Chapter 5

There is another class of forgers, generally bankers, who speculate with trust funds. To cover up the shortage they sign notes expecting that they will never be presented and will deceive no one but the bank examiner. If luck goes against them too long, the bank fails and the forgery is discovered. These are really not forgers, as they never intend to get money on the note. It is only a part of a means to cover up the use of trust funds. Of course, these men are never professional forgers, and are much more apt to die from suicide or a broken heart than to repeat.

But with few exceptions, the criminal comes from the walks of the poor and has no education or next to none. For this society is much to blame. Sometimes he is obliged to go to work too soon, but often he cannot learn at school. This is not entirely the fault of the boy's heredity; it is largely the fault of the school. A certain course of study has been laid out. With only slight changes this course has come down from the past and is fixed and formal. Much of it might be of value to a professional man, but most of it is of no value to the man in other walks of life. Because a boy cannot learn arithmetic, grammar or geography, or not even learn to read and write, it does not follow that he cannot learn at all. He may possibly have marked mechanical ability; he may have more than the ordinary powers of adaptation to many kinds of work. These he could be taught to do and often to do well. Under proper instruction he might become greatly interested in some kind of work, and in the study to prepare him for the work. Then too it is more or less misleading to say that an uneducated man commits crime because he is uneducated. Often his lack of education as well as his crime comes from poverty. Crime and poverty may come from something else. All come because he had a poor make-up or an insufficient chance.

After all, the great majority of men must do some kind of manual labor. Until the time shall come when this kind of work is as easy and as well paid as other employment, no one will do manual labor if he can do any other kind. Perhaps the time may come when the hardest and most disagreeable work will be the best paid. There are too many unskilled workers in proportion to the population to make this seem very near. In the meantime--and that is doubtless a long time--some one must do this work. Much of it is done under supervision and requires no great skill and need not be very disagreeable or hard. In a complex civilization there is room for everyone to contribute to the whole. If our schools are some day what they should be, a large part of their time, in some cases all of it, will be devoted to manual training and will be given to producing skilled workmen. This sort of school work can be made attractive to thousands of boys who can do nothing else. And if easier conditions of life under fairer social surroundings could be added to this kind of education, most boys who now drift into crime would doubtless find the conventional life more profitable and attractive.

VIII

THE FEMALE CRIMINAL

Women furnish only one-fifth to one-tenth of the population of penal institutions. Probably the percentage would be still lower if among these were not a number of rather common convictions for acts which are peculiar to women, like abortion, infanticide, child abandonment and the like. As to the other crimes, few women are burglars or robbers, or guilty of other crimes of violence, except murder. Women steal and poison and blackmail and extort money and lie and slander and gossip, and probably cause as much unhappiness as men; but their crimes, like their lives, are not on so large or adventurous a scale. They do not so readily take a chance; they lack the imagination that makes big criminals or lays broad schemes. In many of their crimes they are often the accomplices of men and take rather a minor part, although sometimes a quite important one. For this reason they are often not detected and frequently not prosecuted, a fact which leaves the percentage smaller than it otherwise would be. Then too, juries are apt to acquit women of crime even when they are indicted and tried. It must be a positive case and one which calls for no possible feeling of sympathy or where there is no personal appeal that will work the conviction of a woman. Men have so long adopted an attitude of chivalry toward women that very few juries will convict them. This too has much to do with the small number of female convicts.

Some writers claim that the small number of women in penal institutions shows that women are better than men; but this is a hasty conclusion arrived at from insufficient facts. There are fewer female prisoners because women have lived a more protected life; they have not been engaged so generally in business; they have not been so constantly obliged to fight their way in the world; their lives have been more quiet and smooth; they have been surrounded by strong conventions and closely watched. Especially is this true with regard to the girl as compared with the boy. Such protection naturally keeps them from the commission of crime. The great consideration shown to them by prosecuting witnesses, prosecuting officers, judges and juries, supplements the protected life and is an added reason for the showing made by statistics. It is notorious that a woman is seldom convicted of murder. This has been the subject of much complaint on the part of the public; still a man may condemn such acquittals and when placed on a jury will himself vote for acquittal.

