The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 11, 1906, Page 11

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. 5 bringing R th we car only a little § o wn 1 st shocking young tmself scarcely been not only their acqua merely for the sake of had tan he eking scarcely more than d 1d soclological editorials ten explaining, exploiting and placir blame of their viciousness; the boy decent, a boy, up nd expressio: hat we n only bring up to- y be no were a sold wh th man, who e, but rifling iis pockets to get money to squander in ry on writ- g the them- of hon- nhood the ap- \:\\\\‘.\ B M It i here t not yet disposed of by the law. only a little while since we had ful spectacle of a father, ining down his cheeks, pacity of attorney for . who was charged with with th pleading his 19-y murder. It is only a little while since a poor lit- tle San Jose high school girl died In in th alid back rcom of a flice, betrayed and abando; Th hoolboy in his teens. in the jail at Auburn re is a bo striving with every trick and subtlety of a crooked nature to save his neck from the hangman’s noose for the atrocious murder of father, mother, brother and sister I mention these incidents, merely re- calling them to you, because they are so shock nd And now, close upon the heels of these " stories, comes that of two be both boys of good family, unforgettable. the best Known names in the State, held for trial on the charges of theft and ajtempted burglary. One of them, Donald McKisick, is the grandson of an eminent jurist, a man of learning and conse- His brother pioneer quence, Judze McKis. k. s a leading lawyer at Sacramento; his immediate family, in fact, are refined and cultured people, living according to the standards of what is called “good soclety”—the sort of people humbler folk envy and emulate. The other, Frank Bowen, is a sweet- faced, soft-voiced, gentle-mannered youth of 18, the son of Charles E. Bowen, senior member of the well- known firm of Wetmore-Bowen, that has done 50 much to make the fame of California wines. His mother s a handsome, capable woman, possessing all the social graces and a thorough knowledge of the world—an exception- ally intelligent, sophisticated woman. Donald McKisick, who, it is true, fs over 20, is boyish, debonalr, well- groomed and rather nice-looking, with all the outward qualifications that would make a young man welcome in business, club and society life. I've no doubt that many a less fa- vored young fellow of his acquaintance has envied him his obvious advantages and wished that he too had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Frank Bowen, with his youthful face and pleasant manners, seems to be only a gently nurtured, well brought up high school boy, more shy than other- wise. Yet these two were caught late at night trying to break into the Southern Pacific station at Alameda, and on one of them when they were taken to the jail and searched—on the youthful, gentle-mannered, sweet-faced Frank Bowen, who seems more shy than otherwise—was found a formidable iron bar, a very thug-like looking imstru- T Il | ‘ mh&fl.‘&lfiffis. ment for a well brought up boy to be incumbered with. The circumstances under which these somewhat fashionable youngsters were apprehended was, to say the least, sus- ph'imt, and the police thought it worth while®o search the shack in which they had been making a sort of bachelor headquarters. There they found among other queer things several pocketfuls of pawn tick- ets for a miscellaneous varlety of sil- verware and jewelry; also a letter from John Hammersmith of Hammer- smith & Fleld to young Boweq telling him to come to work on a certain day. The police, scenting a connection betwedn the pawned jewelry and the jewelry firm, calied upon Mr. Ham- mersmith, who, much to his surprise, found that his jewelry stock had been looted to the extent of several hundred dollars’ worth and that the pawned articles were his. And it is apropos of what Mr. Ham- mersmith sa about this theft in his store that the case of Frank Bowen and Donald McKisick is especially in- teresting. Mr. Hammersmith says that cases like this are not at. all unusual, that nice- appearing, well brought up, well connect- ed boys like young Bowen and young McKissick who turn thief when they get the chance are not by any means un- heard of in the business world. Quite the contrary. “This sort of thing,” says Mr. Ham- mersmith, “is going on all the time in every business house in the city. There are more cases of this sort than are re- ported to the police or made public, that are hushed up—condoned by indulgent business men who yield to the entreaties of disappointed parents and relatives, settled at almost any sacrifice by un- happy fathers or mothers who want to save the family name and give their boy another chance. “Business men are practically at the