Chapter 58

of their children. II. Poverty and inadequate living conditions? If human illness can be in large measure averted by state action, poverty can be practically abolished. The poor we have always had with us, indeed; but we need not forever have them. There is no excuse for our tolerance of the suffering and degradation of the submerged classes; the causes of this wretchedness are in the main removable. The initial cost will be great, but in the long run the saving to the community will be enormous. Individual effort can only achieve a superficial and temporary relief; and even the two or three hundred charity organization societies in the country are impotent, for lack of funds and of power, to stem the forces that make for poverty. To dole out charity to this family and to that is unhappily necessary in our present crude social situation; but it is not a solution. It not only runs the continual risk of encouraging shiftlessness and dependence, but it does not go to the root of the matter. There will always be inequalities in wealth and room for personal gifts from the more to the less fortunate; but the State must not be content with such patching and palliating, but must strike at the roots of the evil. We will consider the chief causes of poverty and their cure.

(1) The cause that bulks largest is the inadequate wages of a considerable portion of the lowest class. It is obviously impossible to support the average family of five in decency, not to say in health, efficiency, or comfort, with an income of, say, less than a thousand dollars a year, as prices go at time of writing (1914). Yet great numbers of families at present have to exist somehow upon less, even much less. Five million adult male workers in this country receive less than six hundred dollars a year for their work.[Footnote: Cf. Professor Fairchild's comments in Forum, vol. 52, p. 49 (July, 1914).] Even when mothers work who ought to be at home tending the children, even when children work who ought to be in school, the total income is often miserably inadequate. Yet there is ample wealth in the country, if it were better distributed, to pay a living wage to every laborer. By some one of the means which we shall presently discuss, the State must see that all laborers are well enough paid to enable them, while they work, to support in comfort a moderate family.

(2) Involuntary unemployment is the next source of poverty. This is due to many causes: the periodic depressions and failures of industries; the introduction of new machinery, throwing out whole classes of laborers; the enormous influx of immigrants and consequent congestion in the cities of unskilled labor; lack of education, or natural stupidity, which render some men too incompetent to retain positions. Ignorance can be overcome by proper compulsory education laws; all but the actually feeble-minded (who must be cared for in institutions) can, by skillful attention, be taught proficiency in some trade. And with a more widespread education the work that requires no skill can be left to the hopelessly stupid. The congestion of labor in the cities [Footnote: In February, 1914, there were reported to be 350,000 men out of work in New York City (Outlook, March 14, 1914).] can be largely remedied by free state employment bureaus which shall serve as distributing agencies; there is almost always work enough and to spare in some parts of the country, and usually not far away. But more than this is necessary; the State must see that work is offered every man who is able to work. All sorts of public works need unskilled laborers in every city of the country; there is digging to be done, shoveling and sweeping and carting. There are roads to be built, rivers to be dredged, parks to be graded, buildings to be erected, a thousand things to be done. It will be quite feasible, when wages are generally adequate, for the cities, by general agreement, to offer work to all applicants at a wage so low as not to attract men away from other employments, and yet to enable them to support their families decently. The low wages given will save the city much money directly, as well as saving it the care of the indigent. But it will be a feasible plan only when the city's jobs cease to be used as a means of vote-buying by politicians and are offered where they are needed. [Footnote: 1 See W.H. Beveridge, Unemployment. J.A. Hobson, The Problem of the Unemployed. Alden and Hayward, The Unemployable and the Unemployed. C. S. Loch, Methods of Social Advance, chap. IX. Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 8, pp. 168, 453, 499. Review of Reviews, vol. 9, pp. 29, 179. Charities Review, vol. 3, pp. 221, 323. Independent, vol. 77, p.363. National Municipal Review, vol. 3, p.366. The unemployment which is the result of laziness must be cured by compulsory work as in farmcolonies, which have been successful in Europe. Cf. Edmond Kelly, The Elimination of the Tramp.]

(3) The third important cause of poverty is sickness and the death of wage earners. Here the way is clear. When the State has taken the measures we have enumerated for the public health, when it provides competent doctors and nurses, and bears the cost of illness, we shall have only the loss of wages during the illness or after the death of wage earners to consider. And here some form of universal insurance will probably be the solution; this is preferable to state care of dependents, as it carries no taint of charity. This solves every problem but the delicate one, which must be entrusted to expert diagnosticians, of determining to work is caused by physical weakness or mere laziness.

(4) The fourth great cause of poverty, drink, can and must be abolished in the near future, by the means already considered.