After all, the juries are right. Most of the cases of murder against women involve sex relations. Nature has made the bearing and rearing of children first of all the woman's part, and this fact so dominates her life that nothing else seems important to her in comparison. She is not able to judge in a broad and scientific way matters so clearly affecting life. It may even be possible that in the evolution and preservation of life, her judgments are right. At least they are the natural judgments for a large number of women, or these tragedies would not occur. No doubt as woman enters the field of industry formerly monopolized by man, and as she takes her part in politics and sits on juries, the percentage of female criminals will rapidly increase. In fact, the percentage of women prisoners has been climbing for many years. As she takes her place with men she will be more and more judged as men are judged, and will commit the crimes that men commit, and perhaps furnish her fair quota to the penitentiaries and jails.

Whether this will be better or worse for the race is no part of the discussion, and can only be told by long experience. Women must accept the facts and make their choice of activities in view of these facts. Quite apart from any sentiment, I think that it is a mistake to believe that men and women should be judged alike. The structure and nervous system of women cause physical and mental disturbances which affect their judgment and life. If there were any justice in human judgment and civilization, then each human being would be judged according to his make-up, his tendencies, his inclinations and his capacities, and no two would be judged alike.

Any sudden change in the treatment of women in the courts will work a great injustice that will leave its effect on both women and men, and still more on the life of the race.

IX

JUVENILE CRIMINALS

This subject would scarcely have been noted a few years ago. True, there was in the past a small mixture of children in the grist ground out in the criminal courts. Usually they received some leniency, and were viewed with more curiosity than alarm. The juvenile criminal was regarded as a prodigy with a capacity for crimes far beyond his years. Something of the attitude obtained in regard to him which attaches to the child chess player or the child mathematician. The child criminal is now common, and for the most part is a product of the city.

All crime is doubtless much more common in the city than the country, and the young criminal especially is a product of the crowded community. To those who look for natural causes for all phenomena the reason is not far to seek. The city itself is an abnormal thing. Primitive man and his ancestors were never huddled together in great multitudes, as are the dwellers in cities today. To a degree almost all animals are gregarious, but the units of organization are much smaller with them than with man, excepting possibly in the case of the ant and the bee, insects which seem specially adapted to live a highly automatic and cooperative life, such as human beings cannot possibly reach. But primitive men and their direct ancestors lived in small groups. They could not have preserved their life in any other way. They lived by fishing and hunting and by gathering roots, berries and herbs. Later they tended their flocks and cultivated the fields in a simple way.

With the introduction of the modern machine, the factory system and the railroads, in the last century, our great modern cities were evolved. As they grew more complicated, new problems arose. The life of the crowded city is most difficult even for normal men and women. The adjustments are too numerous and too complex for an animal made with simple tastes and for a pastoral life. But, if it is hard for men, it is almost hopeless for children, especially the children of the poor who fill our prisons, asylums and almshouses.

Every child needs the open air and the open life of the country. He needs, first of all, exercise which should be in the form of outdoor play. No healthy boy wants to live indoors, even though his home may be a convenient city "flat." The woods, the fields, the streams, the lakes, the wide common with plenty of room, have always made their natural appeal to the young. And as sunlight kills most of the deadly germs, so outdoor life with exercise and play takes care of most of the unhealthy thoughts, habits and ideas of child-life. In the past, our schools both in the city and country have done little to help the young. For the most part healthy children have always looked on them more or less as prisons. Here they have been confined and kept from exercise and play, to study useless and unrelated facts and to commit to memory dry rules which are forgotten as soon as their minds are ready to retain anything worth while.

Schools should be made to fit the needs of children, and not children to fit schools. The school that does not provide work and play for the child which he is glad to do, has learned little of the psychology and needs of youth. Botany, Zoölogy, Geology and even Chemistry can be taught to children before they learn to read, and taught so that it will seem like play, and through this the pupil will acquire a natural taste for books. It is only within the last few years that the modern school has really begun to educate the child. It has been a hard fight that scientific teachers have waged with conventional education for the right of the child. What has been done is too recent and scattering to show material results.

Nothing is so important to the child as education. The early life is the time that character is formed, habits are made, rules of conduct taught, and it is almost impossible to up-root old habits and inhibitions and implant new ones in later years.

It is true that "the child is father to the man," and he is the father of the criminal as well as the useful citizen. Outside of the hopelessly defective, or those who have very imperfect nervous or physical systems, there is no reason why a child who has had proper mental and physical training and any fair opportunity in life should ever be a criminal. Even most of the mentally defective and those suffering from imperfect nervous systems could be useful to society in a sheltered environment. Poor as the country schools have always been, the outdoor life of the country child is still so great an influence that he generally escapes disaster. He is not sent to a factory, but lives in a small community where he has fresh air and exercise.

