This has added to the criminal code and has increased the number of men in prisons. Two statutes of recent date in most of the states are responsible for a very large increase in the number of convicts. The conspiracy statute which is used today is a deliberate scheme on the part of prosecutors to get men into the penitentiary by charging an agreement or confederation of two or more persons to do something, which, if really committed, would be a misdemeanor, or no crime whatever. Under this charge, whether made specifically or in connection with another crime, the rules of evidence have been opened and relaxed until the wildest and most remote hearsay is freely admitted for the plain purpose of convicting men who have really been guilty of no specific act. It is in effect punishing one for his thoughts; the business of the court or jury being to find out whether in some particular he has an evil mind. The statute forbidding the use of the "confidence game" in obtaining property sends to prison a constant stream of persons who, until a few years ago, would have been guilty of no crime. This law, as interpreted by the courts, really means the procuring of money by dishonest means. Under this statute the court and jury hear the evidence and say whether the means charged are dishonest or not. This, of course, leaves the law so that the temporarily prevailing power, perhaps only the prosecuting attorney, may send men to prison who take means of getting money that are not practiced or at least advocated by the ones who procure the passage and enforcement of the law. Numberless ways used by the strong to get money are considered dishonest by a large class of men and women: exaggerated and lying advertisements, forestalling the markets, the acts and wiles of the professional salesman, misrepresenting goods and other methods that could never be catalogued because new ways are constantly coming to light. The logical end of all these indefinite and uncertain laws is to pass one statute providing that whoever does wrong shall be imprisoned, _et cetera, et cetera_. The law never can specify all the ways of doing wrong and many of the meanest and most annoying things have never been, and from the nature of things never can be, prohibited by the statutes. No man is a good citizen, a good neighbor, a good friend, or a good man just because he obeys the law. The intrinsic worth is determined mainly by the intrinsic make-up.