(5) There remain three personal causes which need be the only permanently troublesome factors- -laziness, self-indulgence, and the incontinence which results in over- large families. The laziness which prefers chronic inactivity to work is not normal to human nature, and will be largely banished by education, the improvement of health, and the improvement of the conditions and hours of labor. The obstinate cases of unwillingness to work must be cured by compulsory labor in farm colonies or on public works; most such cases respond to intelligent treatment and cease to be troublesome when some physical or moral twist has been remedied. The waste of income in self-indulgence of one form or other is more difficult to deal with; but the law can justly forbid the wage-earner from squandering upon himself money needed by wife and children, and direct that a due proportion of his wages be paid directly to the wife. If neither father nor mother will use their money for the proper welfare of the children, the State must take the children from them though that step should only be a last and desperate resort. Finally, there is the tendency, unfortunately most prevalent among the lowest classes, to have more children than can be decently cared for. To some extent this evil can be remedied by the dissemination of information concerning proper methods of preventing conception [Footnote: There is, however, a danger in the general dissemination of such information- the danger of increasing prostitution by lessening one of the chief deterrents there from.]; to some extent by moral training to self-control and a sense of responsibility. Or the State may undertake the countenance large families; if this is done (see chapter xxx), steps must of course be taken to prevent the marrying of the unfit-or, at least, their breeding. With our rapidly decreasing birth rate, and the spread of education, which will do away with "lower" classes and fit every one in some decent degree to be a parent, this will probably be the ultimate solution. With the disappearance of poverty, the miserable living conditions of so large a proportion of our population will automatically improve. But much should be done directly by the State to prevent such housing conditions as make for physical or moral degeneration. We are far behind Europe in housing-legislation, and conditions in most of our cities are going from bad to worse. There is, however, no need whatever of unsanitary housing; it is merely the selfishness of owners and the apathy of the public that permits its existence. The crowding-which in New York City runs up to some thirteen hundred per acre-can be stopped by simple legislation. The lack of proper light or ventilation, of proper water supply, plumbing, or sewerage, of proper removal of ashes, garbage, or rubbish, is inexcusable. The results of living in the dark, foul-aired, unsanitary tenements of our slums are: a great increase in sickness and premature death; a stunting of growth, physical and mental, and an increase in numbers of backward and delinquent children; the spread of vicious and criminal habits through the lack of privacy and contagion of close contact with the vicious.

We are breeding in our slums a degenerate race,-boys who grow up used to vice, and girls that drift naturally into prostitution; we are allowing disease to spread from them, through the children that go to the public schools, the shop-girls we buy from in the stores, the servants that enter our houses, the men we rub elbows with on the street or in the street-cars. Very salutary are the laws that require the name of the owner to be placed on all buildings; shame before the public may wring improvements from many a landlord who now takes profits from tenements unfit for habitation. But it ought not to be left to the conscience of the individual owner; the State must exercise its primary right to forbid the crowding of tenants into houses which do not afford sanitary quarters and permit a decent degree of privacy.

III. COMMERCIALIZED VICE?

The duty of the State in regard to the vice caterers is obvious; the commercializing of vice must be strictly prohibited by law and enforced by whatever means experience proves most effective. We must learn to include in this class of enemies of society the manufacturers and sellers of alcoholic liquors, as well as of the less generally used arcotics; but this matter has been already discussed in connection ]with our study of the individual's duty in relation to alcohol. Of the proprietors of gambling dens, indecent "shows," etc, we need not further speak, concentrating our attention instead upon the worst species of vice catering, the commercializing of prostitution. The extent to which the sale of woman's virtue prevails in our cities is scarcely believable. The recent commission of which Mr. Rockefeller was chairman actually counted 14,926 professional prostitutes in Manhattan alone, in 1912; while personal visitation established the existence of over sixteen hundred houses where the gratification of lust could be bought. Not all, certainly, were counted; and this list is, of course, entirely exclusive of the great number of girls occasionally and secretly selling themselves to friends, acquaintances, and employers. Many hundreds of men and women, keepers of houses, procurers, and the like, live on the proceeds of this great underground industry; and to some extent-though to what extent it is, of course, impossible to ascertain the forcible retention of young girls is exist in most of the world's cities. What is being done to abolish this ghastliest of evils? In most great cities, scarcely anything, for two reasons: the one being that so many men, perhaps the majority, secretly wish to retain an opportunity for purchasing sex gratification, the other that the police generally find the protection of illegal vice an easy source of revenue. If the police are honest, they break up a disorderly house-and let the inmates carry the lure of their trade elsewhere. The magistrates fine them, or give them sentences just long enough to bring them needed rest and nutrition, and send them back to their business. Or they drive them out of town-to swell the numbers in the next town. Attempts at legalization and localization are frank admissions of inability or lack of desire to fight the evil; their effect is to make the way of temptation easier for the youth. Compulsory medical inspection gives a promise of immunity from disease which is largely illusory, and entices men who are now restrained by prudential motives. There are, however, many promising lines of attack:

