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Newspaper Page Text
MARRIED MEN ENTITLED TO THE BLUE RIBBON BUt NOT BY A VERY BIG MARGIN There may be a first prize ribbon i pinned on the breasts of married men in .Chicago because a Cesser number of them have landed in jail than single men, but they just made the race by a nose and they are en titled, according to statistic to no such halos as have been stuck on the heads of married men in Los Angeles, where Police Court Defender James Pope declared 90 percent more bach elors get in jail than benedicts. There were 9,654 men in the county jail last year, and of these 3,871 were married, leaving 5,783 not married. But hold! Don't jump at conclusions! Of that lot of single men there were 1,517 who were be low the marriageable age, so they have to be counted out, which gives the married men a percentage of less than 10 to the better of the bachelors. Warden Will T. Davies of the 'County jail furnished the figures, and in his explanation to a Day Book re- ' porter of the reason for the slim per centage the married men have to the good he didn't put blue ribbons on matrimony, but offered a logical early-start-oa-the-cnminal path rea son for the single men. "The statistics of married and sin gle men in the 'jail in the past year maKe it aimosi an even oreaK, war den Davi'es said, "but' in the cases where there are more single men than married serving time, as it 'true in some of the prisons, it is because' a young fellow starts a career of crime long before he is of a mar riageable age. Many of them are from 14 to 16 years old when they commit their first offense. If the boy continues in crime by the time he is 25 he is probably serving a long sen tence somewhere and has served sev eral shorter ones between the time he was 14 and 21, so that he hasn't been in a position to marry. j "A large percentage of men in ' prisons are under 30 years" of age and are undoubtedly single, but what chance would they have to get mar ried, even if they wanted to? "If a man who is in jail here want ed to get married I wouldn't permit it unless in a so-called 'bastardy case' where it may legitimatize a child, and when these young fellows are out of jail or prisons they do not lead lives that give Ihem any desire for marriage. "Of course, I am speaking of cases where there are more single men than married in prisons. The differ ence in percentage here is too small to use as any proof that marriage is a preventive of crime, and I doubt if the figures for a given year in Los Angeles would show any such per centage as has been given for the short period covered by Police Court Defender Pope." The reporter called Mr. Davies at tention to the fact that the very few married'' men who did land in jail in Los Angeles were without the re straining influence of children in the home, but Mr. Davies handed out gome more figures that offset this. For the married men in the County jail last year had divided among them just exactly 2,164 living children. o o New York. Heat yesterday most severe of present summer killed 5, drove 2 to suicide; numerous pros trations. Cleveland. Four deaths due to heat; three persons bitten by mad dogs in last 24 hours. Street temper- 'ature near hundred mark. New York. Steamship Ramos, carrying coal from Philadelphia to Cartagena, has apparently disap peared and it is feared she is lost Paris. Peggy Gillespie, Pittsburgh girl who dazzled Paris with her dar ing gowns and eccentricities, married on her deathbed to Henry Letellier, one of wealthiest men in Franca. j--ag aAjy