Part 3

"If the offences to which habitual drinking has ultimately led could be ascertained, I believe we should find that four-fifths of the recorded offences have sprung from it."

Although the remedy for this enormous evil is justly regarded as lying to a considerable degree in the hands of educators, it is maintained that "much may be done to abate the evil by reducing the number of licensed public houses both in town and country, and by greatly raising the expense of strong drink."

As an evidence of the effects of cheapening strong drink, it is stated that in 1825, the duty on whiskey was greatly reduced in Scotland, and that as a consequence, intemperance began to increase, so that "in the twenty-seven years which have since elapsed, the consumption has become nearly _five-fold_ greater; crime, disease, and death have increased in similar proportion; and the sober, religious Scotland of other days is now _proved_, by its consumption of spirits, to be, without exception, the most drunken nation in Europe."

As to the connection between intemperance and the other causes of juvenile depravity, "the records of the prison-house, if fully analyzed, would show that the _first penny or the first pound_ taken by a son from his parents, or abstracted by the young man from his master's desk, is for the theatre, not for the public-house. But youth, being corrupted by the pleasures of sin, drunkenness follows, and becomes the associate or the substitute of licentiousness, and completes the ruin. Money becomes indispensable, and it is gotten by some desperate and wicked means, at the possibility of which a few months before, the mind would have recoiled with indignation, like that of Hazael, when reproached by the prophet: 'Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?'"

In the great majority of instances, it is believed, the only means by which the reformation of such can be rationally expected is by their thorough and permanent severance from those scenes and associations in which their evil habits were formed. Although suffering from hunger and misery, it must not be supposed that the lives led by these delinquent children are void of pleasurable sensations; "the very alternation from one extreme to another keeps the mind in a state of feverish excitement; the want of a penny to buy food on one day, is more than compensated by the reckless profusion of the next; and the despondency created by privation and long suffering is speedily supplanted by exultation on the success of some criminal feat of daring and dexterity."

None will deny another position of the report, viz.:

"That it is impossible for children to be brought up as Christian children ought to be, when huddled together, male and female, old and young, like pigs in a stye; and yet this revolting expression is not too strong to designate the dwellings of tens of thousands in our land.

"How many of our honest industrious artisans have only one apartment, or, at most, a room and a closet for father and mother, and grown up sons and daughters!

"The physical condition of the poor cannot be viewed as separated from the moral. The want of a proper dwelling place for the working man is one of his greatest trials, and is as injurious to his spiritual as to his bodily health. The crowding together of a whole family in one room weakens domestic virtue, destroys all self-respect, modesty, and delicacy of feeling, and utterly removes all opportunities for self-improvement. A home which is miserable from physical or moral causes is the half-way house to the gin-palace or beer-shop."

The inquiry might be opportunely raised, whether the _habits_ of life which constitute such a social state as is here described, are not formed long before the state itself is entered. A girl or boy accustomed to street-associations either in the pursuit of some trading employment, as selling papers, matches, &c., &c., or from mere neglect and idleness, will soon fall into habits which no degree of loathsome infamy or social degradation will shock. The origin of the evil, in such cases, lies far back of its present stage and locality. It dates from the _childhood_ of those who now act as the head of this filthy and brutalized little community.

Of the penny theatres, it is truly remarked, that "they present almost irresistible attractions;" and the annals of juvenile delinquents are full of cases of petty thefts committed in order to procure the penny or twopence required for admission.

Even if the price of admission be honestly obtained, as one of the reports says, the scenes to which the youthful spectator is there introduced are understood to be of the most flagitious and depraving nature, calculated only to inflame the passions, and deaden every virtuous feeling.

Singing-rooms and dancing-rooms, too, are represented as training up boys and girls to familiarity with vice in every shape. A magistrate sent two of his officers to visit one of them. Their report describes seven hundred boys and girls collected together to have their bodies poisoned with smoke and drink, and their minds with ribaldry and obscenity! Can any one have a doubt that the evil wrought in such a singing-room in a single night, outweighs all the good that can be effected by a dozen Sunday-schools in a whole year?

And finally the part played by the receivers of stolen goods is described as a profession.

So much for causes, and now as to remedies. These are emphatically _preventive_ in their nature, "lying at the very foundation of our social arrangements, and until very recently, wholly disregarded and uncared for, viz., 'organized and adequate means for EDUCATION and INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.'"

It is remarkable how many of the prominent features of some of our modern schemes of juvenile reform here, have been long ago presented to the public eye. More than half a century ago, (1796) the renowned Earl of Chatham introduced to the British Parliament a bill, which had for its object the establishment of a school for work in every parish or incorporated district, for the purpose of instructing the children in different trades and manufactures. The parishes were to be at liberty to maintain their poor children in the working schools, or to lodge them there or keep them only during the hours of labor, and then feed them there or give them work to do at home. The overseers were to be charged with the direction of these schools, and were required to supply them with materials and utensils, &c. Parents burdened with infant children, and in the receipt of out-door relief, were required to send their children to the working school as soon as they were five years old, to be instructed and maintained there. It was provided that those fathers who might prefer to keep their children at home, should bring them up and employ them, receiving some direction and assistance from the local authorities until the children were in a condition to gain their livelihood. Upon leaving the working school, those children who could not return to their families were to have been apprenticed at the expense of the parishes, or provided with some means of service.

