CRIME IN PENNSYLVANIA.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1388, 27 July 1878, Page 3

CRIME IN PENNSYLVANIA.

“The amount of crime in proportion topopuulaiton is probably greater in Pennsylvania,” observes the “San Francisco Examiner,” “ than in any other state of the same age in the Union; and at the same time, especially in the latitude of Philadelphia, the Sabbatarian spirit is more pronounced and offensive than almost anywhere else. Its latest manifestation is a bill recently introduced in the Legislature, asking that body to close up the Zoological garden and the Museum of Fine Arts on Sunday. The Boston “ Post ” hopes, for the welfare of the Philadelphia public, and for the interest of progress, that such a short-sighted snd unreasonable policy will not prevail. It is not charged that either of the resorts is other than harmless and improving in itself, but the petition which the bill embodies says by implication as plainly as it could by direction, that the working-people, who have no other days than Sunday for recreation and the enlargement of their ideas, shall not enjoy the advantages that are offered to people of leisure. Such places should be opened Sunday of all days in the week, and, what is more, they should be made free. The Municipal Government should make (hem so, and it can afford it on purely economical grounds, for by as much as they are multiplied by so much will crime decrease and men and women grow in knowledge and refinement When the Public Library was opened on Sunday in Boston it was in the face of fierce opposition, and similar objection, though in a less degree, was offered to the opening of the Art Museum upon the Sabbath. But no one can study the results of these movements and say that they have not been among the progressive and beneficent forces of our recent history.”