Daily Gazette & Comet [Baton Rouge, LA], November 20, 1860
Respectable Dimensions.—The fact that there is as yet no workhouse in our limits, is known far and near. There is a kind of fraternity among thieves, beggars and loafers, under which they are all kept posted, as to the best places for them to migrate to, when driven out of the last community infected by their presence. Because we have no workhouse here, as well as because of the fact that under the new regeme of Democratic ethics, we have no right to take even the lowest of the vulgar swell mob, and put him to work on the streets, to keep him out of the gutter in which he falls at the expense of the public, is the cause of an effect which gives indifferently honest people a right to complain of a burthen of taxation, not only for the legitimate purposes of government, but also for the illegitimate. In the last category may be placed the onerous burthen of bearing the taxes needed for the support of the vilest vagabonds.
In the early history of Red Stick, there was a chain-gang employed on the public works. Democracy having touched the verge of liberty, we hope to see a reaction and a restoration of some of the primitive features of government. It cannot be safe for the interest of government, even under the broad branches of the tree of liberty, to allow the liberty to steal; the liberty to get drunk and fall in the gutter; the liberty of vagabondage. We are infested with a motley crew of vagabonds; not only in the city, but in the country. Idle scoundrels who travel from house to house, and where they cannot obtain what they want by begging—steal. The offences are all within the limit of the law, which prescribes the penitentiary as a remedy, and the offenders go to the Parish prison, and are fed at the public cost. On Monday last there were no less than thirteen of this crew before his Honor the Mayor, all taken up by the watch on Sunday night. Mayor Elam, we are proud to say it, is disposed to deal upon them the full rigor of his authority; but what is it? It is limited to imprisonment in the Parish jail for a few days. He may fine them, but fining amounts to nothing. There is but one deprivation to the motley crew in jail, and that is whisky. Give it to them say we—enlarge the dimensions of the prison and keep them out of the streets. It will be the cheapest way to get rid of them.