He cannot meet these charges by proving the acts of kindness and charity and real worth that are rarely absent in any life. The proceedings show how bad he is, not how good. He may be able to call witnesses to show that up to the time of the bringing of the indictment his reputation for honesty was good; but he cannot show that he supported his grandmother, or helped his aunt, or educated his younger brother, or gave his money to the poor. All the good is irrelevant to the issue. This does not prove that he did not commit the act. It might clearly prove whether on the whole he should go to jail. Through this process he feels that the law and proceedings are unfair and that he is condemned, when, in fact, he is as good as those who judge him. Neither can he show the circumstances that hedged in his way nor the equipment with which he entered life. Under the legal theory that he is “the captain of his soul,” these are not material to the issue. Neither can he show the direct motive that caused the conduct. It may have been a motive that was ideal, but the question involved is, did he violate the law?
He is convicted and sent to prison. As a rule, he will some time be turned back into the world. He needs careful treatment, involving instruction and an appeal to that part of his nature which may awaken sympathies and produce emotions that will make him more of a social being on his return to the world. In the loose language of the world, it is necessary for him not only to learn how to curb the evil but how to increase the good. His imagination should be cultivated and enlarged. The responses to better sentiment should be strengthened. This can be furthered only by skilled teachers who are moved by the desire to help him. The process should be similar to a hospital treatment. Instead of this, he is usually surrounded by men of little intelligence or education, men who have no fitness for the task; he is governed by strict rules, all of them subjecting him to severe penalties when violated. Every action in the prison reminds him of his status. With the exception of a few strong men who need suffering for their development it can have but one result. He must come out from prison poorer material than when he went in. There are only two reflections that can keep him out of trouble in the future: the remembrance of the past and the fear that a similar experience might come to him again.
When it is remembered that the greatest enemy to happiness and life is fear; when we realize that the constant battle of the primitive man was with the fear that peoples the unknown with enemies and dangers; when we remember that in some way, fear of poverty, of disease, of disaster, of loss of friends and life is the ever-present enemy of us all, it is evident that nothing but harm can come from the lessons of fear that are drilled into the victim in prison. Life furnishes countless ways to be kind and helpful and social. It furnishes infinite ways to be cruel, hard and anti-social. Most of these anti-social ways are not condemned by the law. Whether the life is helpful and kindly or hard and selfish can never depend upon the response of an organism to fear, but upon the response of an organism to the kindlier and more humane and sympathetic sentiments that to some extent at least inhere in the constitution of man.
It is a common thing for prisoners, even during the longest term, to be more solicitous about mother, child, wife, brother or friend than about themselves. It is common for them to deny themselves privileges, presents or favors to help other inmates. The consideration and kindness shown by unfortunates to each other are surprising to those who have no experience with this class of men. Often to find real sympathy you must go to those who know what misery means. Pride and coldness are usually due to lack of understanding, and life alone can bring understanding. Every intelligent man engaged in efforts to improve and help either criminals or children or any others, knows the need of an appeal to what passes as the better nature. Help does not come so much from directly inhibiting the bad as by extending the area of the higher emotions. To pull up weeds in a garden without planting something in their place is a foolish task. The human being is like the garden. Something must grow in the soil. If weeds are pulled up and nothing planted Nature will grow more weeds. Some feelings and emotions always possess every person. The best that is incident to the machine should be found and this be cultivated and extended until it dominates the man. Courts and prisons have no machinery to cultivate the best in their victims; they are always looking for the worst, aiding and promoting it until the prisoner is driven to hopelessness and despair.
XXVI
THE DEFECTIVE AND INSANE
It is almost hopeless to bring any system or order out of the chaos that prevails in the discussion of the insane, the defective, the moron, and the feeble-minded. The world has so long believed that man is a specially created animal and that he does wrong from free choice, that much more time and investigation are necessary before sane and scientific theories can be formulated on this subject.
It has been a great many years since any semi-intelligent man believed that all sorts of physical abnormalities were due to one cause and could be cured by one method, and yet the prevailing opinion now, even among the fairly educated, is that all sorts of abnormal conduct are due to one cause, perversity and wickedness, and should be treated with only one prescription, punishment. Scientific men indeed have long known that there were causes for the abnormality of conduct and that there were various more or less satisfactory remedies for many cases. Still the time that scientists have worked on the problem is short and the data imperfect, and many years of patient study will be needed before there can be worked out the broad theories of responsibility for and treatment of crime which will replace the long accepted doctrines of original sin, and the expulsion of devils from the wicked by cruelty and punishment.
By far the largest part of the population of prisons is made up of the insane, feeble-minded, morons, defectives or victims of diseases that seriously influence conduct. This is especially shown by the increased percentage of the clearly defective that are repeaters, over those in prison for their first offense. There is no lack of statistics as to the various groups of defectives, but these figures cannot be reconciled. No two authorities agree as to percentages; the classifications are more or less uncertain; the dividing lines between the different groups are vague, one class easily fading into another. The investigations have largely been made by those not trained for the work, and above all the conclusions as to treatment are at variance, doubtful and necessarily not yet satisfactory. That the clearly insane and the plainly feeble-minded should not be punished would doubtless be admitted by all who speak in public or write for others to read. Many persons speaking in private, acting on juries and connected with the machinery of “justice” say that these should be punished like the rest. Still for a starting point, it may be assumed that most men would agree that these classes should be restrained rather than punished.
The chief difficulty is that between the most violently insane and the least emotional man are infinite numbers of gradations blending so closely that no one can mathematically or scientifically classify all the various individual units. While there are cases of insanity that can be clearly traced to injury or disease, the degree of sanity in most cases is still impossible to determine. Most insane people are sane on some things, generally on most things and are sane a part or most of the time. The periods of sanity and insanity can be distinguished only by conduct. How far any specific insanity may impair the brain and affect the inhibitions, is impossible to foretell.
When it comes to the defective, the problem is still more difficult. No two persons have the same degree of intelligence. Some are clearly lacking in mentality. Others are manifestly intelligent. The great mass range all along between these extremes. Various arbitrary rules have been laid down to aid in classifying different grades of defectives. Generally the feeble-minded can be sorted out. The defectives are supposed, if young, to be two years or more below the normal scholar in development; if older, three or more below. Their standing is fixed by asking certain test questions. Furthermore, a list of questions has been commonly used for an “intelligence test.” These queries have nothing to do with the school work of the child, but are supposed to reveal only his native intelligence.
No doubt in a broad way such tests throw considerable light on the mentality of those who submit to the examination. Ordinary experience, however, shows that they cannot be fully relied on. Some children develop very slowly, others very rapidly. Some are much quicker, others slower in their perceptions and responses. No two children or grown-ups have the same turn of mind. One may be very bright in business affairs and very dull in books. One may be clever in arithmetic and hopeless in grammar. One may have marked mechanical ability and no taste for school. These tests are only valuable if given by well qualified examiners, and the method is so new that few have had the chance to thoroughly prepare for the work. For the most part the tests are given by people who are wholly unfit for so important a task.
Quite aside from all this it is not certain that intelligent people are necessarily safer to the community than stupid ones. There is always a tendency for the stupid to stick to the beaten path. Intelligence generally means individuality and divergence. On the other hand, the stupid and subnormal are moved much more directly by instincts and emotions. Their lack of imagination, poor perceptions and want of reasoning or comparing power, make their self-control weak. In sudden stress or an unusual situation, they are easily swept away and respond directly to instinct and feeling. In short the urge of the primitive through the long history of the race cannot be modified sufficiently by the new structure that civilization has built around more intelligent people.
The various distinctions between the feeble-minded and the normal must not be taken with too much confidence. As the motives that govern man are understood, it is easy to see that intelligence is a strong factor in regulating behavior. When it is seen also that at least the larger part of the inmates of prisons are subnormal and at the same time without property or education, it is evident that all these handicaps are dominating causes of conduct. This position is made still more certain by the further evidence that nearly all of the repeaters in prison are of this type.
Most states already make some allowances in their criminal codes for the defective and the insane. This is really an acknowledgment that the activity of the human machine is governed by its make and environment. The history of the treatment of the insane serves to show the uncertainty of all man’s theories as to punishment and responsibility. Doubtless at a very early age in the history of man it was discovered that there were people who acted so abnormally that they could not be classified with the great mass. Such persons were supposed to be possessed of devils or demons, and various incantations and practices were used to drive the devils out. Failing in this they were put in prison, loaded with chains or put to death because of their danger to the community.
In other communities, however, insane persons were thought to be possessed of special gifts. God had come nearer to them than to common mortals, and they were seers or prophets endowed with a portion of the divine power.
Either view of the problem is explainable by the lack of scientific or exact knowledge that marks early societies. Still these societies relied on punishments just as much as our present law-makers and enforcers, possibly more, because presumably less enlightened. Further investigation and experiences with the insane have convinced even the most casual observer that they function somewhat differently from other people; there is not the same certainty between stimulus and response. What they will do and how they will act under given conditions cannot be foretold with anything approaching the exactness that is possible with the normal.
The origin of the insanity in many cases is clearly traceable: sometimes to lesions; sometimes to illness; sometimes to the mode of life; perhaps more is due to heredity than to any other cause. At any rate in theory the civilized world has long since ceased to hold the insane criminally responsible for their acts. This applies only to the clearly insane. The border-line is impossible to find, and many cases are so difficult to classify that there is often a doubt as to where the given patient belongs. In times when the crowd is mad with the mob psychology of hatred, people are impatient of insanity and do not care whether the accused was sane or not at the time of the commission of the act. Many insane are put to death or sentenced to long terms of punishments. Jails and other penal institutions are constantly sorting their inmates and finding many who were clearly insane at the time their sentences began.
Society is beginning to find out that even where there is no marked insanity, many are so near idiocy that they cannot fairly be held responsible for their acts. The line here is just as vague and uncertain as with the insane. Thus far, society has not provided adequate protection for the public against this class; neither has it properly cared for these unfortunates. It has simply excused their conduct, except in cases where some act is so shocking that it arouses special hatred, and then it freely declares that it makes no difference whether the accused is a defective or not; he is of no value to the world and should die. Many of this class are put to death. I am inclined to think that most of those executed are either insane or serious defectives; and those who say that such people are of no value are probably right. It is perhaps equally true that few if any are of value, for when value is considered we are met with the question: “Value to whom, or for what?” All you can say of any one is that he wishes to live, and has the same inherent instincts and emotions toward life as are common to all other men.