Of course here as everywhere we must allow for the defective, the imperfect, the subnormals and the children of the very poor. These unfortunates furnish a large percentage of the inmates of prison, and most of the victims for the scaffold which civilization so fondly preserves.

The growth of the big cities has produced the child criminal. He is clearly marked and well defined. He is often subnormal even down to idiocy. In most cases he is the result of heredity. Many times he may have fair intelligence, but this is usually attached to an unstable, defective nervous system that cannot do its proper work, and he has had no expert treatment and attention. He is always poor. Generally he has lost one or both parents in youth and has lived in the crowded districts where the home was congested. He has no adequate playground and he runs the streets or vacant, waste places. He associates and combines with others of his kind. He cannot or does not go to school. If he goes to school, he dreads to go and cannot learn the lessons in the books. He likes to loaf, just as all children like to play. He is often set to work. He has no trade and little capacity for skilled work that brings good wages and steady employment. He works no more than he needs to work. Every night and all the days that he can get are spent in idleness on the street with his "gang." He seldom reads books. He lacks the taste for books, and such teachers as he knew had not the wit to cultivate a taste for good reading. Such books as he gets only add to his unhealthy thoughts.

Many writers have classified the crimes that the boy commits. It is scarcely worth the while. He learns to steal or becomes a burglar largely for the love of adventure; he robs because it is exciting and may bring large returns. In his excursions to pilfer property he may kill, and then for the first time the State discovers that there is such a boy and sets in action the machinery to take his life. The city quite probably has given him a casual notice by arresting him a number of times and sending him to a juvenile prison, but it has rarely extended a hand to help him. Any man or woman who has fairly normal faculties, and can reason from cause to effect, knows that the crimes of children are really the crimes of the State and society which by neglect and active participation have made him what he is. When it is remembered that the man is the child grown up, it is equally easy to understand the adult prisoner.

X

HOMICIDE

Crimes against persons are not always as easy to classify and understand as crimes against property. These acts are so numerous and come from so many different emotions and motives, that often the cause is obscure and the explanation not easy to find. Still here, as everywhere in Nature, nothing can happen without a cause, and even where limited knowledge does its best and cannot find causes, our recognition of the connection between cause and effect and the all-inclusiveness of law can leave no doubt that complete knowledge would bring complete understanding.

It is always to be borne in mind in considering this class of crimes that the motive power of life is not reason but instinct. If men lived by reason the race would not survive. The primal things that preserve the race, the hunger for food, drink, sex, are instinctive and not only are not awakened or satisfied by reason, but oftentimes in violation of it. Nature, first of all, sees to the preservation of the species, and acts in a broad way that life may not perish. Nature knows nothing about right and wrong in the sense in which man uses these words. All of our moral conceptions are purely of social origin and hence not instinctive in human life, and are forever giving way to the instincts on which Nature depends. The preservation of life has called for the emotions of hate, fear and love, among the other emotions that move men. The animal fears danger and runs away, and thus life is preserved. The weaker animal is almost entirely dependent for life upon his fear. He is sometimes afraid when there is no danger, but without fear he would be destroyed. Sometimes the animal hates and kills and thus preserves himself. The love of offspring is the cause of the care bestowed upon it which preserves its life. The herd instinct in animal species develops packs and clans and tribes and states. Man is the heir to all the past, and the instincts and emotions of the primitive animal are strong in his being. These may have been strengthened or diluted as the ages have come and gone, but the same instincts furnish the motive power for all his acts. Man fears and hates, and runs or kills and saves his life. He loves, and preserves his offspring.

Man sees an object. Instinctively he may fear it or he may hate it. He may run from it or destroy it. He gathers impressions through his senses. The nerves carry them to the brain. He comes to fear certain persons and things, to hate certain other persons or things, and to love still others. If the hatred is strong enough or the danger great enough or the desire sufficient, he may kill. Whether he plans the method or deliberates upon the act can make no difference. He is prompted by the instinct, and the reflection simply means the consideration of reasons for and against, or the reaching of inhibitions. If he acts, it is one of the primal emotions that causes the act. He is the "machine" through which certain emotions find their path and do their work. Infinite are the causes and circumstances that give rise to an emotion strong enough to take human life.