mercy of boys they take into_their em- ploy, young fellows that they are giving a chance. “No business man can protect himself on all sides. He Is practically at the mercy of his employes. In the first place he ‘doesn’'t want to suspect them. He hasn't the time to watch them. It isn't possible for him to safeguard every ave- nue through which he can be robbed. “If a boy wants to steal, if he has it in him to abuse the confidence placed {n him, to Pe a thief, there’s no way of heading him off. He can always find a way. For anybody nothing is easier than to do wrong if you want to. “And that's the surprising thing about it—there are so many boys now who seem to want to do wrong. “I don’t know why it is—whether boys are worse than they used to be, whether they are not as well brought up as they used to be, or whether they have more temptations than boys nsed to have, but it s a fact that there Is probably not a v ;,qm;'/!’lfi!-" il N "'{“\ il ]| | \ "”.*fi"’{“{‘ ‘l |";; 1y \\!‘t \ business man in this city who has not had his confidence abused at some time or other, and I think that scarcely a day passesgthat some boy or young man is not caught in some wrong act against his employer. “There is really nothing that the busi- ness man can do to protect himself except try to be as careful as possible in select- ing his employes. “That 1s what I thought I was doing when I took the Bowen boy into my em- ploy. There he was—a nice looking, gentle- mahly, pleasant boy, gn his own account. I knew his family. Why, his father and I were schoolmates. Naturally I felt no hesitation about putting him to work when we took a lot of extra salesmen for the holiday trade. I put‘him, as we al- ways put these extra men, as far out of the way of temptation as possible, keep- ing him at the cases where the smaller and less valuable articles are, and away from the high-priced jewels: but that didn’t do any good. He wanted to steal— and so he found it possible to steal, even out of the case where the dlamonds are kept, a case in which he had no business to put his hand. “He stole deliberately, for he took not one but many articles, and as the police found out pawned them to get trifling sums of money. “Since his arrest it has come out that thisyis not his first wrongdoing; that he has been in a good many pretty bad- looking scrapes before. It is hard to know what to do in a case like this. The boy is young. He is the son of a friend. It scems hard to prosecute him. But he is a bad boy, and there are so many bad boys. The right thing to do, perhaps; is to let the law take its course and make an ex- ample of him. N J “Surely something should be done to put a stop to this sort of thing.” This is the plain straight{ kindly statement of a busin puzzled by the condition of thin inclined to exercise all charity as justice. What Mr. Hammersmith says about the insecurity of the husiness man and the peccability of boys is corroborated at every turn. A door to door canvass in the business district, retail and he rward man, s well L 4 L4 O rallroad accidents are more lamentable or inexcusable than those arising from neglect of signals; For as our systems are organized to-day each train- man is supposed to know what each green light and each red light and every other warning device means and upon his prompt and thorough obedience depend the lives and property of those who have intrusted themselves to the railway companies for safe transportation. And when a man either through carelessness or willfulness disregards a signal he nul- lifies the proper working out of a care- -fully planned schedule and often brings terrible consequences upon himself and others. ‘We are all quick to condemn the re- creant engineer or switchman, but when it comes to the sphere of our own lives we daily run by the signals with hagdly a thought of what we are doing. The course of life resembles a rallroad track. We start at a given point and are head- ed toward the terminus at the other end of the line, but as we rush- along how numerous are the chances for derailment and aisaster! Yet as we speed forward, there are placed along the track at cer- tain Intervals warning and admecnishing signals. We are told when to slow up and when to quicken our pace and when to halt altogether. There is one class T THE BAD BOY MEANS T8 THE BUJINESS MA BT HELEN DAR wholesale, but piles incident upon inci- dent. One of the big firms of retallers of dry goods suffered a loss that ran into the thousands through a dishonest clique of employes, all young, that had banded together for the purpose of systemized stealing that was carried on for many months without detection. Boys trusted with the making of col- lections, boys trusted with the deliver- ing of goods, with the sale of them, with merely the handling and cleaning of them, have betrayed their trust in every firm on every