Even the legal tests as to insanity and feeble-mindedness are neither logical nor humane. Often the definition is given by courts that if one is able to distinguish between right and wrong, he is sane within the meaning of the law. This definition of insanity is utterly unscientific. If the insane or the defective above an idiot is questioned specifically whether certain distinct things are right or wrong, he can generally give the conventional classification. Often he can tell much better than the intelligent man, for he has been arbitrarily taught the things that are right and wrong and has not the originality or ability to inquire whether the classification is right or how far circumstances and conditions determine right and wrong.
Conduct is ruled by emotion, and actions depend not upon whether one has learned to classify certain conduct as right or wrong, but whether from education, life or otherwise, the thought of a certain act produces a quick and involuntary reaction against doing it. No one believes or feels that it is always really wrong to violate some statutes, and most men indulge in many practices that are wrong and repulsive but not forbidden by the criminal code.
Furthermore, the insane and subnormal are influenced by punishment and fear. Even the animal responds to both. It is possible that in many instances those who are insane and subnormal are influenced by fear more than the intelligent and normal. The most that can be said is that they have not the same power of resistance that is given stronger men. This means only that they have not stored up the experiences of life so well; that their nervous system has not so well conveyed impressions, or that their power of comparison is less; this, in turn, means that it will take greater stress or harder environment to overcome the inhibitions of the sane than the insane. The treatment of the insane and the defective is an acknowledgment that all conduct comes from a direct response of the machine to certain stimuli and the machine can act only in a way consistent with its mechanism.
In other cases, the courts often recognize the strength of hereditary defects in nullifying environment with its strict ideas of right and wrong. The kleptomaniac is generally recognized as being a well-defined class of the insane. Most of the shop-lifters are women. This is especially a female crime. It is useless to explain why. It is not a daring crime; it is secretive in its nature; it requires more stealth than courage; it especially appeals to women on account of their taste for the finery exhibited at stores. The kleptomaniac, however, is generally a rich or influential woman. She steals something she does not need, and she is therefore held to be a kleptomaniac and not responsible.
The poor woman who steals something she actually needs is not a kleptomaniac. I have no doubt that the rich woman who could not resist shop-lifting is a kleptomaniac. I have just as little doubt that the poor woman, with an imperfect make, found her environment such that she was forced to act as she did. If a rich woman is irresponsible and cannot resist when she steals something she does not need, I can see no reason why a poor woman is not likewise irresponsible when she takes something that she needs or must have. The kleptomaniac finds herself in a position where her emotions and her feelings are too strong for her judgment and inhibitions. Everyone who acts must act from similar causes or inducements. There is no special providence in the realm of mind. There is no room for chance in any natural phenomenon. Possibly the public will understand sometime, and law-makers and law-enforcers will place crime and punishment on a scientific basis.
XXVII
SOCIAL CONTROL
Organizations and cults are forever coining new expressions that sound “pat” and for this reason seem true. As a rule, these terms and phrases are put in the shape of general statements that may or may not mean something; but their “pat” sound is used to justify all sorts of excesses and violations of individual rights. The term “social control” is met everywhere now. It may imply much or little, according to the construction of the users. It is meant at least to imply that somewhere is lodged a power to bring under control or supervision the refractory or evil elements of society for the well being of the whole. As a rule, under this phrase anything is justified which seems in some way fit for the community as a whole. The fact that the restraint interferes with personal liberty seems to have no bearing on the matter. Social control necessarily means that the majority of the members of a social unit shall limit the freedom of action of the individual to conform to its view. Of course, the majority has the right because it has the power. In the discussion of political or philosophical questions, “right” means little more or less than “power.” A right must be based upon some custom or habit with some power to enforce it, or it cannot be claimed. It can never be enjoyed without the power to obtain it.
The relation of society to the individual has been one long conflict. This is necessarily true because every human organism has instincts, feelings and desires and is naturally impatient at any limitations placed upon it unless self-imposed. On the other hand, organized society functions to preserve itself, and if the activities of the individual are hostile to this preservation the individual must give way. Theorists of various schools are forever propounding social ideas, with the positive assurance that, if followed, they would work automatically and heal all social ills. But it must be evident that neither from history nor philosophy can any such theory be proved. Between the extreme anarchistic view that each person should be free of control by law, and the extreme socialistic view of an extension of state organization until all property and all industrial activity shall be administered by the state and collectively owned, social life in its relation to the individual is always shifting. No one can find the proper line, and if there were a line it would forever change. On the one hand, the power of the strongest element in social organization is always seeking to enlarge the province of the state. On the other hand, the individual unit following the natural instincts for its development is reaching out for more freedom and life. When the theorists in each camp manage to push so hard that both can no longer be maintained, the old organization of society breaks up into new units, immediately to re-form in some new way.
This struggle of contending forces is a prolific and unavoidable source of crime. When organized society goes too far, the individual units rebel and clash with law; when the units swing too far away from the social organization and defy the power of the state, almost automatically some sort of a new organization becomes the state. Whether this new one discards all old forms and laws and acts without the written law, is of no concern. It at least acts and sets limits to the individual life. If it were possible for all legislative bodies to meet and repeal all laws, the state would still remain; the people would live and automatically form themselves into a certain order and protect that order either by written law or vigilance committees. At least the people would act together.
The majority generally has some religious creed, and to it this is all important. This creed is made up of observances, such as holy days, the support of the prevailing religion, the condemnation of witchcraft and magic, and the like. These and other doctrines often have been enforced upon those who have no faith in the regulations. The enforcement of such laws in the past has been by the most drastic penalties and has brought extreme suffering upon the world. No religious organization has ever seemed willing to confine its activities to propaganda, teaching and moral suasion; those methods are too slow, and the evils and consequences of disbelief are too great. Laws of this drastic character are still part of the penal codes of various states and nations, and well-organized bodies are always strenuously seeking to extend the application of such laws and re-enact at least a portion of the religious code that has been outgrown.
Individuals have likewise found, or at least believed, that certain personal habits were best for them, for instance, abstaining from alcohol and tobacco in all forms. Not content with propaganda, they have sought to force their views upon others, many of whom deeply resent their interference.
It is not enough that certain things shall be best for the health and physical welfare of a community. This does not justify the wise law-giver in making them a part of the penal code. If so, the code would be very long. No doubt coffee and tea, and perhaps meat, are injurious to health. Most likely the strength of the community would be conserved if regular sleeping hours were kept and if great modifications or changes were made in dress. But this does not justify criminal statutes. The code must take notice of something more than the general welfare. Unless the end sought to be attained is very direct and plain and the evil great so that a large majority believes in the law, it should be left to education and to other voluntary social forces.
A large part of the community has always attributed many criminal acts to intoxicating drinks. I am convinced that with such crimes as murder, burglary, robbery, forgery and the like, alcohol has had little to do. Petty things, like disorderly conduct, are often caused by intoxicating liquor, and these land a great many temporarily in jail, but these acts are really not criminal. Men have been temporarily locked up for over-drinking. If over-eating had been treated the same as over-drinking, the jails would often be filled with gluttons. As to health, probably the glutton takes the greater chance. A very large percentage of deaths would have been materially delayed except for excessive eating. The statements ascribing crime to intoxicating drinks have generally been made by those who are obsessed with a hatred of alcohol. As a rule if one lands in prison and has not been a total abstainer, his downfall is charged to rum. Statistics have been gathered in prison often by chaplains who, in the main, are prohibitionists and interested in sustaining an opinion. The facts are mainly furnished by inmates of prisons, a poor source from which to gather facts and draw deductions, especially as to the cause of crime. Prisoners are interested in only one thing, and that is getting out. They understand perfectly well what kind of statistics the chaplain wants and these are given. It is the nature and part of the protective instinct of everyone to find some excuse for his acts. Alcohol has always furnished this excuse. It is a good alibi; it is readily believed, always awakens sympathy and at once turns the wrath of a provincial community from the inmate of the prison to the saloon-keeper.
Even if prisoners were unlike others and wished to tell the truth about themselves, they have not the art and understanding to give the causes of their plight. No man, however intelligent, can do this, least of all one of inferior brain power, little education and not trained in dealing with facts. The prison inmate, like everyone else, knows only that he followed what seemed to him the line of least resistance, and that every step in his course was preceded by another and that there was a reason for what he did. Most likely he does not know the reason. In the hours of his despair he goes over his life in every detail, at every crossroad, and at all the forks where paths branch, always wishing he had gone the other way.
While this is true, he could know neither the dangers that lurked along other roads, nor the fact that he had no choice about the way he went. All he knows is that he stumbled along a certain path which led to disaster. All the paths of life lead to tragedy; it is only a question as to how and when. With some, the evil day is longer delayed and the disaster seems not so hard to bear.
In a sense, all the classifications as to the cause of crime are misleading and worthless. Your existence is the result of infinite chances and causes appalling in their number. Out of a thousand eggs, one is fertilized by perhaps one of a billion sperms, and from this you have been given life. Each of your parents and grandparents and so on, back for two hundred thousand years of human ancestors, and back to infinity before man was born, was the result of the same seemingly blind and almost impossible hazard. The infinitely microscopic chance that each of us had for life cannot be approximated. All the drops of water in the ocean, or all the grains of sand upon the shore, or all the leaves on all the trees, if converted into numbers and used as a denominator, with one for a numerator, could hardly tell the fraction of a chance that gave us life.
The causes of human action are infinite, and no cause stands isolated from the rest. In the first place we cannot tell the meaning of the word “cause” when applied to a problem of this sort. In law the ordinary rule for a “proximate cause” is “an event or happening in the direct line of causation, not too remote, that has led to the result, and without which the result could not have happened.” But this means nothing. Infinite are the causes which have led to every act, and without each one of the infinite causes the act could not have resulted. If it be something that affected a life, and had it not happened then the life would have drifted somewhere else. In the end it would have reached the same harbor of Nirvana. But the life would not have been the same. A drop of water falls on the Rocky Mountains, it trickles along, going around through pebbles and grains of sand; it joins with others, meets trees and roots, winds and twists perhaps for hundreds, even thousands of miles before one can tell by what channel it will reach the sea. Infinite accidents determine even which sea it shall finally reach. The most radical advocates of social control are never at a loss to lay their fingers on causes or to know what would have happened if something else had not happened; they never hesitate to forbid seemingly innocent acts because they are certain that evil will follow. They are contemptuous of one who wants to preserve the semblance and spirit of freedom.
Life has none too much to offer where men are left to control themselves, and to be forbidden to follow your inclinations and desires because sometimes they may result disastrously, is to give up what seems to be a substance for what is most likely a shadow.
