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him to put his theory into practice. This he did three years ago.

When the drunkard who is not a confirmed toper is arraigned and the case heard, the Judge imposes a heavy fine which will necessitate sixty days in the workhouse, breaking stone. This sentence, however, is held in suspense if the guilty party will sign a pledge which he has framed, to abstain from drink for one year.

Three years have passed since this innovation, which the conventionalist pessimists so freely predicted would prove a dismal failure, was put in operation, and up to the present time not more than two persons in one hundred thus put on their honor have fallen. The effect of showing the victim of drink that the court is interested in his reclamation and is willing to give him a chance to prove his manhood, and the knowledge that if he fails to keep his pledge sixty days of hard work breaking stone in the workhouse are before him, exert a double check. The success of the innovation has exceeded the most sanguine expectations of the Judge and his friends.

III.

66

JUDGE POLLARD'S VIEWS ON THE
TREATMENT OF DRUNKARDS.

"As long as the germ of good is not dead," said Judge Pollard in a recent interview, "I believe it is the duty of the court to save drunkards from themselves and for their families. I would rather make my court a tribunal of reformation than of punishment. A judge on the bench must exercise common sense and good judgment. I try to do the best I can for the defendant and the city. Back of the man is his family, whose interests must be taken into consideration in fixing his punishment. To send a man to the workhouse to work out a fine breaking rock at fifty cents a day while his family faces starvation is a pretty serious thing to do. I would rather send the man back to his family and keep him sober than to send him to prison. It is better for the city, better for society, better for the in

dividual, and a thousand times better for his family to say to the drinking man: The Court will forgive you for your past conduct, but you must pledge yourself to behave in the future. Virtually the man is enjoined from getting drunk.

"In giving a defendant an opportunity to sign the pledge I always impose a suitable fine for his offence. I let him off on his promise of good behavior, with the distinct understanding that if he drinks again he will have to go to the workhouse. The man who knows he is going to be sent to the rock-pile for getting drunk will keep out of the reach of temptation. I have learned by observation that after they have kept sober for a month they have very little trouble. It is during the first month after giving them the pledge that I have to keep a sharp lookout over them. They must report to me regularly every week either at the court or my home. If a man is working and cannot get away without losing time I give him the privilege of reporting to me at night at my home. If he is a married man I require him to bring his wife with him."

There are, Judge Pollard holds, great numbers of good-hearted, honest men whose moral fiber has not been weakened or destroyed by drink, and they would be permanently injured if the court should "put the stain of the workhouse upon them." "What they need," he says, "is a good strong moral stimulant. I produce the pledge and give them a chance to work out their own reformation. Then I back up that pledge with the law created by 700,000 people. The chances are that the man who knows the eye of the court is upon him wherever he goes will stay at home evenings instead of lounging around saloons.

"Here is a case in point. A delicate woman endured the abuse of her drunken husband as long as she could. He was a poor teamster, earning $9 a week. He was the father of three children, ranging in age from three to eight years. Regu

larly every Saturday night he went home drunk, having spent the greater part of his wages for liquor.

"He mistreated his wife. His children were so afraid of him that they hid under the bed when they heard him coming. The furniture in his little home was mortgaged. His wife and children were in tatters. Finally in her desperation the wife had the husband arrested, and he was brought into my court for disturbing her peace. The thin little woman appeared in court, carrying her youngest child in her arms. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she told me of the indignities she had borne. She asked me to send him to the workhouse until he reformed. I asked her how she would get along without him. She said she would take in washing and manage to eke out an existence. She was willing to make any sacrifice if he could only be cured of the drink habit.

"I called the defendant to the bar of the court and had a heart to heart talk with him. He seemed penitent, and when I asked him what he would do if I gave him a chance to reform his countenance brightened and he said he would do his best to keep away from liquor. I asked him if he could keep sober a year. He said he would try. I produced the pledge and he signed it. Then I told him to report to me at my home once each week for a month, because he had no time to lose from work, and his family needed all the money he could possibly earn.

"He came to see me regularly every week. When he appeared in court he was a sorry looking sight, but week after week there was an improvement in his appearance. He was more cheerful and ambitious. It was not long until he told me the mortgage on his furniture had been paid off and that he was getting along better than for years. He wore better clothes and his general appearance was neater. I saw that he was a reformed man, and after the first month I released him from the obligation to visit me every week. I saw him a few days ago and he

told me he was happy and prospering, that he had been promoted and never intended to drink again.

"If I had sent him to the workhouse he would have come out soured on the world and probably would have gone back to drink. During his incarceration his family would have endured many hardships. I have not the slightest doubt that he will keep the pledge, not only for a year, but for all time. His wife tells me that he treats her with the greatest possible consideration, that his children have learned to love him again, and that he is ambitious to get ahead in the world.

