I wondered if a rapid picture of a boy of sixteen arrested for fighting, shot through this court into association with criminals for ten days, being found in their company afterward and sent by the criminal court to prison for three months for larceny, and afterward appearing and re-appearing as a long or short term criminal, would suggest to others what the idea suggested to me? I wondered, in short, if there were less machinery for the production and punishment of crime and more for its prevention, if life might not be made less of a battlefield and hospital for the poor or unfortunate. I wondered if the farce of oaths, the flippancy of trials, the passion of the prosecutor for conviction and all the train of evils growing out of these were necessary; and if they were not, I wondered if the vast non-court-attending public might not suggest a remedy if its attention were called to certain of the many suggestive features of our courts that presented themselves to me during my first two days as an observer of the legal machinery that grinds out our criminal population.
I read that headline in a newspaper one morning. Then I asked myself: Why should the city's dead be "thrown in?"
Where and how are they "thrown in?" Why are they _thrown_ in?
Why, in a civilized land, should such an expression as that arouse no surprise--be taken as a matter of course? What is its full meaning? Are others as little informed upon the subject as I? Would the city's dead continue to be "thrown in" if the public stopped to think; if it understood the meaning of that single, obscure headline? Believing that the power of a free and fearless press is the greatest power for good that has yet been devised; and believing most sincerely, that wrongs grow greatest where silence is imposed or ignorance of the facts stands between the wrong doer, or the wrong deed, and enlightened public opinion, I decided to learn and to tell just the meaning--_all_ of the meaning--of those six sadly and shockingly suggestive words.
Suppose you chanced to be very poor and to die in New York; or suppose, unknown to you, your mother, a stranger passing through the city, were to die suddenly. Suppose, in either case, no money were forthcoming to bury the body, would it be treated as well, with as humane and civilized consideration as if the question of money were not in the case? We are fond of talking about giving "tender Christian burial," and of showing horror and disgust for those who may wilfully observe other methods. We are fond of saying that death levels all distinctions. Let us see whether these are facts or fictions of life.