All we can tell about the man whom we are pleased to call a criminal, is that he had a poor equipment and met certain influences, motives and conditions, called environment, on his journey. We know that at a given time the journey has reached a certain point; it has met disaster or success, or most likely indifference. At a certain point he has reached a prison or is waiting for the hangman to tie a noose around his neck. Is heredity responsible? We know of many who apparently started out with an equipment no better. These may be business men and congressmen and deacons in the church. While we do not know and cannot know the trend and relative strength of the instincts in the various machines or the emotions that these and the whole equipment produced, apparently an equipment as poor as that of the criminal has met success, or at least kept its possessor out of jail. Was it then his environment? We have known men placed in the same environment, perhaps a brother, conquering difficulties and bringing success from what seemed to promise certain defeat. Why did one fail where the other conquered? Was it the “will” that caused one to be the “captain of his soul”? What then is the “will” and who gave the weak will to one and the strong will to another? And, if each was born with a certain “will” or the capacity to make a certain “will”, who then is responsible for the result? Or, does the word “will” mean anything, as usually applied?
All we can tell is that a certain equipment met a certain environment, and the result was early disaster. A change of even the slightest factor of environment might have saved the victim from hanging, so that he could die a respectable and peaceful death from tuberculosis or cancer.
After all, the inevitable tragedy that in some form marks the end is not so important as the sensations and experiences that one meets on the road. Life is hopeless and colorless indeed if these experiences are chosen for the wayfarer and the sensations are enforced or denied, as the case may be. Nothing recompenses the individual for the denial of his chance to follow his own path.
XXVIII
INDUSTRIALISM AND CRIME
It was not until about the middle of the eighteenth century that the desire for the creation and accumulation of property began to rule the world. Up to that time such small amounts of property as man needed or coveted had either been produced in a simple manner by himself or taken in the easiest way.
This new passion has made a large part of the modern criminal code. A world of warriors, religious zealots and pastoral people could not readily adapt themselves to the change. Criminal codes were lengthened; methods of getting property and keeping it were provided for, and other ways condemned. It must be obvious that it was not easy for man with his age-old machine, his inherited institutions and his ancient folk-ways, to adjust himself rapidly to the change. New conditions and laws created new criminals.
With the growth of the factory system and accelerated industrial development, an overweening desire for material things was awakened. As neither individuals nor societies can be possessed of more than one overpowering emotion at a time, the devotion to property naturally weakened religious fervor. Religion became more an abstract belief and a social organization than a vital thing affecting life and conduct. Even before this time there was growing up in the world a protest against the religious superstition that had led to the cruelties of the past. The scientist and the modern philosopher were making their contributions to the world of thought, and these contributions were slowly affecting life and conduct.
A doubt of old creeds and doctrines and faiths was coming over the minds of men. Social conventions were loosening, new customs and habits were becoming folk-ways. In short, society and life were growing more fluid and adaptable. The growth of property holdings created new desires and new temptations. The accumulation of large fortunes brought envy and hatred and ambition. The rise of industries built the large cities, with palaces on one hand and hovels on the other. The vast inequality of wealth and the growth of workers’ organizations, together with the spirit of skepticism which activity always brings, caused large numbers to doubt the justice of property rights, the utility of many institutions and the possibility of radical change by social organization. It is perfectly evident that all of this movement brought more conflict between social units, a constant lengthening of the criminal code to protect the interests of the controlling powers, an increase of prisons, and an apparent if not a real increase of crime.
Nothing but a strong government can long endure great inequality of wealth or social condition. The slaves of the past civilization were kept in subjection by main strength and fear. This enslavement was aided by the deep ignorance of the masses who had no means of information and nothing but vague feelings of the injustice of their lot. Even then the poor sometimes revolted, but such outbreaks were generally easily put down by the sword. The growth of political power and industrial independence has been accompanied by the constant conflict of social forces. This means conflict with the law, and the law has always taken its toll of victims.
New inventions and methods that bring power of any sort carry with them social clashes, protests, bitterness, conflicts and violations of law. The invention of gun-powder was the source of great conflict and still continues to add to the inmates of prisons. From the first, the far-reaching effects of high explosives were seen by the wise, and firearms were permitted only in the hands of those who could be depended upon to support the state. Gradually through the needs of the rulers in war they were given to the poor. When the American Revolution separated us from Great Britain, the spirit of democracy and revolt was strong in the world. A body of peasants had gained independence over the strongest nation on earth. This body, through its delegates, provided in the Constitution of the United States that the people should never be forbidden to bear arms. The cheap production of firearms placed them in the hands of all who wished to buy. This aided feuds and brawls. It also gave strength to the burglar and robber.
America was fast becoming a manufacturing and commercial nation. The accumulation of property was greater, and the inequalities perhaps more marked than in any other land; likewise the poor were more independent. Gradually we came to rely more and more upon the power of law and the force that goes with it to preserve the old order. Legislatures and city councils all over the United States began to limit and forbid carrying firearms. The Constitution of the United States was held no impediment to this legislation. Gradually laws have forbidden the carrying of guns by the common man, and these laws are growing stronger every year. In many states robbery with a gun may mean life imprisonment, while the mere carrying of a revolver is a serious offense. The passage of these drastic laws and the number of prison inmates confined for these offenses show that the invention and use of firearms has affected crime, and likewise that the government is constantly growing more doubtful of the common man.
Civilization largely has to do with the creation and protection of property. Although it is related to literature, architecture, politics, art and the like; even these things if not actually rooted in property are stimulated or affected by property. Civilization has created new crimes and new ways to commit crime. It has likewise created many wants and desires that furnish the motive power of property crimes. Each new invention of civilization adds to these needs and these desires, increases the power of committing crime, and necessitates stricter measures to prevent it. Civilization has likewise created many new outlets for the emotions, strengthened old ones, weakened others and added to the complexity of life. It has imposed added strain and stress upon man’s nervous system and through this has caused the abnormalities and excesses that are either crimes or lead to crimes.
Civilization has created the big cities; in other words, the powers and forces that made civilization have made the big cities. The invention and development of the railroad has taken men from the air and sunlight and comparative freedom of motion of the country and the small village, and placed them in an atmosphere not really fitted for normal animal life, especially the life of the young. It has likewise stimulated crime by offering the opportunities and making the suggestions that are potent factors in crime. In country and village life everyone was known, the smallest detail of every life was an open book. This fact furnished a moral restraint to the individual and likewise made it hard for him to violate the rules of the game. The opportunities for collecting large numbers of people who might encourage each other with their conversation and association were very few in rural life. The man who would violate the law must do it alone. Not only this, but he must take his first steps almost without suggestion or aid. This confined criminal conduct largely to the feeble-minded and the seriously defective, and even these could generally live in a country atmosphere where life is simple and easy, without serious danger to themselves or others.
The great city with its swarms of people, its wealth and poverty, its unhealthy atmosphere, its opportunities for everyone to have many associates and still be lost to the community at large, makes irregular lives not only easy, but almost necessary to large numbers of men. Civilization has no doubt created crime as it has created luxury, wealth, refinement and ease. Much luxury has always led to deterioration and decay and is doubtless leading that way now.
One of the latest products of civilization that has had a marked effect on crime is the automobile. Stringent laws are on the statute books of all states against stealing automobiles, yet stealing and selling automobiles is a flourishing and growing business. A large percentage of the boys in the juvenile courts of our cities are there for stealing automobiles. Yet this is the work of a very short period. I do not mean to say that many of the boys brought into court for stealing automobiles would not have committed some other crime, if automobiles had not been invented and come into general use, but I feel quite sure that many of them are victims of the automobile madness alone.
The automobile is one of the latest manias and fashions that civilization has provided. Almost no one is free from the disease. Conservative business men must have motor cars; clerks and salaried people who cannot afford them must get them; mechanics and professional men who have no need for them, except that others use them, must contrive to buy them. Automobiles are much more important today than houses. Men go into debt and struggle for money to buy gasoline so that they may drive somewhere for the sake of coming back. It has created a psychology all its own, a psychology of movement, of impatience, of waste, of futility. Men in Chicago start to drive to Milwaukee without the slightest reason for going there; they travel the road so fast that they could get no idea of the scenery even if there were something to see. They hurry as if going for a doctor. They reach their destination and then start back home. The specific desire that is satisfied by this expense and waste is a new one, an emotion of no value in the life processes and probably of great injury in life development. It is a craze for movement, for haste, for what seems like change.
The automobile has made its list of criminals, and it is making them every day. Probably it will continue to make them until the flying machine is perfected, and then to some extent at least the airplane will take its place.
The truth is that man is not adapted to the automobile. His reactions are too simple; his inherent needs are not adjusted to the new life; he has not been built up with barriers to protect him from this insidious temptation which is claiming its victims by the hundreds every day.
The boy is perfectly helpless in the presence of this lure. He wants to do what others do. He is by nature active and venturesome and needs to keep on the move. The mechanism itself appeals to him. He wants to work in a garage. He is anxious to be a chauffeur. He cannot resist an automobile. No such temptation should be placed before a boy. It has added a great deal to the responsibility of parents and teachers, and so far they seem not to have been able to meet that responsibility in any way. Aside from the boys’ thefts it has played a great part in crime. The doctor, the real estate agent, the business man cannot afford to be without automobiles. No more can the burglar, the hold-up man, the bank robber, if he would keep up to date. The automobile has raised the robbery of country banks from a vagrant crime, infrequent and dangerous, to a steady occupation coupled with a great deal of excitement and some chance for profit. So far no one has ever suggested anything to counteract or lessen the evil effects except to increase penalties. The crimes committed with and for automobiles are a result of the conditions of life. Out of a thousand men and boys, a certain percentage must commit these crimes just as a certain percentage must die of tuberculosis. The temptation is very great. The human equipment is not strong enough in many people to withstand the temptation. They either buy them when they cannot afford to own them, or they steal them, and either way leads to disaster. No doubt men will some time become adjusted to the automobile as they have become adjusted to the horse, but until that time comes, it will demand its heavy toll of unfortunates.
Not only, it seems to me, does the growth of civilization mean the growth of crime, but that civilization likewise leads to decay. The world has seen the result over and over again, but it cannot learn. Man is an animal; the law of his being demands that he shall live close to nature; he needs the outdoors, the country, the air; he needs to walk and run; otherwise his digestive apparatus will fail, his brain power will decay, and the strength of his legs will be impaired. Civilization runs too much to stomach and nerves, and Nature will have revenge. To be sure, the professional American rhapsodist points out that we are immune from natural law because we have a chance to vote for presidents once in every four years. But there are ample signs that Nature knows little about political institutions or other man-made devices and that she will have her way.