(1) When women gain the vote, they can be counted on to fight the evil. The prostitutes themselves, being mostly minors, and, in any case, anxious to conceal their identity, seldom vote; and the remaining women are almost en masse bitterly opposed to the trade. With women voting, and an efficient political administration inaugurated in our cities, we shall hope to witness the end of the scandalous nonenforcement of existing laws.

(2) The abolishing of the liquor trade will take away the great political ally of the trade in girlhood; and without the demoralizing influence of alcohol fewer men will yield to their passions and fewer girls be pliant thereto.

(3) The Rockefeller Commission disclosed majority of prostitutes are almost wholly uneducated-about half of those questioned had not even gone through the primary school, and only seven per cent had finished the grammar-school work. Compulsory education, vigilantly enforced, will greatly lessen the number of girls who will be willing to take up the life of degradation, suffering, and premature death; especially will this be the case if sex hygiene is properly taught. Approximately a quarter of the girls studied were mentally defective; these should have been detected in the schools and removed to the proper institutions before they fell prey to the clever schemes of the procurer.[Footnote: Of 647 wayward girls recently at the Bedford Reformatory, over 300 were accounted mentally deficient.] For a falling-off in this alarming number of mental defectives we must await scientific eugenic laws to be discussed in chapter xxx.

(4) It is a shameful fact that thousands of girls, dependent upon their own earnings for support, receive less than enough to enable them to live in decent comfort, not to say with any enjoyment of life. Many, of course, waste their earnings on needlessly fine clothes, or at the "shows"; the American fashion of extravagant dress and the craving for amusement are factors of importance in the ruin of young girls. But five dollars, or even seven dollars, a week is not enough to live on in the cities; and many girls are paid no more, even less. The State, in framing its minimum wage laws, or other legislation, must take cognizance of this startling and intolerable situation.

(5) Provision should be made for the care of girls who come alone to the cities. Dormitories with clean and airy bedrooms at minimum cost, and attractive reading- and social-rooms, offering provision for normal social life and amusement, can do much to keep lonely and restless girls out of the clutches of the vicious provision for young men who live alone might avail to lessen to some extent their patronage of houses of vice.

(6) The model injunction acts of a few of our more advanced States "vest the power in any citizen, whether he or she is personally damaged by such establishment, to institute legal proceedings against all concerned; to secure the abatement of the nuisance, and perpetual injunction against its reestablishment." It is too early yet to speak with assurance of the practical working of this method; but it bids fair to make the brothel business more precarious. If, in addition, laws against street soliciting are strictly enforced, the first steps of young men into vice will be made much less alluringly easy than at present.

(7) The most radical and effective measure of all will be to arrest the professional prostitutes, segregate them, and keep them segregated during the dangerous years, except as genuine signs of intention to reform appear, in which case they may be released upon probation. The expense will be, at the outset, considerable. But the girls will be taught trades, and kept at work which will in most cases more than pay for their support. Moreover, the community will, of course, save the vast sums now passed over by its lustful men to these women. The saving of health and life will be incalculable. The girls, although under restraint, will be infinitely better off than they were, and can in most cases, with patience and education, be made ultimately to realize their gain; as they grow older and forget their early years of shame, they can be set free again, with some skilled trade learned, and some accumulated earnings. Professional prostitution will, of course, still flourish to a degree underground; but it will be a highly risky business, attracting far fewer girls, and difficult for the uninitiated young man to discover. With this outlet for lust partially closed, there would no doubt tend to be an increase in solitary and homosexual vice, and in the seduction of innocent girls. But the latter outlet can be checked by raising the "age of consent" to twenty or twenty-one, and punishing the seduction of younger girls as rape. And the former evils, serious as they are, are far less of an evil than the creation of our present wretched class of professional prostitutes. As a matter of fact, there would, beyond all question, be a great diminution in sexual vice, the present amount of it being due by no means wholly to desire that is naturally imperious, but to the artificial fostering of that desire by those who hope to profit financially thereby.

IV. Crime?

The gravest of all social ills is-crime. Its treatment may be considered under the three heads of prevention, conviction, and the treatment of convicted criminals.

