Daily Evening Journal, Friday, Dec. 8, 1854
Crime in the City. [editorial]
In speaking upon this subject, it is useless to recount the enormities committed against the moral feelings of the whole city, during the first year of the present mayor's administration, when murders were perpetuated with impunity, and known violators of law permitted to go unpunished and unrebuked, provided their sinning was on the side of rum and intemperance. From the moment that he refused to appoint a Marshal, for whom more than a thousand citizens petitioned, vice and immorality held a jubilee, for they saw that the executive power of this city was their friend and ally, and rum shops sprung up at every corner of the street, drunkards staggered in every alley, while prostitution reared its brothels at every thoroughfare leading to us, and held carnival in the very heart of the city itself. Virtue was confronted on the streets by known harlots, young men decoyed to houses of infamy in open day, and beneath the very shadow of the Mayor's office, the courtesan bargained for the price of her embraces, and led her victims to a place of assignation.
Public opinion cried out against these outrages of decency, but the executive power of the city was as dead to petitions, to remonstrances, and to cries of help for redress, as it was destitute of those high principles of morality that alone can adorn an official position. No descents, as are done in other cities, was made upon known houses of ill-fame, and the quiet of four suburban villages was destroyed by their hellish orgies, while thieves made their dens the receptacles of their stolen plunder, and vice, hideous, loathsome and revolting, revelled in and disgraced our city. The people, at last, publicly rose against the Mayor, pulpits exposed his heedlessness and disregard of the honor of the city, and he retorted by accusing them of falsehood in their statements in regard to the amount of crime among us. A change was made in the city marshal, Irishmen made constables and appointed watchmen, and halycon days were once more to shine upon the city; but the Scriptures were still true, and the "last (year) of that man was worse than the first."
What think you, reader, is the amount of crime this year, compared with last? CRIME has nearly DOUBLED, and where last year, we had but 583 cases before the Police Court, we have, in the eleven months of this year, nine hundred and seventy-one . . . .
Crime in the City. [editorial]
In speaking upon this subject, it is useless to recount the enormities committed against the moral feelings of the whole city, during the first year of the present mayor's administration, when murders were perpetuated with impunity, and known violators of law permitted to go unpunished and unrebuked, provided their sinning was on the side of rum and intemperance. From the moment that he refused to appoint a Marshal, for whom more than a thousand citizens petitioned, vice and immorality held a jubilee, for they saw that the executive power of this city was their friend and ally, and rum shops sprung up at every corner of the street, drunkards staggered in every alley, while prostitution reared its brothels at every thoroughfare leading to us, and held carnival in the very heart of the city itself. Virtue was confronted on the streets by known harlots, young men decoyed to houses of infamy in open day, and beneath the very shadow of the Mayor's office, the courtesan bargained for the price of her embraces, and led her victims to a place of assignation.
Public opinion cried out against these outrages of decency, but the executive power of the city was as dead to petitions, to remonstrances, and to cries of help for redress, as it was destitute of those high principles of morality that alone can adorn an official position. No descents, as are done in other cities, was made upon known houses of ill-fame, and the quiet of four suburban villages was destroyed by their hellish orgies, while thieves made their dens the receptacles of their stolen plunder, and vice, hideous, loathsome and revolting, revelled in and disgraced our city. The people, at last, publicly rose against the Mayor, pulpits exposed his heedlessness and disregard of the honor of the city, and he retorted by accusing them of falsehood in their statements in regard to the amount of crime among us. A change was made in the city marshal, Irishmen made constables and appointed watchmen, and halycon days were once more to shine upon the city; but the Scriptures were still true, and the "last (year) of that man was worse than the first."
What think you, reader, is the amount of crime this year, compared with last? CRIME has nearly DOUBLED, and where last year, we had but 583 cases before the Police Court, we have, in the eleven months of this year, nine hundred and seventy-one . . . .
Unknown, "Crime in the City," Daily Evening Journal, December 8, 1854. Accessed January 12, 2015, http://www1.assumption.edu/users/mcclymer/95Fall97/EveningJournalDec8.html
The author of this article believes that temperance is the solution to all of the problems that the city, Worcester, Massachusetts, was facing at the time. The author of this newspaper article believes that the root to all of the problems that the city has been facing is because of alcohol consumption. This newspaper article as a whole if continued to be read is a political piece, trying to persuade the people of Worcester to vote for a mayor who supported temperance and did not want alcohol running the city, because the author believes that the increasing problems that Worcester is facing at the time, are based off of the increase in alcohol consumption. The author has some facts to back their claims, such as the crime rates almost doubling between the years 1844 and 1845, but the author is clearly biased, and supports the temperance movement, so some of the facts or claims may be embellished in an effort to prove their point. The author's descriptions of increased crime rates, prostitution, and opening of liquor stores in Worcester represent what most of the country was truly like at the time, and how the high amounts of alcohol consumption within the U.S. at the time may have lead to all of these negative societal changes. With the author's negative descriptions and emphasis on all of the bad ways in which alcohol is affecting the city at the time, and how the mayor of the city is encouraging their drinking and unlawful behavior, it is clear that they are trying to get other people to support the temperance movement too.
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