08......8,952..........---------...............

1909......8,103..........---------...............

1910......8,975.........91,972,266...........97.5

Total......191,150

We are blood-thirsty enough, God knows, without making things out any
worse than they are. Our murder rate per 100,000 unquestionably exceeds
that of most of the countries of western Europe, but, as the saying is,
"there's a reason." If our homicide statistics related only to the white
population of even the second generation born in this country we should
find, I am convinced, that we are no more homicidal than France and
Belgium, and less so than Italy. It is to be expected that with our
Chinese, "greaser," and half-breed population in the West, our Black
Belt in the South, and our Sicilian and South Italian immigration in the
North and East, our murder rate should exceed those of the continental
nations, which are nothing if not well policed.

But of one thing we can be abundantly certain without any figures at
all, and that is that our present method of administering justice
(less the actions of juries than of judges)--the system taken as a
whole--offers no deterrent to the embryonic or professional criminal.
The administration of justice to-day is not the swift judgment of honest
men upon a criminal act, but a clever game between judge and lawyer, in
which the action of the jury is discounted entirely and the moves are
made with a view to checkmating justice, not in the trial courtroom, but
before the appellate tribunal two or three years later.

"My young feller," said a grizzled veteran of the criminal bar to me
long years ago, after our jury had gone out, "there's lots of things in
this game you ain't got on to yet. Do you think I care what this jury
does? Not one mite. I got a nice little error into the case the very
first day--and I've set back ever since. S'pose we are convicted? I'll
get Jim here [the prisoner] out on a certificate and it'll be two years
before the Court of Appeals will get around to the case. Meantime
Jim'll be out makin' money to pay me my fee--won't you, Jim? Then your
witnesses, will be gone, and nobody'll remember what on earth it's all
about. You'll be down in Wall Street practicing real law yourself, and
the indictment will kick around the office for a year or so, all covered
with dust, and then some day I'll get a friend of mine to come in
quietly and move to dismiss. And it'll be dismissed. Do