| Show Poverty and Crime In England There has been much distress in London and other parts of England this winter There always a number of nn employed people over there and at this i aason the bony hand of poverty grips tighter than at any other time Crime increases too as a natural consequence These evils are unfairly charged by some partisan papers to free trade in England and dire calamities are predicted pre-dicted s a consequence of its adoption in the United States The truth is that there has never bean so much widespread wide-spread distress among the laboring people of Great Britain since the repeal of the I G Ib corn laws and the removal their effects Recent official reports show a positive decrease in crime in Great Britain and that it has been corelative with the advance ad-vance in wages and of the increase in the purchasing power of wages It shows a material improvement in the general condition of the Working classes The returns from savings banks mutual aid societies and other institutions establish this fact The Commissioners of Prisons furnish statistics that help to establish the truth of this reported improvement Since the year 1S79 up to March 31 1892 the date of the ending of the investigation investi-gation there has been a marked and steady decrease in the prison population There have been some changes in the I I I i penal laws Shorter terms have been substituted for former penalties in several sev-eral cases These of course effect theI I general figures But allowing for them the details being given in the report the j decline in the criminal statistics of the country is still notable And when the increase of the population during the past fifteen years is considered the decrease de-crease in crime is made all the more conspicuous con-spicuous The report shows that in 1874 the number num-ber of summary cases was 192440 Sixteen j Six-teen years later it was 162032 In 1868 indictable cases reached the height of 57812 They fell to 36648 in 1890 In I 1868 the number of habitual criminals was 87668 in 1890 it was 52153 The same encouraging features appear in the statistics of persons held for penal servitude In Great Britain Australia I etc in 1874 they numbered 10867 in 1892 only 5068 The number of persons sentenced to penal servitude year by year I is given in a table showing rapid and gradual grad-ual decrease but we will give only three instances by way of contrast During five years ending December 5lst 1874 there were 1622 during the five years ending Dec 31 1889 they numbered 945 Compare Com-pare that with the five years ending Dec 31 185H forty years before when there were 2559 It must not be forgotten that while this decrease in convictions was going on I the population increased fully eight and a half millions The commissioners therefore had good grounds for reporting report-ing that for several years crime has tended to fall and this notwithstanding notwithstand-ing the increase in the general population popula-tion The contrary appears to be the case in the United States Crime has increased I notwithstanding the march of education I and the statistics show that the ratio of educated persons to the uneducated is alarmingly great We do not pretend to say that the tariff affects this question one way or another But we do say that facts and figures are dead against the notion no-tion that free trade in England has affected af-fected the social condition in the manner that is claimed by the protectionists |