How much the natural limitations of man will permit him to learn and understand; how far his instincts and emotional nature would allow him to be controlled by knowledge, if he had it; what would be the results to life if reason could control him, are pertinent questions that affect all discussion and which may never be satisfactorily answered. It is entirely possible that the student who tries to point out better ways and teach better methods does it only to satisfy his own emotions and is often conscious that it does nothing else. But, whatever the inducing cause or result, given a brain and nervous system and the material that civilization furnishes for reflection, these and other important subjects will be interesting topics of study and furnish material for the reflective powers of man.
XXIX
WAR AND CRIME
All natural phenomena affect the activities of man. It has been repeatedly observed that the number of crimes of assault and murder increases in the summer months and fluctuates with extreme heat or a cooler temperature. The nervous system of man is responsive to all sorts of physical and psychological influences, and criminologists take these into account in considering crime, as doctors take them into account in treating disease. Man is influenced by substantially all the things that affect other structures and by many things that do not. His nervous system is more delicate, his emotional nature more complex, and his brain permits the handling of impressions in a way not possible to lower organisms.
The effect of war has always been manifest in human conduct. Man acts largely from habit and custom; he does as others do, without reflection as to why he should do it or why others do it. War is a sudden, violent and spectacular destroyer of all established habits. In its conduct and preparation it has rules of its own which have no analogy in civil life. The battlefield is a reversion to the primitive; a reversion which man finds it easy to make, for it appeals to fundamental instincts which civilization holds in leash with great difficulty and never with entire success. War especially appeals to the young. Their desire for activity, their impatience with restraint, their love of the spectacular, their untrained emotions, all find a ready outlet in war. Even those who are too young to fight still read of it, talk of it, play at it to the exclusion of other games. War is a profound and rapid maker of mental attitudes and of complexes that are quick to develop and slow to pass away. Both the quick development and slow decay are probably due to the fact that war meets a decided response in the primitive nature of man.
Nearly all the newspapers of America are now calling attention to the increase of crime since the close of the Great War. It is a topic of pulpit and platform discussion. Wild appeals are made for convictions and extreme penalties. Governors and boards of pardon and parole are urged to refuse clemency to prisoners and are roundly condemned when they do their plain duty, even though they do it very reluctantly and tardily.
It is probably true that the close of the war has shown a large increase in criminality, especially in crimes of violence. This is true not only of America but of all European countries. In some of the most afflicted ones civil government for a time has virtually broken down. Both the great need for food and clothing and the overthrowing of conventions, customs and habits are responsible for the change. Here we perceive a notable example of the almost instantaneous disruption of established folk-ways.
For more than four years most of the western world did nothing but kill. The whole world talked of slaughter and devoted its energy to killing. Every sentiment of humanity was forgotten. Even religious ties and religious commands were ignored. The prayers to the Almighty contained requests that He help the various fighting nations to kill their enemies. Everyone was taught to hate. The leaders in the war knew that boys could not do efficient killing unless they learned to fear and hate. The most outrageous falsehoods were freely circulated by every nation about its enemies and their conduct of the war. The highest rewards were offered for new and more efficient ways to kill. Every school was turned over to hate and preparation for war, and, of course, all the churches joined in the universal craze. God would not only forgive killing but reward those who were the most expert at the game.
The newspapers carried stories of battles every day, the dead and wounded often running into the tens of thousands. None of the reports was exact. Nothing was true. Everything was wild and exaggerated. Facts were not strong enough to make an impression. Lies were deliberately circulated to help the cause.
Every tradition and habit of life was broken and broken all the time. The commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” was repealed. Property was not only ruthlessly destroyed but openly confiscated. Lying was a fine art. When this bears a harvest after the war, the public loudly clamors for hanging boys whose psychology is a direct result of long and intensive training by the leaders of the world.
One life is not worth considering in the face of the holocaust that has taken its hundreds of thousands and has been defended in the schools and churches. It is not strange that the after-war harvest of crimes should come largely from boys, often those boys who did their part on the field of battle. Whether they got the psychology from killing or reading or hearing or playing soldier or training makes no difference. Everyone who has any reasoning power knows that they got it, that it was deliberately given to them if not forced upon them, and that just as deliberately the state is killing them because they took it.
It is not alone the young who show this psychology of killing that has grown out of the war. Organized society, the public, juries, judges, pardon boards and governors, show that war has made them cruel and wanton of human life. The great number of hangings since the war is patent to all observers. In normal times juries were very loath to pronounce the death penalty. With any possible excuse they always saved life. Now they pride themselves on taking life. Even insanity does not always prevent an execution.
Numerous are the evidences of the derangements the war has created and left behind. A few years ago a prize fight would not have been permitted in more than one or two states in the Union. Now state after state is passing laws to permit prize fights to take place, and even the best society has given its sanction to this sort of sport. Whether the state should permit prize fights is not the question. The fact is, as everyone knows, that it is permitted on account of a psychology growing out of the war. We content ourselves with saying it will never do to raise our boys as molly-coddles; they must learn to fight.
It is not alone murder that can be traced directly to the war psychology. Robbery and burglary have rapidly increased, and much of this is due to the emotions of boys. The robbing of country banks has grown to be almost a pastime, and often one or more participants in these raids is a returned soldier.
What should be done to meet these new conditions? Common honesty, common sense and common humanity alike plainly show that a large part of the crimes of violence are due to the war. Will hangings and life sentences stop them? And, if so, is it right for organized society to ignore its responsibility and place it on the young men that they innoculated with the universal madness? It is expecting too much to think that there is any process by which society can be made to think and feel. Some day, however, when the war fever passes away crime will again take its normal place.
This phenomenon is not new in the world. Everyone interested has noted it before. It has followed all great wars. War means the breaking up of old habits, the destruction of many inhibitions, which in the strongest civilization are only skin deep at the best. It means the return to the primitive feelings that once ruled man.
The Napoleonic Wars left a long heritage of crime. Every nation in Europe was affected by them. Many years passed before the world grew tranquil. Our Civil War brought its harvest of crime. It was felt both North and South. It was not confined to homicide but was shown in all sorts of criminal statistics, especially crimes of violence.
I do not write as a pacifist. There is nothing in the constitution of man that makes pacifism anything but a dream. Man is largely ruled by fear and hate, and it is not possible to imagine an individual or a race that under sufficient provocation will not fight. Neither is it possible that nations will not always, from time to time, find the provocation sufficiently great. Individuals and nations can philosophize and reason and make compromises when they are calm; but let them be moved by fear and hatred, and these emotions will sweep away every other feeling. The conditions for war were ripe in 1914, and it was inevitable that America should be in it too. This should not make one wish for war nor believe in war nor close one’s eyes to its horrors and results. Much less should it prevent him from trying to do his part to restore sanity to the world.
Another consequence of war which America is passing through is the spirit of super-patriotism. This is always aroused and must be aroused to carry on the war. It is potent in creating the psychology that makes men fight. Every people teaches that its own country is the best; that its laws and institutions excel those of all other lands. This spirit is taken advantage of and used by designing men. It is used to send to jail those who criticise existing things. It is used to hamper and destroy any effort to change laws and institutions. The one who criticises conditions is a disturber and a traitor. Those who profit by existing things are always intense patriots and by means of cheap appeals and trite expressions seek to stifle discussion and criticism. This war has borne a deadly harvest of restrictive legislation in America. We are no longer an asylum for political offenders. We no longer stand for freedom of speech. Old traditions and constitutional and legal guarantees have been swept aside under the hysteria which has prevailed during and since the war. These results were inevitable and will follow war as long as man is man.
All the after-effects of the World War show how completely man is ruled by forces over which he has no control. If considerable numbers of the people have been moved by war hysteria, and if a large part of crime is directly traceable to war, it seems plain that all human action could be traced to some controlling cause, if only man could be wise enough and industrious and humane enough to find the cause. It is plain that the law of cause and effect influences mental phenomena as it does physical acts, and sometime, perhaps, men will seek to avoid the effect by removing the cause.
XXX
CIVILIZATION AND CRIME
As children we have all amused ourselves by looking into a kaleidoscope, turning it around and around and watching the changing patterns formed from the mixing bits of different colored glass in the other end. Each turn makes a different pattern and each bit of glass seems to seek a spot in the general medley where it can be settled until another turn drives it to find a resting place somewhere else. The organization of individual units into a group is more or less such a formation, each seeking to adjust itself to a pattern and finding that the pattern is ever-changing and the individual units obliged to seek new positions and make new adjustments.
It is vain for social theorists to talk of a perfect order, a system of social organization that will find the proper place for each unit and bring social symmetry out of the whole. Such a society is not consistent with the varied capacities and wants of men. Neither is a perfect order possible with ever-changing and moving physical forces, with new mental conceptions, with new needs and wants, with constant births and deaths, and with the innate instincts of man.
Some system may be the best for a time but must in turn give place to new formations. In this process the old is ever mixed with the new. The past hangs on to plague the present, and the vision of the future disturbs the quiet and stability that the present inherited from the past. Organizations of society are necessary and automatic. The frost on the window pane takes its pattern, the crystals in the glass and stone have their formations, the grain of sand, the plant–all forms of animal life–the solar system and, doubtless, an infinite number of other systems which the eye cannot see or the mind comprehend take on form and order. The symmetry and shape of any of these organizations may be shattered by growth or catastrophe, and new forms may take their place. All life is constant friction and constant adjustment, each particle in a blind way trying to find a more harmonious relation, but never reaching complete rest.
The social and political patterns that men have taken have been of many forms. All through the past these have changed, and the laws and habits that were meant to hold men together, have been made and discarded as fast as new emotions or ideas have gained the power to make the change. Men are of all degrees of adaptability. Some can readily conform to the new. Some adjust themselves very slowly. Man’s structure is fixed; his inherent instincts are of ancient origin, always urging him to primitive reactions; his habits are slowly formed and slowly changed. Slowly he settles himself to the conditions that surround him. He learns their demands; he manages to conform, but the folk-ways that he knew and the way of life he learned must be changed to something else. Every new adjustment, every change of organization, every modification made by civilization, bears its toll of victims who have not been able to adjust themselves to the new order.
The first criminal regulations, doubtless, had to do with the personal relations of men. The number of offenses was small for life was simple, wants were few, and ambition rare. The growth of religion created a ferocious criminal code, regulating every thought and action that God’s agents thought might offend the Deity or threaten their power on earth. Anyone interested in the story of punishment for heresy, sorcery or other crimes growing out of religious fanaticism, can read the story in Lecky’s _History of Rationalism in Europe_, in White’s _A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom_, in Draper’s _Intellectual Development of Europe_, and in many other books. The Spanish Inquisition alone furnished about 350,000 victims in the two centuries of its power. Many of them were burned alive, many others were killed by the most cruel torture that could be devised by man. Up to recent times more victims have been put to death for heresy and kindred crimes against religion than for any other cause. Next to this no doubt stand political crimes. Even America hanged old women for witchcraft, a crime they could not commit. Practically all the victims of religious and political persecution have been guiltless of any real crimes, and among them were always many of the noblest of their age.
