umble it may be;
indescribable depravity to destroy the most useful and the most
beautiful product of this earth.

"Yet the statute in this and other American States for the punishment of
those who take human life is made to apply but to a fraction of those
guilty of such offense. The individual who shoots or otherwise takes the
life of another is always prosecuted and generally punished. The
association, whose culpable neglect of the ordinary dictates of humanity
in making its employees safe, is not even prosecuted for factory girls
destroyed in a fire, for miners entombed in the earth, for passengers
and trainmen hurled to their death that dividends may be wrung from soft
roadbeds and rotten rails, for excursion boats so built as to prevent
the saving of passengers in case of accident; and what must be said of
those economic and social conditions that drive thousands to
self-destruction every year and that destroy all Christian and political
ideals, the proper development of which would preclude the possibility
of crime!

"You, gentlemen, represent the collected society of which I am a part,
and the fact is worth your consideration at least, that under the system
of woman parasitism, dependence, and, in a way, slavery, the rugged
qualities of strength of purpose, of womanly self-reliance, of
constantly expanding mental and moral natures that so distinguished our
foremothers, and which mean so much to the character of children, which
in turn mean so much to the character of the citizen and the nation,
have largely disappeared.

"In every consideration of crime, its cause should be of interest to
those who represent the State. I am not seeking to minimize or palliate
or excuse whatever crime may have been committed in this case, but
_that_ society which is seeking its own safety and perpetuity cannot too
strongly be urged to beware of the universal menace to its existence, as
well as to guard against those individuals that war only against
individuals. So I appeal to you in this case, if crime there be, to deal
with the perpetrator of such crime with all due justice, but with that
mercy and consideration which these thoughts may suggest, and which we
owe to the weaker members of society.

"Whatever crime was committed in this case sprang from the old order of
our existence, which is rapidly passing away; it was nurtured in that
soil which most of us cultivate too much, and which produces envy,
malice, hatred, uncha