Why should we tolerate any longer a professional criminal class?  It is not large.  It is contemptibly small compared with our seventy millions of people.  If I am not mistaken, a late estimate gave us less than fifty thousand persons in our State prisons and penitentiaries.  If we add to them those at large who have served one or two terms, and are generally known to the police, we shall not have probably more than eighty thousand of the criminal class.  But call it a hundred thousand.  It is a body that seventy millions of people ought to take care of with little difficulty.  And we certainly ought to stop its increase.  But we do not.  The class grows every day.  Those who watch the criminal reports are alarmed by the fact that an increasing number of those arrested for felonies are discharged convicts.  This is an unmistakable evidence of the growth of the outlaw classes.

But this is not all.  Our taxes are greatly increased on account of this class.  We require more police to watch those who are at large and preying on society.  We expend more yearly for apprehending and trying those caught, for the machinery of criminal justice, and for the recurring farce of imprisoning on short sentences and discharging those felons to go on with their work of swindling and robbing.  It would be good economy for the public, considered as a taxpayer, to pay for the perpetual keep of these felons in secure confinement.

And still this is not the worst.  We are all living in abject terror of these licensed robbers.  We fear robbery night and day; we live behind bolts and bars (which should be reserved for the criminal) and we are in hourly peril of life and property in our homes and on the highways.  But the evil does not stop here.  By our conduct we are encouraging the growth of the criminal class, and we are inviting disregard of law, and diffusing a spirit of demoralization throughout the country.

I have spoken of the criminal class as very limited; that is, the class that lives by the industry of crime alone.  But it is not isolated, and it has widespread relations.  There is a large portion of our population not technically criminals, which is interested in maintaining this criminal class.  Every felon is a part of a vast network of criminality.  He has his dependents, his allies, his society of vice, all the various machinery of temptation and indulgence.

It happens, therefore, that there is great sympathy with the career of the lawbreakers, many people are hanging on them for support, and among them the so-called criminal lawyers.  Any legislation likely to interfere seriously with the occupation of the criminal class or with its increase is certain to meet with the opposition of a large body of voters.  With this active opposition of those interested, and the astonishing indifference of the general public, it is easy to see why so little is done to relieve us of this intolerable burden.  The fact is, we go on increasing our expenses for police, for criminal procedure, for jails and prisons, and we go on increasing the criminal class and those affiliated with it.