Every general change of religious or political ideas bears its quota of crimes. For whatever the religious or political organization, it always uses every means in its power to perpetuate itself. This is as true of republics as of monarchies, although the severity of punishment and the amount of heresy permitted change from time to time. Each age is sure that it has the true religion and the God-given political organization. In every age the accepted religion is true, and the king and the state can do no wrong.
One thing only seems to be sure. Human nature does not change. Whether it was the theological systems of the ancient world fighting to keep Christianity out, or Christianity fighting to preserve itself, the same cruel, bigoted, fanatical majority has been found to do its will, and the same reasons and excuses have served the law from the earliest times down to today.
A letter of the younger Pliny, who was then governor of Bythinia-Pontus, a province of Rome, asking the Emperor Trajan for instructions in dealing with the early Christians shows how persistent are intolerance and bigotry. This might have been written yesterday to seek advice in the suppression of opinion and punishment for sedition in any of the most advanced governments of the modern world, as it was in the most advanced of the ancient world. The letter is here reproduced as an interesting exhibit of human nature and it fixity.
Pliny, the younger, was born in 61 A.D. and became governor of the province of Bythinia-Pontus about the year 112 A.D. under the Emperor Trajan. In the discharge of his duties as governor, Pliny discovered that the conversion of many of his subjects to Christianity had resulted in a falling off of trade in the victims usually purchased for sacrifices at the temples and in other commodities used in connection with pagan worship. As a good governor, Pliny sought to remedy this economic situation, and his plan was to restore his subjects to their old forms of worship. Thus he was brought into contact with Christianity. The following letters, one from Pliny to Trajan, and the other, Trajan’s reply, show the situation. These documents are from the Tenth Book of Pliny’s Correspondence, Letters 97 and 98.
PLINY ASKING INSTRUCTIONS OF TRAJAN ON TRIALS OF CHRISTIANS
It is my invariable rule, Sir, to refer to you in all matters where I feel doubtful; for who is more capable of removing my scruples, or informing my ignorance? Having never been present at any trials concerning those who profess Christianity, I am unacquainted not only with the nature of their crimes, or the measure of their punishment, but how far it is proper to enter into an examination concerning them. Whether, therefore, any difference is usually made with respect to ages, or no distinction is to be observed between the young and the adult; whether repentance entitles them to a pardon; or if a man has been once a Christian, it avails nothing to desist from his error; whether the very profession of Christianity, unattended with any criminal act, or only the crimes themselves inherent in the profession are punishable; on all these points I am in great doubt. In the meanwhile, the method I have observed towards those who have been brought before me as Christians is this: I asked them whether they were Christians; if they admitted it, I repeated the question twice, and threatened them with punishment; if they persisted, I ordered them to be at once punished: for I was persuaded, whatever the nature of their opinions might be, a contumacious and inflexible obstinacy certainly deserved correction.
There were others also brought before me possessed with the same infatuation, but being Roman citizens, I directed them to be sent to Rome. But this crime spreading (as is usually the case) while it was actually under prosecution, several instances of the same nature occurred. An anonymous information was laid before me, containing a charge against several persons, who upon examination denied they were Christians, or had ever been so. They repeated after me an invocation to the gods, and offered religious rites with wine and incense before your statue (which for that purpose I had ordered to be brought, together with those of the gods), and even reviled the name of Christ: whereas there is no forcing, it is said, those who are really Christians into any of these compliances: I thought it proper, therefore, to discharge them. Some among those who were accused by a witness in person at first confessed themselves Christians, but immediately after denied it: the rest owned indeed that they had been of that number formerly, but had now (some above three, others more, and a few above twenty years ago) renounced that error. They all worshipped your statue and the images of the gods, uttering imprecations at the same time against the name of Christ. They affirmed the whole of their guilt, or their error, was, that they met on a stated day before it was light, and addressed a form of prayer to Christ, as to a divinity, binding themselves by a solemn oath, not for the purposes of any wicked design, but never to commit any fraud, theft, or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then re-assemble, to eat in common a harmless meal. From this custom, however, they desisted after the publication of my edict, by which, according to your commands, I forbade the meeting of any assemblies.
After receiving this account, I judged it so much the more necessary to endeavor to extort the real truth, by putting two female slaves to the torture, who were said to officiate in their religious rites: but all I could discover was evidence of an absurd and extravagant superstition. I deemed it expedient, therefore, to adjourn all further proceedings, in order to consult you. For it appears to be a matter highly deserving your consideration, more especially as great numbers must be involved in the danger of these prosecutions, which have already extended, and are still likely to extend, to persons of all ranks and ages, and even of both sexes. In fact, this contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread its infection among the neighboring villages and country. Nevertheless, it still seems possible to restrain its progress. The temples, at least, which were once almost deserted, begin now to be frequented; and the sacred rites, after a long intermission, are again revived; while there is a general demand for the victims, which till lately found very few purchasers. From all this it is easy to conjecture what numbers might be reclaimed if a general pardon were granted to those who shall repent of their error.
TRAJAN TO PLINY
You have adopted a right course, my dearest Secundus, in investigating the charges against the Christians who were brought before you. It is not possible to lay down any general rule for all such cases. Do not go out of your way to look for them. If indeed they should be brought before you, and the crime is proved, they must be punished; with the restriction, however, that where the party denies he is a Christian, and shall make it evident that he is not, by invoking our gods, let him (notwithstanding any former suspicion) be pardoned upon his repentance. Anonymous information ought not to be received in any sort of prosecution. It is introducing a very dangerous precedent, and is quite foreign to the spirit of our age.
Civilization is largely a question of new machinery and methods. It is not the humanizing of men. It is plain that no matter what the time or age, the characteristics of man remain the same. His structure does not change; his emotional life cannot change. New objects and desires may control his feeling, but whatever the aim of the age and place, the same inherent emotions control.
Intolerance has been one of the great sources of evil all down the ages. It is practically certain that neither time nor education has made man more kindly in his judgment of his fellows or more tolerant in his opinions and life. All that education can do is to remove some of the inducing causes that have always brought the sharp conflicts and awakened the cruelty of man.
Every civilization brings new evils and new complexities which man meets with the same machine and the same emotions. It is fairly certain that no nobler idealism or no finer feelings have been planted or cultivated in man since the dawn of history, and when it is thoroughly realized that man’s structure is fixed and cannot be changed it seems as if none could be developed.
XXXI
THE CONVICT
Human nature is so weak and imperfect that, at its best, it needs all the encouragement it can get. The comradeship of friends, and the attitude of the public and acquaintances are of the greatest importance in effecting the development of most lives. Sooner or later the convicted man is turned out either on probation or parole, or at the expiration of his sentence. He was probably none too strong a man before his conviction. His heredity was poor in most cases, and his environment completed his downfall. He faces the world again with a serious handicap that he did not have at first. If he had just recovered from a severe illness, everyone he met would do all he could to help him; his environment would be made easier than before his confinement in the hospital; and especially from the conditions that placed him there, both society and his neighbors would try to see that he should, as far as possible, be saved. If he had been one of those who could live only by means of his own work, and if on account of himself or his family he had been obliged to over-strain, an easier place would probably be found for him. The chances of going to the hospital the second time would be very much less than they were the first time. Even his experience in confinement would be of use, and through that experience he would be taught to live and preserve his health.
The discharged prisoner is met in an entirely different way. The ex-convict is under doubt and suspicion from the start. On the slightest provocation he is reminded of his past. He is always under suspicion unless, perhaps, he professes a change of heart. Such a change implies a physical process which is impossible. Some sudden exaltation may furnish him a new emotion for a time, but this can last only while the stimulus has power to act. It will soon pass away and the man will be himself again. It may be possible that here and there is a nature of such an emotional temperament, that religion or socialism or single tax or some other strong conviction may possess him until such time as his feelings begin to cool and change, when he will be safe. But most men are inherently the same when they come out of prison as when they go in. Under right treatment they may gain a little more wisdom as to life that will help them make adjustments; or they may be relieved from some burdens, or placed in an environment of less stress and strain where it will be easier to live. In those cases, the attitude and help of the community are all-important.
Society is not entirely to blame for looking on him with suspicion. It knows he once failed. It has been taught that this failure was due to a moral delinquency outside the law of cause and effect, and society is naturally suspicious that he will offend again or molest the community in some other way. Had he been confined because he had not the strength to meet his environment; had the law put him in custody under expert control until he gained the strength for his battle with life; or had a new environment been provided under scientific direction as in the case of a hospital patient, society would then take another view and do all it could to help him. New comrades and associates would surround him to show him the way, and they would make his burden lighter. Instead of this, he comes out with his ability to adjust himself to life lessened. If a crime is committed in his community he is blamed or at least suspected. He is known to the police and often “rounded-up.” This directly interferes with his employment, places him at a disadvantage with his associates, and drives him into the company of others who feel that the world is against them and that a life of crime is all there is left to follow. It is not hard to see how men come to be “repeaters.” It is hard to understand when they do not.
XXXII
ISOLATION AND STERILIZATION
The growing belief that crime comes largely from the subnormal has created a more or less definite demand for the isolation of the moron before the commission of crime and for the sterilization of certain misfits, especially after conviction. Both of these methods are very drastic, and while society must and will adopt any way that seems to be necessary to protect itself, still before accepting such drastic remedies it should be very clear that the danger is sufficiently great to justify the means, that the desired result will follow and that no other means will bring about the end.
In this discussion it should be remembered that the mental classification of children and grown-ups is only in its infancy, that much that is freely stated is still in the realm of theory, and that time and patience in making investigations and classifying facts are most important in arriving at correct results.
The really intelligent are as abnormal as the defective. The great masses of men are rather mediocre, and those above and below are exceptions. This depends on how broad is the class included in the normal. There are no sharp divisions anywhere; above, the normal shades imperceptibly into those of unusual intelligence, and below it fades just as gradually into the sub-normal. While defectives are more apt to commit crimes, in the main this is because their environment is too hard for their machine.
The sub-normal are probably more tractable and less disposed to the emotions that lead to criminal acts than are the more intelligent. Their crimes are especially noticed because they seem to be without any serious motive and often shockingly brutal. City life most readily uncovers the sub-normal. This is true because the strain is far greater in the city than the country. There are exceptions to this rule, particularly those portions of the country that are barren and unproductive territory into which the venturesome and obvious unfits are drawn.