"That is only one case out of hundreds. The records of the police courts of St. Louis show that thousands of persons are arrested annually and formally charged with petty offences committed while they are under the influence of liquor. So many cases resulting from intemperance made me do some real earnest thinking.

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Judge Pollard holds the old-fashioned idea that courts of law are for the purpose of dispensing justice, and not for its defeat through quibbling, technicalities and fine-spun theories, and his rulings have often proved very disquieting to a class of lawyers who hover about every court and rely on quibbles and technicalities or the citation of precedents which are often strained to fit the case, regardless of the essential right or wrong involved. His methods of procedure in his efforts to dispense justice are quite unconventional and refreshingly free from red tape, as the following incidents will show:

"I once let a man go to trial," said Judge Pollard, “in the absence of an important witness. The city's attorney

closed his case and the man was about to be fined through his ignorance of court methods, when in came the missing witness. He was summoned by the prosecution, and when I wished to put him on the stand the attorney for the defense objected. The city's case, he said, had been closed.

"I told him that this court was not intended to be a forum for the splitting of hairs, and that I wished to get to the bottom of the matter. That witness' testimony was heard and the defendant was freed as the result.

"I told those attorneys right then that a case was never closed in my court until I had imposed a fine or discharged the accused."

On another occasion the Judge allowed a mule to become the chief witness in a complaint brought before him. This case is interesting as showing the common-sense and humanity of the jurist. A man had been arrested by the Humane Society for working a galled animal. The arrested party secured a prominent veterinary surgeon to aid him in testifying that though the poor creature had a raw place on the shoulder, the collar was such an excellent fit that the animal did not suffer any inconvenience from it. Judge Pollard had the mule brought up to the sidewalk in front of the court. He went down to examine the creature. He found a great raw place on the shoulder and touched the spot with his cane; the animal winced. He touched it a second time, and the mule shied, and this was the place where the collar was constantly rubbing. The men all returned to the

court-room after the examination, when Judge Pollard rendered his decision which proved that the mule in the case had been the star witness. He prefaced his finding with these remarks:

"I am no expert on horses and their diseases, but I hope I have commonsense enough to see that an animal which can't stand a gentle touch on a wound is manifestly unable to be worked.

"That mule is a more eloquent witness in its silent wincing than all the volubility of you men here."

He fined the driver fifty dollars.

Space prevents our citing numerous other illustrations showing how commonsense and an eminent degree of practicality go hand in hand with a wise humanitarian spirit that is so frequently painfully absent in modern business, political and judicial life. Judge Pollard embodies in a large degree the new spirit of twentieth-century civilization, which appreciates the priceless value of the human soul, the worth of the citizen to the state and the great responsibility devolving upon society if it presses the weak and the offending downward when it might help them upward, and which insists that the noble ends of justice shall not be defeated by quibbles, by technicalities or by precedents born of a less enlightened age than our own, advanced by men of prostituted intellects who systematically seek to circumvent the demands of equity in the interests of sordid wealth or a soulless conventionalism, and who place property considerations above human rights.

EDWARD W. REDFIELD:

AN ARTIST OF WINTER

LOCKED NATURE.

BY B. O. FLOWER.

MA

I.

ANY are the master architects of a nation's greatness and diverse are their spheres of activity. The dominating spirits that guide the develop ment of her physical resources; the clearvisioned educators; the fearless, conscientious and high-minded statesmen, editors and clergymen; the scientists, inventors and discoverers; the artists, sculptors, poets and architects, all in their way, if they be true to the vision, advance civilization and forward the true greatness of the nation while broadening and deepening the life of the individual unit.

Necessary and important as is the material prosperity and the development of the physical resources of a land, that nation or civilization that is fatuous enough to center its affection upon material wealth so that idealism no longer exerts imperial sway over the public consciousness, signs its own death-warrant. The imagination and emotional nature must be fed and stimulated on the nobler plane of being if a people is to become great and to enjoy perennial youth. Gold with its potential power for good becomes the supreme curse when it so fascinates the brain as to become the master-passion of man. Moral rectitude

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EDWARD W. REDFIELD.

is absolutely essential to permanent great- Photo. by Park, Lambertville, N. J.
ness; but wealth and moral integrity
alone cannot foster a full-orbed civiliza-
tion. Man is so constituted that he
must have his hunger for beauty, for
poetry and for music satisfied if he is to
express in full degree the power and
beauty that are potential in the soul.
Hence it is that the artist, the sculptor,
the architect, the poet and the singer
are master-builders of civilization.

In the past we as a people have con

the passion for the acquisition of gold and for triumph on the physical plane has more and more dominated the nobler aims of leading the world in the experiment of free government and becoming the standard-bearer of justice, equity, integrity and righteousness that are the

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