . , ,
'''."Tho very people in charge of our ni"nict
pal ' and national government-i who wojj fcj,
:- (CONTINUED "ON IN.? I V U TAi J3.)
V
t
Z'.t
A,
-:".t'v '-'f
4 ,v..
1 1