Criminal Tolerance

     Our country is much too tolerant of evil. We wink at practices which fit its votaries for acts jeopardizing the safety and peace of the innocent. We shield criminals too much and thereby encourage the criminally disposed to commit crime. To feed the ambition of covetous lawyers we give criminals not only the benefit of doubt but the benefit of every devisable technicality and stratagem to escape merited punishment. This encourages criminality, giving hope of escape if caught. We allow societies to be formed that have for their object the undermining of the principles on which our government is founded. We tolerate public speech that has the same end in view. Speakers and newspapers are allowed to inflame the public mind, defame and malign public officers. Thereby weak-minded and malicious people are taught contempt for authority. Sensational newspapers spread abroad the poison of wickedness of every kind, familiarizing readers with details of iniquity and educating them for crime.
     Anarchy, with barbaric hatred and malice against all authority is suffered to germinate in the slums and spread unchecked over our fair land. Humiliating the thought that an obscure, contemptible specimen of humanity may suddenly end the life of a most noble and pure-minded president, thereby robbing a great nation of its honored head. But in this enlightened country a dozen periodicals, with circulation aggregating forty thousand copies, are allowed to disseminate seeds of discontent, envy, malice and murder. These tolerated schools of iniquity prepared Czolgosz for the most unprovoked, inexcusable, inhuman of crimes—fired his brain and nerved his hand to murder one of the most patriotic and public-spirited of presidents.
     Now will we awake and do something to stop the devilish work? If we tolerate criminal education are we not responsible?