MANUFACTURE OF "CROOKS"

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 105, 30 October 1913, Page 11

MANUFACTURE OF "CROOKS"

Jack Rose, the converted crook, \whose revelations of the complicity of the. New York police in crime, produced a national sensation, and whose evidence concerning the murder of Rosenthal entailed the conviction of^ Police Lieutenant Becker, assumed a "new role last month, when he lectured at South Norwalk, Connecticut, in aid of the local Episcopal Church (writes a New York correspondent). Rose's address was entitled "What Makes up the Underworld?" He spoke in a quiet, self-posseßsed voice. "The underworld here and, elsewhere," said the Rosenthal informer, ."is made up from the so-called reform schools. These schools defeat the very purpose foi! which they were built. It was in a reform school that I learned to be a crook ; it was in a reform school tliat four young men now in Sing Sing death-house learned to be bad men. Society must reform its reform schools, or the manufacture of crooks will con: tinue to be as bad as before. My entrance to the Underworld really caniev>f my having typhoid fever when I was a little lad. When I came out of it I hadn't a hair on my head, and was doomed never to be able to grow any. Tljo children used to make fun of me all the time, and I was sensitive, so I played truant to keep away from being ridiculed. For playing truant I was sent to a reform school. There*l met boys who had done nothing worse than I had, and all for something liko similar ( reasons, boys ashamed of their ragged . clothes or some deformity. Then there were orphans, who never had any other place to go to, and witlr us there were a few really wicked boys, little thieves and gamblers, but before ' we came out, we Komv all their tricks. When I came ous, of tho reform school nice boys turned their backs on me. I went V> vieit relatives one night, and they wouldn't/ receive me. My parents wero shocked and sowas I. I ran- away that night-. ami tho underworld got me." Rose supported ins denunciative oi reformatory /schools by statistics ■which