block on every street, sometimes only to the extent of trifling pilferings, sometimes with ex- ceedingly clever crookedness, in large amounts. Why §s it? And what can the business man, the man who must take his chances with the boy, do about it? Is it, as Mr. Hammersmith suggests, that perhaps boys are worse than they used to be? Hardly that, for human nature re- peats itself with singular pers! Is it, as Mr. Hammersmith again sug- gests, that perhaps boys are not brought up so well as they used to be, as carefully disciplined, as rigidly held to principle? s Perhaps they are not so uncompro- misingly taught that black 1is black and white is white; that a lle is a lie and not a clever evasion; that a theft is a theft and not a shrewd and cutely managed temporary appropriation of another person’s property. Is it, as Mr. Hammersmith suggests with firmer confidence, that there are more temptations assailing boys than there used to be? A pitying heaven knows that there are pitfalls In plenty open befors young feet. What are the things that a boy—who is the most voraciously curious young animal in the world—can do right here in San Francisco? He can get the grossest, most de- grading conceptions of the eriminal, the obscene, the vicious in life by gluing his eyes to the exhibits In our unhampered and uncenséred penny peep shows. His plastic young mind can be be- fouled by the vilest exhlibitions at thea- ters on our main thoroughfares. He can take ten minutes from the time it takes to run an errand for his unsus- * pecting mother to acquire a corrupting knowledge that ten years of her en- deavor won't cleanse from hjs mind. He can, even while he Is a cheruble little ,chap in knickerbockers, get the first insidious impulse toward gam- bling by playing iround a cigar stand, a bootblack stand, or chattering over the counter of a newsstand. Littik boys, If they want to gamble with the dimes and quarters that come their way honestly or by hook and crook, can do so without shooting craps in an alley—which they may do also while one of their number sacrificing enough to act as lookout for the policeman on the beat. They, too, can get their “tips on the races,” and place their “best bets” with the cigar man, the bootblack or the news vender. Ana a little reached the dignity of is self- they have trousers later when long and stiff coll they can vary their gambling with hazards at dice and cards in the “clubs” maintained for such purpeses—and such pigeons, or shall we say squab’—clubs regularly “incorporated” if you please, Maybe you think they can’t; and If you do just inquire casually, say, among the precocious youths at the poys' schools in this vicinity and among their masters. The big boys who borrow from the smaller boys, lLeir worshipers, for this purpose are the boys who pilfer for the same pur- as numerous from their empioy, pose. And—perhaps even more dreadful in the fond mother’s eyes is this—if a boy mbitions toward drunkenness he can y them. We Americans do not, like the Eng- lish and Germans, give our children beer and light wines as beverages, but boys, as I've said already. are the most voraciously curious little animals in the world, and as inquisitive as pupples about the flavor and the feel of for- bidden things. C There is an as has ordinance. of course, i ¢ RUNNING BY THE SIGNALS @ @ A SUNDAY SERMON of signais for children and another for young men and young women and en- other for persons in middle life, and still another for the aged. But no period of life is without its signals. The warnings that relate to our phy- sical well-being are many and constant. The baby toddles up to the stove, puts its finger on the hot cover and eries out with pain. But that experience serves as a signal to remind the child perhaps for all time that stoves with fires in them are always hot and are always to be let alome. Through the limbs and bodies of older people dart now and then significant pains, or they find themselves sleepless at night or craving strong stim- ulants or irritable and fretful. Signals they are which nature overdriven or neg- lected hangs out to tell us that we are doing violence to our bodles, which are something more than so much muscle, bone and tissue, but veritable temples of the Holy Spirit. The signals mean that it 18 time to slow up, to reconstruct our methads, to consider whether we are do- ing the falr thing by ourselves in point of diet, exércise and rest. / As we mingle with our fellow men we get a variety of helpful signals that if heeded may lead us to a stricter watch upcn habits and actions. An unexpect- edly large bili comes in. Your feeling of irritation is perhaps the token that you are living beyond your means or are too socially ambitious, Somebody jokes you about your fondness. for somebody framed no doubt with a most satisfying sense of virtue, forbidding