ushing further into the regulation
of the habits, customs and lives of all the individual members of the
community. The majority, when it has the power, has never hesitated to
force its ways of living, its ideas, customs and habits on the minority.
The majority, when strong enough, has always assumed that it was right,
and provided that others must live its way or not at all. The pendulum
is now swinging far this way as is evidenced by prohibition, the
persistent campaign for Sunday laws, and the growing belief in social
control as a means of changing and directing humanity.

This has added to the criminal code and has increased the number of men
in prisons. Two statutes of recent date in most of the states are
responsible for a very large increase in the number of convicts. The
conspiracy statute which is used today is a deliberate scheme on the
part of prosecutors to get men into the penitentiary by charging an
agreement or confederation of two or more persons to do something,
which, if really committed, would be a misdemeanor, or no crime
whatever. Under this charge, whether made specifically or in connection
with another crime, the rules of evidence have been opened and relaxed
until the wildest and most remote hearsay is freely admitted for the
plain purpose of convicting men who have really been guilty of no
specific act. It is in effect punishing one for his thoughts; the
business of the court or jury being to find out whether in some
particular he has an evil mind.

The statute forbidding the use of the "confidence game" in obtaining
property sends to prison a constant stream of persons who, until a few
years ago, would have been guilty of no crime. This law, as interpreted
by the courts, really means the procuring of money by dishonest means.
Under this statute the court and jury hear the evidence and say whether
the means charged are dishonest or not. This, of course, leaves the law
so that the temporarily prevailing power, perhaps only the prosecuting
attorney, may send men to prison who take means of getting money that
are not practiced or at least advocated by the ones who procure the
passage and enforcement of the law.

Numberless ways used by the strong to get money are considered dishonest
by a large class of men and women: exaggerated and lying advertisements,
forestalling the markets, the acts and wiles of the professional
salesman, misrepresenting goods and other methods that could never be
catalog