(1) To some extent, not yet clearly determined, the causes of crime are temperamental, due to congenital defects or overexcitable impulses. The inherited effects of insanity, alcoholism, and other pathological conditions, make self-control far more difficult for some unfortunates. Such baneful inheritances will some day be minimized by eugenic laws; and individuals whose abnormal mental condition makes them dangerous to society will be kept under permanent restraint. The causes of crime are, however, to a far greater degree environmental. Undernutrition, overwork, worry, and various other sources of poor health, create a condition of lowered resistance to impulse. The herding of the poor into crowded tenements, the inability to find work, the lack of wholesome interests and excitements to provide a normal outlet for energy of body and mind, the daily sight of the luxury of the rich and the bitterness of its contrast with their own need, awaken dangerous passions and reckless defiance of law. The lack of education, contact with absorption of law-defying philosophies of life, tend to make crime appear natural and justified. All of these unhealthy conditions are being attacked under the spur of our new social conscience; and with every step in social alleviation crime diminishes. Criminals are, in general, just such men and women as we; in like situations we too should be tempted to crime. We might all repeat with Bunyan: "There, but for the grace of God, go I!" Give every man and woman a fair chance for happiness in normal ways, and the lure of crime will largely vanish.[Footnote: Cf. An Open Letter to Society from Convict 1776 (F. H. Revell Co.).] Yet human nature in its most favorable circumstances and in its most favored individuals has its twists and its anti-social impulses. For the potential criminal-and that means for every one of us-there must be elaborated also a system of moral or religious training which shall seek to develop the better nature that is in every man and enchain the brute. With such a discipline imposed upon each generation there would be a far greater hope for the repression of evil tendencies, whether due to temperamental perversion or provocative environment.

(2) If there is much to be done in the prevention of crime, there is also much to be done in insuring the prompt conviction of offenders. The legal delays and obtrusion of the technicalities which now so often obstruct the administration of justice, hold out a means to the criminal of escaping punishment, work hardship to the poor, who cannot afford to employ the sharpest lawyers, and needlessly retard the clearing of the reputation of the innocent. The overuse of the plea of insanity has become latterly a public scandal. In certain courts it has sometimes seemed impossible to convict a criminal who has plenty of money or strong political influence. In other cases such men have been set free on bail and proceeded to further may have to wait years for compensation; if they are poor, they may hesitate to set out on the long and dubious course of a lawsuit; or, if they embark upon it, it is only by an agreement wherein the speculator- lawyer takes the lion's share of the compensation. The result of all this friction in the machinery of the courts is an increase in crime, and an increase in the illegal punishment of crime. Lynching, which are such a disgrace to this country, are due primarily to indignation at crime which bids fair to be inadequately punished; they will occur, in spite of their injustice and brutality, until the penalties of the law are made universally prompt and sure and fair.[Footnote: See J. E. Cutler, Lynch Law. Outlook, vol. 99, p. 706.] A wholesome disregard of technicalities, and an interpretation of the law in the line of equity, a rigid exclusion of irrelevant evidence and argument, the provision of an adequate number of courts to prevent the piling up of cases, and of a public defender, of skill and training, to look after the interests of the poor, the removal of judgeships from politics by the general improvement of our political system, and the adjudgment of insanity only by impartial, state-hired alienists-these are some of the reforms that ethical considerations suggest.[Footnote: Cf. W. H. Taft, Four Aspects of Civic Duty, II. Outlook, vol. 92, p. 359; vol. 98, p. 884.]