the sale of intoxicants to mipors. but in how many places is it strictly cbserved? And in how many more D basely, deliberately and wil nored! Youn boy or mine, if he has the price and the appetite, o seven out of every ten of the rner groceries where the bar furnishes the chief rev- enue, and into every one of the low drinking places so cheerfully flourishing in this careless city, and buy a drink or two, or as many as he has money for. Why only the other day thers was the report in our daily papers of how one of these same obliging “groceries” was robbed by two boys. In two papers the report was almost Identical, In each paper the prebrietor being quoted as say- ing that never for a moment did he suspect the daring boys of being robbers, because, just mark this, “They were sO young, MERE BOYS, and they came in, ORDERED DRINKS, and HE SET THEIR WHISKY ON THE BaR FOR THEM,” before they made a move to- ward holding him up. And the most striking thing about the )ne news- whole circumstance is paper, and not one anxious mother, so far as the world know any comment on the proprietor’s = Nobody came forward prote: this man was violat! valuable of our i But there are a that is generally admit ribly worried about them. There are many temptations to begu boys into what s merely mischief; ther are the all that cause boys with no al come—to wav honesty; but these unpleasantly cata worse—are the things that shatter | rity, that rout principle, that send from bad to worse. And apropos of this descent, of b they can go in the wrong way, Mr. mersmith made a significant comment. “When I was with the Mystic Shrin- ers, on our excursion to Reno, we stopped off at Folsom and visited the State pris that not nances 7 bad boys— we do from home om the good on, and I was astounded, on going through it, to find th so many the convi the majort f them I believe, were ny of scarcely in their early twenties. Mothers who admire the rosy archness of a boyish face above his innocent bowl of mush and milk or rice pud: they could but lift the lid and look the youngster's would, many a time and o prised and shocked by their discoveries as was Mr. th by his at Fol- som. inner consc » be aral and feminine, our It is human and nat of co ve t sW: not it would be better to recognize painful facts frank- ly and try to re them. Mrs. Bowen rse, to bell geese are for her boy with almost primitive passion, told me how good a boy he had always been. “At home five nights out of seven in the week.” “Always just as sweet and gentle as he could be, and devoted to me.” “Never using a profane word.” “A mere boy.” And she called him to me in the of- fice of Alameda’s Chlef of Police to show me, by an ocular demonstration, what a well-appearing boy he’ was. And ndeed I found him so—but weak and selt-indulgent, if physiognomy tells us anything—the type that finds It hardest to resist temptation. “My boy,” sald Mrs. Bowen, in des- perate mother pride, “could not have done these things he s accused of. It is impossible. But there, alas! was the iron bar— an uncomfortable metal fact—that was found upon him. And there were the pawn tiokets, the pleces of silverware and jewelry in the pawnshops, and the empty places whers they had been i Hammersmith's & Field's. Perhapa to rear a boy without rec- ognizing him as a very human, fallible creature, with possibilities for evil as well as good in his plastic nature, is as dangerous as salling a ship along an uncharted coast. else’s wife. It's only a joke mads in good temper and yet it sets you think- ing and you becoms more circumspect. What signals does a man get from time to time touching the state and prospects of his soul? Some Sunday morning your little child comes to you and says, “Papa, why don't you ever go to church with_us?* The blunt question rather starefes you and instead of answering her directly you repeat the question si- lently to yourself. Or maybe you are a churchgoer, but the sermons and the hallowed associations fail to touch and inspire you as they used to do. It is possible that the minister is becoming dull, but it is more likely that your mind s so crusted over with schemes for get- ting rich that the arrow from the preach- er's quiver cannot plerce to the spot where you really live. Nothing is mere pathetic in human life than the increas- ing insensibility of many men absorbed in business and pleasure to the ap- peal of higher interests, their unsuscept- ibility to the higher forms of literature, music and art, their indiference to Jesus Christ. But in the gracious ordering of Iife there are signals all along the way. And they mean that some one Is trying to communicate with us who has more knowledge than we and who wants to help us avoid pitfalls and snares. He knows the track ahead of us as we cannot know it, and he would save us from plunging headlong to wreck and ruin. . @