Criminal Impropriety, Part 2

Heart and Soul by Maveric Post
by Victor Mapes

(Page 10 of 14)

Los Angeles Times, Dec. 17, 1920.

The financial and business summary for December, issued by the Citizens' National Bank, will be circulated to-day. This careful review of general conditions classes business as unsatisfactory from the standpoint of current activity, but hastens to explain that data supporting this conclusion is on the surface, and then, arguing from the human standpoint, says that there is greater need just now that we determine when the tendency to cancel contracts, and otherwise strike the element of integrity from our business relations, will cease, than there is that we know when commodity prices will reach the bottom.

"To-day," the summary continues, "we are registering a very low point of commercial morality, and as we approach the portals of a new year, a year full of promise and plenty, there is a great need of a full individual sense of our personal relations to one another.

"It is not a struggling that is tearing apart the commercial, social and home circles of to-day; instead, it is the lack of struggle, a missing ambition to stamp out the measure of selfishness that has been permitted to breed in the human consciousness. Our growth during the coming years, both as individual business concerns, as a nation, and as a race, will be in a direct ratio to our re-establishment of individual and mass integrity.

"The weakness of the bond market is merely an affair of permanence. It seems to be purely a seller's market with the cause of the selling temporarily prohibitive to reinvestment. The income tax has caused a new seasonal liquidation period to be written into the category of investment influences so that the present bond market, though definitely in a major trend upward, still hangs down around bargain levels.

"Possibly some sympathetic bear influence is reflected into the present bond market through the sharp breaks in the stock market, yet whatever may be the cause of present low bond prices and dull activity, it is certain that the underlying fundamentals in control of the investment situation are favorable to a long swing upward, with the course to higher levels graded and fit for rapid travel when the turn of the year re-energizes the sinews of finance."

The protest against the present "blue-laws" is strong and the laws under fire are branded as the limit of legislative meddling, but here are some of the old laws that were really blue:

These laws once were in force in Connecticut:

No one shall run on the Sabbath day, or walk in his garden or elsewhere, except reverently to and from meeting.

No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep house, cut hair, or shave on the Sabbath day.

No woman shall kiss her child on the Sabbath or fasting day.

The Sabbath shall begin at sunset on Saturday.

Whoever brings cards or dice into this dominion shall pay a fine of five pounds.

No one shall read common prayer, keep Christmas or Saints' days, make mince pies, dance, play cards or play on any instrument of music except the drum, trumpet and Jew's harp.

No gospel minister shall join people in marriage; the magistrates only shall join in marriage, as they may do it with less scandal to Christ's church.

A man that strikes his wife shall pay a fine of ten pounds; a woman that strikes her husband shall be punished as the court directs.

A wife shall be deemed good evidence against her husband.

No man shall court a maid in person, or by letter, without first obtaining consent of her parents; five pounds penalty for the first offense to imprisonment for the third offense.

Married persons must live together or be imprisoned.

Every male person shall have his hair cut round according to a cap.

A child over sixteen years old who strikes his father shall be put to death.

A child over sixteen years old who is stubborn and rebellious shall be put to death.

Whoever, professing the Christian religion, shall wittingly deny the Song of Solomon to be the infallible word of God, may be whipped forty lashes and fined fifty pounds.

Whoever marries two wives or more shall be executed.

Saying that the Christian religion is a politic device to keep ignorant men in awe shall be punished with death.

Any man who uses tobacco in the street shall be fined, or if he do so in his own house, a stranger being present, he shall be fined, but if on a journey, five miles from any house, he may smoke.

Any single person without a servant, wishing to keep house by himself, must get the consent of the selectmen unless he be a public officer.

Persons not proved guilty, but lying under a strong suspicion of guilt, may be punished, though not so severely as would be the case had they been convicted.

Every family must have a Bible, catechism and other good books.

Copyright 1921 by The Century Co.