Killings which result from a sudden passion are easily understood. Everyone has been overwhelmed by rage, where reason and judgment and all acquired restraints are entirely submerged. The primitive man with his primitive emotion reasserts himself. It is mainly accident or the lack of some particular circumstance that prevents a murder. Of course some people are overwhelmed more easily than others. Some natures are less stable, some nervous systems less perfect, and the built up barriers are weaker. The whole result of stimuli is determined by the strength of the feeling acting upon the machine. Such a person is not ordinarily dangerous to the community. The act itself would generally assure that it could never happen again. Some killings, however, are more deliberate. They are preceded by a settled hatred which preys upon the mind and fights against the preventive influences that training and habit have formed. Under a certain combination of circumstances these restrictions are swept aside and the emotions have their way.

There are, of course, certain broad classifications of homicides. A considerable number, perhaps more than any other, come through the commission of robbery, burglary and larceny. In the midst of the act the offender is caught, and kills in an effort to escape. These murders fall under the heading of property crimes; the cause is the same, and the rules governing them are the same. The second group, with respect to numbers, grows from the relations of men and women. Wives kill husbands and husbands kill wives; sweethearts kill each other. Jealousy and revenge are commonly mixed with sex life and sex association. Many socialists have argued that under an equal distribution of property, where women were freed from fear of want, these crimes would disappear. But this argument does not take human nature into account. Jealousy is inevitably associated with sex relations. The close contact of men and women over long periods of time inevitably causes friction and misunderstanding. These conditions often grow chronic, and in marriage are aggravated by the necessity of close association regardless of the real feelings that may exist. Certain claims are made by husbands and by wives, which are probably inherent in the relationship; sometimes they flow from habit and custom, but, from whatever cause, such claims are so exacting that either the husband or wife finds them hard to meet.

Because of the fact that the feelings of men and women for each other are deeper and more fundamental than those of any other relation, they are more subject to misfortune and tragedy. The hatreds born from the deepest affection are most beyond control. Then the desire of possession is overwhelming. It would be strange if more killings did not result from the relations of men and women than from any other cause. It is easy to understand why this is true. It is likewise easy to understand how laws, reason and judgment are powerless to prevent. Juries seem to understand this when women kill husbands and lovers, but a long-established code of chivalry and a cultivated attitude toward women, which is partly right and partly wrong, make it impossible to see that men are just as helpless under strong feelings as women. No doubt a public opinion that would favor divorces on a greater number of grounds and make them easily obtainable would prevent large numbers of such killings, but the cause can not be altogether removed.

The law has long singled out killing as the greatest crime, doubtless because man prizes life first of all. Of course every effort should be made to protect life. Still, in measuring the character of the offender, in determining his possibilities as a useful citizen, homicide is probably one of the lesser crimes. Many times it implies no moral turpitude, even with those who believe in moral turpitude. It may imply very little lack of physical stability. Homicide practically never becomes an occupation. Most killings are accidental in the sense that they are casual and dependent on circumstances, and there is as a rule much less danger of repetition than there is of the original commission of a homicide by one of a defective nervous system who has never before committed an unlawful act. A large number of men convicted of murder are used as "trusties" in our penal institutions, even when their imprisonment is for a long term, or for life. This shows from the experience of prison officials that this class of offenders is, as a rule, of a better fibre than almost any other class.

Doubtless no sort of treatment will ever entirely get rid of homicide. Brains and nervous systems are so made, that inhibitions are unable to protect in all cases. Nations and men readily engage in killing, either from sport or because of a real or fancied wrong. Mob psychology shows how whole communities are turned into ravenous beasts, hunting for their prey. The world war, and all wars, show cases of mob psychology that have led large masses of men to take an active part in killing. The pursuit of those charged with crime shows that all people like the chase when the emotions are thoroughly aroused. Under certain impulses, communities gloat over hangings and commend judges and juries because they have the courage to hang, when, in fact, they were too cowardly not to hang and when their reason did not approve the verdict and judgment. Men who do not kill often wish others might die and are pleased and happy when they do die. We approve of death when it is the right one who dies. Whether all persons are murderers or not may depend upon a definition of murder. But, beyond doubt, all persons are potential murderers, needing only time and circumstances, and a sufficiently overwhelming emotion that will triumph over the weak restraints that education and habit have built up, to control the powerful surging instincts and feelings that Nature has laid at the foundation of life.

XI

SEX CRIMES