(3) The ends to be borne in mind in the treatment of the convicted Criminal are four: First, reparation to the injured party must be demanded of him, so far as money will constitute reparation; if he has not the money, his future work must go for its accumulation, so far as that is compatible with the support of his infant children. Secondly, he must be punished severely enough to serve as a warning to other potential offenders and, so far as they are amenable to such fears, deter them from similar crimes. Capital punishment for the worst crimes is shown deterrent than confinement; whether the danger of executing an innocent man is grave enough to offset this public gain is an open question.[Footnote: See A. J. Palm, The Death Penalty.] Thirdly, he must be prevented from doing any more harm; this means confinement just so long as expert criminologists deem him dangerous, whether not at all (unless to deter others) or for life. The old system of giving a fixed sentence is wholly unjustifiable; some are thereby kept imprisoned when there is every reason to believe them capable of living honorably and serving the community as free men, others are let loose, after a term, more dangerous to the community than ever. The habitual criminal, who alternates between periods of crime and periods of imprisonment, should be an unknown phenomenon. The judge should be obliged to pronounce an indeterminate sentence, and leave it to the expert prison officials to decide if, or when, it is safe to release the prisoner on parole. Experience has already shown that few mistakes are made (where prison management is kept out of machine politics); and as the released prisoner is under surveillance, and may be returned to the prison without trial for disorderliness, drunkenness, or other anti-social conduct, he is not likely to do much damage. A second offense would be likely to bring upon him imprisonment for life, which would be within the discretion of the prison officials. This method provides a spur to good behavior, and, when used in conjunction with the reforming influences we are about to consider, works admirably in abolishing the criminal class; whatever criminal class persists-those who cannot or will not reform are kept under restraint for life, where they can do no harm. Fourthly, and most important of all, a painstaking attempt must be made to reform the criminal, to make him a normal, socially useful man. At present our prisons are rather schools of corruption than of uplift; too often first offenders are thrown into association with hardened criminals, and come out after their term of years with their minds full of criminal suggestions, and less able than before to live a normal life. The prison should be a training school for the morally perverted. First of all, the prisoner should be taught a trade, if he knows none, and made competent to earn an honest living. He should be kept at regular work, and his wages used partly to reimburse society for his keep, and partly to support his family, or, if he has none, to give him a new start when he leaves prison. Recent experience shows that the great majority of prisoners can be trusted to work outside the prison, at any ordinary labor, without guards-returning to the prison each evening.[Footnote: See Century, vol. 87, p. 746.] Regular hours, and wholesome living in every way, are, of course, enforced; sports are encouraged in leisure hours, and physical development ensured. Educational influences are brought to bear, through class-instruction, books, sermons, private talks. The individual's mind is studied and every effort made to supplant morbid and anti-social by normal and moral ideas. Few criminals but are amenable to skillful guidance; most of them, could, if pains were taken, be transformed into useful citizens. All this application of modern penological ideas means a greatly increased expense per capita; but this will be largely offset by the work required of all healthy prisoners, and in any case is the best sort of an investment. The prevention of crime is, in the long run, much less costly, even from a purely financial standpoint, than crime itself. On pathological social conditions in general: Smith, Social Pathology. E. T. Devine, Misery and its Causes. M. Conyngton, How to Help. C. Aronovici, Knowing One's Own Community. Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House. S. Nearing, Social Adjustment. Charles Booth, Life and Labor of the People of London. Hall, Social Solutions. C. R. Henderson, Social Duties. W. Gladden, Social Salvation. Public health: H. Ellis, The Task of Social Hygiene, The Nationalization of Health. Outlook, vol. 98, p. 63; vol. 102, p. 764. Literature published by The Committee of One Hundred on National Health (105 East Twenty-second Street, New York City). C. R. Henderson, The Social Spirit in America, chap. V. World's Work, vol. 17, p. 11321; vol. 21, p. 13881; vol. 23, p. 692. W. H. Allen, Civics and Health. Poverty and living conditions: R. Hunter, Poverty. B. S. Rowntree, Poverty, A Study of Town Life. Adams and Sumner, Labor Problems, chap. V. A. S. Warner, American Charities. E. T. Devine, Principles of Relief. S. Webb, Prevention of Destitution. Literature of the American Association of Societies for Organizing Charity, and of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation (both at 105 East Twenty-second Street, New York City). L. Veiller, Housing Reform. Deforest and Veiller, The Tenement-House Problem. J. Lee, Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy. Alden and Hayward, Housing. J. A. Riis, The Battle with the Slum. National Municipal Review, vol. 2, p. 210. Commercialized vice: Jane Addams, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil. Report of the Chicago Vice Commission: The Social Evil in Chicago. G. J. Kneeland, Commercialized Prostitution in New York City. Outlook, vol. 94, p. 303; vol. 101, p. 245; vol. 104, p. 101. Crime: F. H. Wines, Punishment and Reformation. E. A. Ross, Social Control, chap. XI. R. M. McConnell, Criminal Responsibility and Social Constraint. H. Ellis, The Criminal. A. H. Currier, The Present- Day Problem of Crime. P. A. Parsons, Responsibility for Crime. E. Ferri, The Positive School of Criminology. W. Tallack, Penological and Preventive Principles. E. Carpenter, Prisons, Police, and Punishment. Outlook, vol. 94, p. 252; vol. 97, p. 403. World's Work, vol. 21, p. 14254. North American Review, vol. 138, p. 254. International Journal of Ethics, vol. 20, p. 281.