The prisons are not the only places which are inhabited by the sub-normal and the misfit. The hardest and most disagreeable and most poorly paid labor is largely done by this class of people. Very few people of superior intelligence and education do manual labor and the more disagreeable the manual labor, the more certain it is that the job is done by the sub-normal and the misfit. A large part of the farm labor, the odd jobs and common labor in small towns, the cheaper labor on railroads, in factories and all industrial plants is given to this sort of men. In the country and small village, where life is easy, this class seldom makes trouble and is hardly known. These men and women easily and naturally fall into a place in the industry and society of the village and are often among the most useful members.
A general examination of all men to discover the defective and the sub-normal, coupled with a demand that all such be sent to some place of confinement, would meet with such a protest from all classes seriously affected as to end not only the demand but the further agitation of the subject. Any such law, if carried out, would not only seriously increase the cost of all industry, but in many instances would make it impossible to carry it on. It is hardly conceivable that above the idiot, society shall make examinations and tests and confine or sterilize large classes of people who have not yet developed anti-social tendencies, but who on account of feeble intellects might sometime commit crime.
The world has ample data at hand to show more humane and at the same time much cheaper ways, even methods that will yield a profit. These ways have been abundantly illustrated by history and can be witnessed in operation every day.
England was repeatedly conquered and settled by brigands and misfits. When her people grew more homogeneous and orderly she sent her anti-social to New Zealand and to Virginia. In New Zealand with its opportunities these outcasts and their descendants prospered and were as orderly and conventional as the English society that banished them for England’s good. The colonies in Virginia with access to land and a chance to make homes for themselves established a social order and formed communities more prosperous than the ones that sent them out. Many of their descendants are now successful and important members of every western state.
In fact, most of the European immigrants who have settled in the United States were the poor and the outcast, the misfits of European countries. With better opportunities and a chance to build up homes in a new land, their descendants are at least the equals of those who stayed behind. The growth and development of the United States westward from the Atlantic seaboard has been effected by the poorer and less intelligent, but often the more venturesome, who constantly turned West to get cheaper land and a better chance. The residents of these western states compare very favorably with those who still reside in the sections of the country which these pioneers left behind. It cannot be shown that the less intelligent have criminal natures. All that can be shown is that they have a poorer equipment to meet the stress and strain of life. To make most of this class safe, all that is needed is fairer conditions and an easier environment. If society could only recover from the obsession that what is necessary to regulate man is plenty of prisons and harder punishments, it would be fairly easy and infinitely cheaper to improve the environment from which crime springs than to visit vengeance on the victim.
The effect of education is very great. Many a subnormal and backward person has been educated so he could take a place in life that those with a much greater natural ability could not fill.
Beyond the segregation of the imbecile, the insane and those who have committed crime, it is dangerous to go. The course of preventing crime lies in the other direction, better opportunity and an easier life.
It has grown to be a commonplace in the discussion of crime to speak of isolation and sterilization as the proper treatment of the criminal and defective. This is generally done without any clear understanding of the laws of heredity.
The laws of the transmission from parent to child of traits and tendencies are not yet well enough known to justify any attempt to interfere with the function of life, except in the case of the idiotic. It is plain that crime cannot be inherited. Certain defects in the brain and nervous system can be and are inherited. No brain or nervous system is perfect, so the problem is one of the incapacity which causes the maladjustment. Crime results from defective heredity when applied to the environment. It comes from the inability of the machine to make the necessary adjustments of life. The making of the criminal is largely a question of his fortune or misfortune in the environment where he is placed. It is absurd to say that one inherits the tendency to rob or rape or burglarize or kill. He may inherit an unstable organization that in certain hostile environments will lead him to any of these crimes. For that matter all men inherit the organization that will bring these results if the environment is sufficiently hard. Society may in many ways place too high a value on human life. Still we punish men who place too low a value on the lives of others, and the state should be very slow to destroy life or the capacity for life.
There is much to learn, much to explain about the mysterious workings of heredity, before man can undertake to say that he has the wisdom or justice to choose the ones who should be the bearers of life to the future.
It is most common to find in the same family various degrees of intelligence. Now and then a man of such high powers and faculties is born that he is regarded by scientists as a “sport” who defies all known laws in his origin. Often one person in a family is of commanding strength, while the rest are commonplace.
The insanity and disease that afflict many men of genius is well known. Grasset in his book _The Semi-Insane and the Semi-Responsible_ has given a long list of eminent names. Many great authors have depicted insanity in their most gifted characters. Genius is frequently an indication of insanity. It is a wide departure from the normal.
The obscure and lowly origin of many of the world’s greatest men seems to point to the fact that Nature has methods that man cannot comprehend and with which it is not wise for him to interfere. The fact is that genius, or even great strength or ability in the parent, is by no means sure to be handed down. In fact, it is very rare indeed that such unusual traits persist. That sterilization should follow as a punishment for sex crimes is without any sort of logic except that sterilization relates to sex. The whole idea is born of the hatred or loathing of certain crimes.
Generalizations have been made from a few poorly authenticated cases, and these generalizations have gone far beyond anything that the evidence can justify. It does not follow that because the father and son have black hair, or the mother and daughter have blue eyes, or that their mannerisms are similar, that inheritance is responsible for character, much less for crime. Certain things are clearly traceable to heredity. Other things may be the result of association or what to us must still be accident.
Often the fact is pointed out that great progress has been made in the culture of plants and the breeding of animals. This is true. No intelligent farmer to-day would think of raising any but the best stock. He takes pains with the breeding of his cattle. If he wants rich milk and butter, he breeds Jerseys or Guernseys. If he wants a larger quantity of milk and a fair beef animal, he breeds Holsteins. If he wants beef only, perhaps he raises Durhams. At any rate he knows what he wants and breeds that kind. Similarly the horse-raiser will breed for race horses or dray horses as the case may be, and the system works with almost mechanical certainty. He gets what he wants and would never think of raising scrubs and taking a chance on results. The effect of selective breeding and culture is beyond dispute, and to many it seems obvious that all that is needed to perfect the human race and wipe out misery and crime is to supervise human breeding in the same way, so that the species may be controlled.
At first glance this seems to be the logical thing to do, especially as the effects of heredity can no more be doubted in man than in animals. Still there are important questions to be asked and grave dangers to be encountered. When we say that the well-bred Berkshire hog is better than the “razor-back,” we mean that it will produce more meat for food. In other words the hog is better for man. If we were to ask which would be the better, if the hog were to be considered, the answer would probably be the “razor-back.” The fact that the food consumed by the Berkshire produces a large quantity of fat, makes him unfitted to live if he were living for his own sake. Turn both hogs out to run wild, and the “razor-back” will live and the Berkshire die. Nature will make her selection and adapt the hog to his environment. The Berkshire will produce more lard, but it will not run so fast; it has no more brains and cannot adapt what it has so well to the preservation of life. The same thing is doubtless true of other animals and likewise of plant life. The Jersey cow would not survive in a natural state. She gives too much milk and for too long a time. Man has made of her a milk-machine. Turn all thoroughbred horses out on the plains to shift for themselves, and they would either die or gradually be modified until they were adapted to the free and wild life of the plains. This would not be so good for man, but would be better for the horses. In plants and animals, man can by selection breed or cultivate any characteristics that he may choose, but he cannot produce a horse which is both a draft horse and a running horse; he cannot produce cattle that are the best both for milk and beef. He is urged to try scientific breeding on the human race. How would he have man changed? Would he experiment for more intellect, or a bigger and stronger physique? Would he breed for art and civilization or would he breed for strength and physical endurance? What qualities are desirable for the human race? This would be a very hard question even to entrust to a popular vote. While the capacity of cattle to produce milk can be increased, cattle cannot increase their own capacity or improve their own quality. This can be done only by the slow and patient processes of Nature in the line of adapting the animal to its environment. The rapid change that is to come about by breeding must be directed and controlled by man. The cattle have nothing to say about the process. No doubt a higher order of beings who could control man might, and perhaps would change him by selective mating. How they would change him would depend on the use they wished to make of him, not on what the man himself would like to do. The contemplation of a higher order of beings experimenting with the human race is not a pleasant one for intelligent men.
Can we imagine men, through government, forcibly experimenting with each other? Who would settle the kind of man that was to be evolved or the specific changes that would be required? Or, what was to be done and how? Who could prophesy what man would be like when he should be made over in the likeness of something else? Who are the people with the breadth and tolerance and infinite wisdom, in whose hands it would be safe to place the remodeling of man? It is hard to conceive that it can be seriously considered.
Nature in her own way is a eugenist. By her slow processes she is continually wiping out the unfit and adapting man to the environment where he must live. Perhaps by saving too many of the unfit man is more or less interfering with the processes of Nature, and it may be that the interference with her method of work is bad. But Nature is mindful of this tendency and if it is not in accordance with the profoundest laws of being, Nature will have her way in spite of man’s meddling. Any change that can be brought about by selective mating must come by natural processes aided by the education of each individual through a closer study of the origin and evolution of life. This must leave everyone free to do his own selecting, rather than to trust it to the state. Society can do much toward giving man an environment which will more or less be adjusted to his heredity. To give him a heredity that will conform to his environment is quite another thing and probably must be kept practically free from the theories, vagaries and experiments of man. It would seem so absurd and dangerous as not to be worth discussing except for the fact that the movement, both for sterilizing and some degree of control of mating has already gone far in some of the states. There is no limit that fanaticism or hatred will respect.
No doubt the popular opinion that in some way crime and pauperism are inherited has been strengthened by the literature concerning the family that has been given the name of “The Jukes.” The first extensive study of this family was made by Richard L. Dugdale, who was connected with the New York Prison Association. It was first published in 1877 and may almost be regarded as the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” of the scientific study of crime in America.
Mr. Dugdale was evidently a careful student, an honest investigator and a humane man. Strange to say, deductions have been freely and carelessly made from his book, which the investigations do not warrant, and against which he carefully cautioned the reader. No one can examine Mr. Dugdale’s book without being impressed with the quiet unassuming modesty and worth of the author, and yet in the hands of those who have so often carelessly and unscientifically generalized from his studies, it has possibly brought more harm than good.
The book covers investigations made by Dugdale between 1850 and 1870, a period in which little was known about the laws that govern inheritance, and necessarily, much evidence was pure hearsay without the data of careful investigation at hand. The case, however, does show a surprising number of criminals, paupers, harlots and misfits, descending from their original ancestor. From time to time further investigation has brought the history of the family down to 1918.
