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Show CRIMINALS. When a boy starts off the straight and narn.v path to accomplish something which may not !.-. really, criminal, the gate has been opened to iL broad way to destruction. Perhaps he is caught 1 ; his dishonorable dealings ami set right; perhaps his inner conscience warns him of his error am! helots the seal on the gate of w-'iywardness ; perhaps per-haps the religious influences about him effect his return to the path of moral rectitude. On th-other th-other hand, he may dally on the road, now on on. side, now on the other, and finally reach a climax which wrecks his life forever. Life is a very uncertain quantify among growing grow-ing boys and young men. We believe a very small percentage of the crimes committed in this world originates in men who live their first twenty-one years in moral and religious surroundings and whose characters develop under the wise and discreet dis-creet tutelage of parents and the church. The foundation of honesty, fair dealing, morality and decency is laid in the formative years preceding the twenty-first birthday. The statistics of crime for the past year furnished fur-nished by Harper's Weekly show the cost to the United States government alone to be $ 140,000,0 mi. of Avhich sum frauds in the post office reach a total of $40,000,000. Enormous as these figures are, the grand total cost of crime in the United States last year-reached the stupendous amount of $1,076,327.-606, $1,076,327.-606, a figure $."00,000,000 greater than the total expenditures for all kinds of spiritual, ecclesiastical, ecclesiasti-cal, physical, humanitarian, educational and heal- i ing agencies combined. These figures tell a story which language cannot can-not adequately describe. They arc incomprehensible, incomprehensi-ble, and should arouse the church bodies to vigorous vigor-ous action. Here indeed is a condition upon which every moral agency in the nation may unite in combating. All questions of church government, all dogmas of faith and all the vexing problems which agitate churchmen and retard the work of God may well be put aside in seeking a remedy for so grave a condition. The broad principles of morality mor-ality which even the most "liberal" churches profess pro-fess in common with the Catholic church suggest I and supply the means to strike at this enormity. Only one thing suggests itself. Strike at the root. The remedy lies not in increasing the forces of policemen and preservers of the peace, but in guiding the lives of young men into paths of righteousness, right-eousness, transforming evil tendencies into virtu- f ous activities and making, moral rectitude ihe standard by which each life is measured. W4iile we know the Catholic church supplies all the spiritual and moral needs of those who are fortunate for-tunate .enough to come within the scope of its influence, in-fluence, it is preposterous to all ow niii'ithiiu i it,' h I separate it from other great and good moral airei,- i cies to interfere in any way with a work which requires re-quires such enormous activity for good. Any religion re-ligion is better than none, and any moral tcachimr' which can reach those beyond the sphere of Catholicism Cath-olicism must exert a power for good. With mind ! and heart set upon the redemption of humimi'y. the work requires tolerance of intolerance and ye' a strong sense of the justness of the cause i wluch we labor. God's work in general requires the application of the broad principles of Chr:s-tianity Chr:s-tianity and any agency which reaches and saves young men from lives of crime is a good ageu-y. And the growth of Catholicism will be mightily increased in-creased as criminality is reduced among the people peo-ple of the world. |