The ancestor with whom the investigation begins was born some time between 1720 and 1740. In the report the original is called “Max.” He has been described as a “hunter and fisher,” “a hard drinker,” “not fond of work,” fairly intelligent and leaving no record of crime. He probably left behind a large family, some of whom were legitimate and some illegitimate. The family came from a barren, rocky, lake region in New York and several generations grew up in the vicinity. The only industry was rough work like quarrying stone, logging and the like. Later a manufacturing plant was located in the region. The Jukes early got a bad name in the small community. Even when they wanted to find employment it was hard to get a job. They were socially ostracized and individually boycotted. The region was poor, and for the most part the family grew up in poverty. Often several members of a family lived in one room and slept on the floor indiscriminately, regardless of sex. For several generations few of them wandered far from the ancestral home. The locality was one that naturally came to be the resort of the poor and the outcast; these are always driven to the cheapest and most barren land. Whether the community was related by blood or not, the residents would almost inevitably be of the same class. Rich people cluster closely together for association and fellowship. The poor and wretched do the same. Common observation in city and country shows that this is inevitable. It comes from deeper and more fundamental laws than human statutes. It is born of the gregarious instinct and fostered and developed by economic law.
In the main, lax habits grow from surroundings and association. The tendency of all human beings is to revert to the primal. It is only association that keeps the individual units up to the tension that civilization expects and demands. Every community shows many examples of this inevitable tendency. Nature is constant; civilization spasmodic. Especially with sex relations, conditions are the chief factor. Nature knows little or nothing of the regulations fixed by society and custom. Poverty and wretchedness reach outward through a community and by association between the old and the young pass down the generations. Nothing but a complete change of environment can counteract the inevitable tendency. When social classes arise and the cleavage is clear and established, no great effort is made by the superior members to aid the inferior. In fact they are almost invariably left to themselves. Poverty and wretchedness are not transmitted in the blood, but in the environment.
It is not many years since physicians and communities believed that tuberculosis was inherited. In all communities there were instances of this dread disease spreading out through families and down the generations. It required the sacrifice of many lives and the careful investigation of scientists to discover that tuberculosis was the result of germs, generally accompanied by an impoverished system. These germs were transferred by close association and lack of sanitary conditions. It is as easy to transmit shiftlessness, idleness and lax habits as disease.
Dugdale’s figures of delinquency in the Jukes family are doubtless much too high. A large percentage of facts was gained from gossip and hearsay about those long since dead. The details show that many crimes charged were not even proved, others were evidently not crimes, and in any small community suspicion would rest upon a member of this family who was accused. Then too, the poor in court and out have a hard time defending themselves. They are frequently convicted when accused. The evidence in regard to the subnormal and defective is still less satisfactory. Without close examination and thorough tests, illiteracy generally passes as subnormality. Very few of the subjects were submitted to a careful test. It is at least probable that this family was not much different from the other families who lived in like circumstances in the community.
Dugdale’s original examination covered 709 cases out of about 1200 that were supposed to be living at the time. Of this number, 180 are put down as having received institutional and outdoor relief. The criminals and offenders are put down at 140. Habitual thieves convicted and unconvicted are listed at 60. Common prostitutes are put down at 50.
After Dugdale’s investigation the family, from industrial and other conditions, became scattered and spread out over many states. A record has lately been made of the descendants of this family, the later record showing much improvement in the stock. This must be due to environment. It seems fairly certain that with time and opportunity, it will not much longer be a marked family.
Quite aside from the history, it seems certain that no results such as shown by Dugdale could have followed from inheritance. Defectiveness is a recessive factor; normality a dominant one. If such were not true, this would be a world of feeble-minded. If the Mendelian law held good in this regard, from a union of a defective and a normal person, three out of four would be normal, but as a matter of fact, the percentage of normal is no doubt much greater. It is only when both father and mother are feeble-minded that feeble-mindedness is sure to show in the offspring. With the modern care of this sort of defectives, the chance of breeding is growing rapidly less.
The Kallikak family is cited as another illustration showing the possible inheritance of criminality and poverty through a defective strain. This family, so far as shown, makes it still clearer that what some authors have charged to heredity is simply due to environment. These investigations do not show the need of controlling birth but do prove the necessity of improving environment. It is not possible to speak with certainty as to heredity and environment. The thorough investigation of these two factors which make up life is still in its infancy, but scientists are working out the problem, and we may be confident that with the right attitude toward crime, a remedy will be found for such cases as result from environment.
XXXIII
CRIME, DISEASE AND ACCIDENT
The criminologist has always looked for the cause of crime in some other direction than in the inherent wickedness of the criminal. Only those who make and enforce the law believe that men commit crimes because they choose the wrong.
Different writers have made their catalogues of causes that are responsible for crime, and most of these lists are more or less correct. There can be no doubt that more crimes against property are committed in cold weather than in warm weather; more in hard times than in good times; more by the unemployed than the employed; more during strikes and lockouts than in times of industrial peace; more when food is expensive and scarce than when it is cheap and plenty; more, in short, when it is harder to live. There is no doubt that there are more crimes of violence in extreme hot weather than in cold weather. That is, heat affects crimes as it affects disease and insanity and death; in short, as it affects all life. More crimes of violence are committed after wars or during heated political campaigns than at other times; more of such crimes when, either by climatic or other conditions, feelings are intensified or aroused and less subject to control. Likewise there are more crimes committed by young men between seventeen and twenty four or five years of age than at any other age. Neither the very young nor the old commit crimes, except in rare cases. All the old people could be safely dismissed from prisons. Some few of the senile would need attention, and many need support and care, but none is dangerous to the community. There can be no question that practically all criminals are poor. Even when bankers get into prison they almost never have much money when they start that way, and none when they arrive. They are sent for something that would not have happened except for financial disaster. There is no longer any question that a large number, say probably from ten to twenty per cent of the convicted are, in fact, insane at the time the act was committed, and that the demented, the imbecile, and the clearly subnormal constitute many more than half of the inmates of prisons. Most of the rest can be accounted for by defective nervous systems, excessively strong instincts in some directions, weak ones in another, or a very hard environment. Add to this the facts that only a few have ever had any education worthy of the name, that most of them have never been trained to make a fair living by any trade or occupation, that almost all have had a poor early environment with no chance from the first, and most of them have had a very imperfect heredity. In short, sufficient statistics have been gathered and enough is known to warrant the belief that every case of crime could be accounted for on purely scientific grounds if all the facts bearing on the case were known.
Is there anything unreasonable in all of this? Is it outside of the other manifestations of life? Let us take disease. Clearly this is affected by heat and cold; beyond question it is largely the result of inherited susceptibilities. Poverty or wealth has much to do with disease. Many poor people die of tuberculosis, for instance, where the well-to-do would live. The span of life of the rich is greater than that of the poor. The long list of diseases from under-nourishment is mainly from the poor. Age affects disease, increasing the hazard of death. The food supply seriously affects health. Ignorance is a prolific cause of disease. Or, to speak more correctly, the lack of education and knowledge prevents men from living so that sickness will not overtake them, or so that they can recover when they are attacked by disease. The strength or weakness of the nervous system is a material factor.
The times of life, too, when the ravages of disease are greatest are as distinct as those of crime. And barring the fact that the few who are left at seventy rapidly drop away, the time of the greatest disasters would rather closely correspond with that of crime. Tuberculosis and insanity, for instance, take their greatest toll in the period of adolescence between fifteen and twenty-five years, just as crime does, and the percentage of both begins falling off rapidly after thirty.
Accidents can be as surely classified, and many of them in the same way. The poor naturally have more accidents than the rich; the ignorant more than the educated; the poorly-fed more than the well-nourished. Accidents are directly affected by climatic conditions; they are affected by human temperaments, by the strength and weakness of the nervous system, by the environment, by heredity, and by all the manifold stimuli that act on the human machine.
Legislatures have long since recognized that crime does not really stand as a separate and isolated phenomenon in human life. They have long since passed laws to safeguard the community against loss by accident and disease. A lengthening list of statutes can be found in our code regulating dangerous machinery, the operation of railroads, the running of automobiles, the construction of buildings, the isolation of the tubercular and those suffering from other contagious diseases, the amount of air-space for each person in tenement and work-shop, the use of fire-escapes and all of man’s conduct and activity for the prevention of accidents and disease.
Quite apart from the question of the wisdom or the foolishness of all this line of legislative activity, over which there will always be serious discussion, it is evident that criminal conduct even now occupies no unique or isolated place in law or human conduct. All unconsciously the world is coming to look on all sorts of conduct either as social or anti-social, and this regardless of what has already been classified as criminal. A few years since science was absorbed in the study of man’s racial origin and development. Today, biology and allied sciences are devoted to unraveling the complex causes responsible for individual development. It is fair to presume that this new effort of science may be able in time to solve the problem of crime, and that it may do for the conduct and mental aberrations of man what it has already done for his physical diseases.
XXXIV
LUCK AND CHANCE
Accident and luck may seem to have no place in a world of law, and yet the fate of lives rests almost entirely on what can be better classified under this head than any other.
This is a pluralistic universe. The world is made up of an infinite number of independent machines, each having its own existence and controlled by the laws of its own being. In going its several ways and living its own life, inevitably it often clashes with others and is seriously affected by them. The fox and the rabbit both roam the woods, apparently at will, at least independently of each other. By an infinite number of circumstances, at a particular time and place, their paths cross and the fox devours the rabbit. Had they not met at the time and place, the fate of the rabbit would not have been the same. The fox would have traveled farther and eaten another rabbit or some other animal in its stead.
An engine is running on a railroad track. It makes the trip day after day without accident or disaster. An automobile is one of a million built in a far off city. Its mechanism is marvelous, and each part is dependent on the rest for its normal functioning. Some vital piece of the machine contains a flaw. How it chanced to be imperfect is another story involving endless speculation. An inherent natural defect in the ore, or a tired workman anywhere from the original smelting place to the last hand that touched it, may have been the cause; or, the reason may be still more impossible to discover. The machine is purchased and does its work perfectly for months. It is driven thousands of miles without any mishap. It is propelled along the highway and reaches the railroad track over which the engine runs. It is filled with happy people enjoying a vacation. The automobile and the engine reach the crossing at almost the same time. The automobile driver sees the engine and applies the brakes. For the first time since it left the shop, the machinery does not work. The car forges ahead and reaches the tracks just in time to be struck by the engine. The merry party meets disaster. No power could foresee the catastrophe, nor provide against the death that must result. Inevitably comes the clash of independent machines. Each human being is a separate machine. Along the road of life he meets countless others like himself. Some chance meetings are fortunate and help the journey. Some other chance meeting with a human machine, a mechanical device, an infinitesimal microbe that happened to be at the same place at the same time brings disaster or death. This is luck or chance or fate, and this really hovers over every life, controlling its course and destiny and deciding when the puppet shall be laid away!
Luck and chance are the chief of all factors that really affect man. From birth to death the human machine is called on to make endless adjustments. A child is born and starts down the road of life. He starts blindly and, for the most part, travels the whole way in the mists and clouds. On his pathway he meets an infinite number of other pilgrims going blindly like himself. From the beginning to the end, all about him and in front of him are snares and pitfalls. His brain and nervous system are filled with emotions and desires which lure him here and there. Temptations are beckoning and passions urging him. He has no guide to show the way and no compass to direct his course. He knows that the journey will bring him to disaster in the end. He does not know the time or the nature of the last catastrophe he shall meet. Every step is taken in doubt and pain and fear. His friends and companions, through accident or disease, drop around him day by day. He cannot go back or halt or wait. He must go forward to the bitter end.
The whole journey of life is largely a question of luck. Let anyone ask himself the question how often he has escaped disaster or how often death has just passed him by. How often has he done some act that would have led to degradation had it been known? How many hair-breadth escapes has he met? How many accidents has he had which luckily were slight but which easily might have caused his destruction?
Chance is the great element in life. Two men invest money; one gains a fortune, the other loses all. Two men are riding in a machine and it goes over a cliff; one is killed, the other escapes. The deadly germ is taken by one, it passes the other by; or, it is taken by one when his health will make him immune, by another at the time that it will destroy his life. How many temptations to violate the law has one just missed by a lucky accident? How many times has a previous experience, education, or a friend at the right time saved him from destruction?
The imperfect man travels this road; he is poor and friendless; his life is a long series of accidents great and small. The first accident that weakens his structure makes the second more certain and so on in increasing ratio until the end. Good luck crowds around one life, while ill luck and disaster follow another’s footsteps wherever he goes with the persistency of his shadow.
In all the infinite number of chances one false step may be enough to bring final disaster. All depends on the nature of the step. Every pilgrim makes innumerable false steps; often luck alone saves the situation; often luck alone compasses the destruction.
Insurance companies know just when accidents will befall the insured. If a man lives long enough he will die from a mischance. In a thousand men, a certain number will meet accident in a given time. It is just the same whether the insurance is written to be payable when a leg is cut off by a train or when money is embezzled from an employer. In either event the time can be figured out, and inevitably it will come if the time is long enough.
Neither is it necessary that the bad luck shall be great at the first misfortune. It may be but the loss of a few dollars which another could easily stand. It may be only a few days of sickness which would be of no consequence to someone else. It may be the death of a father or an uncle, while the same sort of tragedy might be the source of another’s wealth. It may be some other person’s hard luck which takes him from school and leaves him to follow a life of hard and constant toil. It may be that he had the bad luck not to marry the person of his choice, or it may be that he had the bad luck to marry her. It may be because he had no children; it may be because he had too many. It may well be that he has been saved from prison by dying early of tuberculosis. He may have been saved from a railroad wreck by going to jail. Infinite are the tricks of chance. Infinite are the combinations and consequences that may come from turning the cards in a single deck.
Who is the perfect one that should be willing to punish vengefully his fellow-man? Let one look honestly into his own life and pick out the important things that lead to fortune or disaster from birth onward, and say how many are the results of circumstances over which he had no control.
Where is the human being, in the presence of a dead child or a dead parent or a dead friend or in the presence of a terrible trouble, that has not sat down in sorrow and despair and again and again lived over every circumstance that led to the disaster, asking why he did not turn this way instead of that way? Why did he not stop here, or go there; why did he do this or why did he not do that? Why did he not take this short step? Why did he not think of this or think of that? If only any one of almost an infinite number of things had been done or left undone, the dead would be alive or the disaster would not have befallen. Every man who is honest with himself knows that he has been a creature of conditions and chance, or at least what is chance as far as a man can see, and what was clearly chance to him. He knows that if he has met success, he has only been more in luck than the rest. If he has intelligence and human sympathy, he feels only pity for the suffering. He would never punish in vengeance or hatred. He knows that all do the best they can, with what they have.
Enumerating some of the many causes of crime ought to be an unnecessary task. To give the number of ways men die or are killed by accident, means only that sooner or later they die, and if they had not died one way, they would have died another. It means only that a machine will inevitably give way in some part, and man may go on finding the weak spots and strengthening them forever and still the end will come. Fate does not look for a weak spot; it looks for the weakest and finds it.
Manifold causes produce crime; some men commit it from one cause: some from another. Statistics only show the number of men who commit crime from the various separate causes. In logic and philosophy it really shows that, a certain heredity placed in a certain environment, will meet obstructions and obstacles. Some heredities will carry men further, and some environments will overcome them more quickly; but as surely as effects follow from causes, every heredity will meet disaster in some way under any environment, and the time and kind of disaster it meets depend not upon perverseness or freedom of will, but upon the fortune of the meeting of heredity with the manifold environment that surrounds every life. It must be plain that life lasts only as long as it makes adjustments. That it consists only of adjustments. That, ordinarily, strong heredity and a good environment will serve the longest. That, generally, a weak heredity and a poor environment will meet disaster soonest. Life may be lengthened either by improving the heredity or the environment or both. Whatever catastrophe overtakes it and the time it falls depend not upon the will of the machine, but upon the character of the machine that starts on the journey and the road it travels. The disasters cannot in reason or justice be divided into criminal or non-criminal. They are all natural; they are each and all inevitable. Each is the inevitable destruction of a machine which could stand so much, but which could stand no more. And in each, in spite of both heredity and the general environment, the constant meeting with other machines due to pure luck and chance is a great factor, if not the chief factor, that determines the individual life.
XXXV
PARDONS AND PAROLES
It has always been the province of the Chief Executive of a state or nation to grant pardons or clemency to those who are confined in prison. This is largely to correct the mistakes of courts and juries and is often indulged in by presidents and governors at Christmas time. Experience shows that during the trial of a case, especially one that causes public notice and general discussion, injustice is frequently done. Often the defendant is convicted when he should have been acquitted, and still more frequently punishments are excessive and cruel. Almost never is any serious inquiry made as to the heredity and environment of the accused. Probably trial by jury has served to save many defendants where the judge would have convicted, and has still more often tempered and modified penalties. Still, juries are by no means free from the mob psychology that surrounds and affects most important and well-known cases. Jurors are generally none too intelligent and not very ready to stand against public opinion. Most men agree with the crowd. The prevailing religious opinion and the dominant political and social ideas are accepted and believed by the ordinary citizen. Social and business considerations cause most men to go with the crowd, and in any case of importance it is easy for a jury to tell the feeling of the populace. If the case has attracted much attention, the juror knows the prevailing ideas as to the guilt or innocence of the defendant. When he takes his seat in the box he almost always shares that feeling. If the case is not one he has heard of or discussed, he can easily tell by the actions and surroundings of the court room how public feeling lies. All lawyers know how readily men feel the sentiment of a court room and how much easier is the task when the sentiment is their way. Juries are also apt to have an undue regard for the opinion of the judge. In spite of the fact that it is their province to pass upon the facts, they are very watchful of all the judge says and does and are prone to decide a case as they believe the judge wishes it to be decided. Even when the judge is not permitted to express any opinions on the facts involved, it is difficult for him to hide his real feelings, and when his desire is strong for either side it is easy to make his opinions known.
A jury is more apt to be unbiased and independent than a court, but they very seldom stand up against strong public clamor. Judges naturally believe the defendant is guilty. They feel that the fact that an indictment has been found is a strong presumption against the accused. The judge regards himself as a part of the administration of justice and feels that it is a part of his duty to see that no guilty man escapes. Generally, in the administration of the court he is very closely connected with the state’s attorney and naturally believes that the attorney would not have procured an indictment, much less pushed a trial, unless the defendant was guilty.
The whole atmosphere of the court at the time of the trial calls for a harsher and more drastic dealing with a defendant than would naturally prevail after the feeling has passed away. For this reason, the pardoning power is given to the chief executive to correct errors or undue harshness after the legal proceedings have been finished. Often after months or years, the persons or family who have suffered at the hands of the defendant feel like reversing their judgment or extending charity, and it is not unusual that the prosecutor and judge who conducted the case ask for leniency and a mitigation of the sentence is imposed. So often is an appeal made and so frequently is it felt just to grant clemency, that this part of the duty of the chief executive has grown to be very burdensome and really impossible for him thoroughly to perform. The policy of the law is further to give a prisoner some consideration and in cases of good behavior and mitigating circumstances to release him before the expiration of his time. In most states this has called for the creating of a board of pardons and parole. The statutes fixing penalties for certain offenses provide for a reduction of a certain number of weeks or months each year, but as a rule courts take this provision into consideration and figure out the net time they wish to give the defendant so that there is no clemency except through pardon or parole.
In most states the duties of the board are very grave and its business large. With this has generally gone a law providing for the release of prisoners on parole before their sentences are finished. In these cases the prisoner is paroled to someone who promises the board to employ him, and a monthly report is to be made of his conduct for a stated length of time. He is then given conditional freedom, subject to the revocation of the parole by the board on the violation of its terms.
The administration of this power has made the parole board one of the most important, if not the most important, of any branch of the state government. The lives and well-being of thousands of prisoners are absolutely dependent on this board. Even more important are the happiness and well-being of the families of the inmates of the prison. The power and responsibilities of this board are so great that only men of the best judgment and of humane and just tendencies should be trusted with the task. It also calls for great courage such as few men on boards possess. The public generally clamors for vengeance and unfairly and unjustly criticises the board, especially when a released man violates his parole or commits another crime. This frequently happens. Perhaps on an average ten per cent of those paroled are sent back to prison before their term expires. All this makes it hard for the board to perform its duties, and makes the members of the board timid and doubtful of the result, often causing them to deny paroles in many cases where they should be given.
A great deal of criticism has been made of the parole system. Public officials and that part of the crowd that is clamorous for vengeance are always ready to assail its activities unfairly and unduly. Most professional criminals are against the parole board. Speaking of the State of Illinois, I am sure that the parole law, instead of shortening the time of imprisonment, has lengthened the terms. All lawyers in any way competent to handle the defense of a criminal case would, in the event of conviction, almost always get a shorter term for their clients from a jury or from the court, or even from the prosecutor, than from the parole board. I feel strongly that the board is too timid and unwilling to grant paroles. Still in spite of this there can be no doubt