It has long been our conviction, as the volumes of this Journal will show, that no very radical reform of the vicious children and youth of the land will be accomplished, so long as the government is so reluctant to enforce parental obligations, or to take upon itself all due attention to such obligations in those points where the welfare and safety of society are put in jeopardy by the disregard of them. Though our institutions are based on a principle of the utmost liberty, they are, for that very reason, peculiarly dependent on the proper education and training of children for their preservation. No country on the face of the globe has so much staked on the intelligence, industry and virtue of each succeeding generation as ours. We are fully satisfied that the timidity which our government manifests in laying fast and earnest hold of this great evil, PARENTAL NEGLECT, exposes us to the loss of all that is worth preserving.

"Society has surely the right to guard itself against the evil practices of those neglected children; and, having the right, it ought also to have the power; but if such power exist, it seems very difficult to tell in whose hands it is vested. The child convicted of theft is whipped or imprisoned, but if he stole to appease the cravings of hunger which his worthless parent failed to satisfy, it is clear that chastisement has not fallen upon the proper party, and that the really guilty has profited by the vices prompted by his culpable neglect, while the whole cost has been defrayed by the public."

"Power must be given," says our report, "to send to school all _neglected_ children--all found loitering in streets and lanes--whose parents take no charge of them, but leave them to grow up as they may, untutored and untaught, save in the practice of crime. If the parents neglect to perform their bounden duty, then the State may properly step in, _loco parentis_, and do the needful work; and surely this is no unjustifiable interference with the parental authority--it is only saying to the parent, 'if you will not discharge the duty you owe to your child, both in the sight of God and of man, we, the public, will do it for you; we will not suffer your child to grow up a torment to himself and to all around him; we would much rather you did your duty yourself, but if you _will not_, then _we must_.'

"By law, the burden of uncared-for pauper children falls at present on the workhouse, but the poor-law authorities are not entitled to expend their money, unless under their own immediate control; and power must be given to them to do so, through the medium of industrial school managers. This will be as advantageous as it is economical. Better for the public, who must eventually pay in one form or other, to maintain the child in an industrial school at 4_l._ a year, than in a poor house at 10_l._ or 12_l._, especially as the smaller expenditure gives every prospect of making him a useful member of the community, and the larger gives little hope of ever raising him above the pauper class.

"A good education," says one of the inspectors of the English National Schools, "so infallibly dispauperises, and raises its recipient above the necessity of ever again applying for relief, that except under gross mismanagement of the guardians in other points, we may be tolerably certain that vicious habits, easily eradicable by sound early training, have brought the great majority of those who burden the parochial rates to their state of dependence. Could this truth be more universally impressed on the managers of the poor, the difficulties in the way of forming industrial schools would vanish!

"It was said by the late stipendiary magistrate at Liverpool, that he had ascertained that ten such children, under fourteen years of age had cost, in apprehension and imprisonment, upwards of six hundred pounds; and, with so little effect, that all of them were then in prison, and one, only about ten years of age, lay under sentence of transportation for seven years.

"The remedy for these enormous evils appears simple and obvious. Let the committee or the magistrate be empowered to send all such mendicant children to the schools of industry at the expense of the parent or the parish, and let the worthless parent be punished if he neglects the sacred duty of maintaining his child, which at present he is allowed to do with impunity."

We think the friends of our Houses of Refuge could scarcely ask a more sensible and cogent argument in support of such establishments, than is furnished in these brief extracts; and yet cogent and sensible as it may be, it fails to convince gainsayers, or at least, to constrain them to prompt and liberal action. Within a twelvemonth a project for such an establishment was lost in a neighboring State, (as it was alleged,) in some political whirlpool; and the public prints tell us, that a like wholesome measure was lately defeated in St. Louis by the jealousy or arrogance of a religious party. We do not vouch for the truth of either of these statements, but we hazard nothing in saying, that the problem, how to restrain and suppress crime, will never be solved, till politicians and religionists lose their selfishness and their bigotry in an earnest and efficient effort to provide for vicious and neglected children.

The following good old Saxon principle is adverted to in a report on Parochial Union Schools for 1851.

"Guardians are not always so open to considerations of ultimate as of immediate economy; and many a pauper who now, before his death, costs his parish one or two hundred pounds, might have lived without relief, had a different education, represented perhaps by the additional expense of a single pound, been bestowed upon him in his youth! This is strictly retributive justice; and I think it would be good policy to increase its effect, and it would give a prodigious stimulus to the diffusion of education, if the expense of every criminal, while in prison, were reimbursed to the country by the parish in which he had a settlement. What a stir would be created in any parish by the receipt of a demand from the Secretary of State for the Home Department for 80_l._ for the support of two criminals during the past year! I cannot but think that the locality where they had been brought up would be immediately investigated, perhaps some wretched hovels, before unregarded, made known, and means taken to educate and civilize families that had brought such grievous taxation on the parish. The expense of keeping criminals, as of paupers, must be borne somewhere; and it seems more just that it should fall on those parishes whose neglect has probably caused the crime than on the general purse."

We would gladly pursue the discussion of these interesting topics did our limits allow, but we have indicated one important, and as it seems to us indispensable preliminary inquiry, viz.: Can we effectually carry out any general scheme of reform, except we withdraw neglected and vicious children from the associations and habits of their miserable and degraded homes, and put them upon a course of involuntary moral and industrial training, before they become what are technically called juvenile delinquents? Is not a compulsory process (much earlier in its application than the discipline of a House of Refuge) essential to the accomplishment of any general or comprehensive reform? Will such a process be authorized by any popular legislature in our country? If the question implies an answer, is the answer true?

ART. IV.--PENNSYLVANIA PENITENTIARIES.--

Twenty-Fourth Annual Report of the Inspectors of the Eastern State Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, dated January 1, 1853, pp. 36.

Report of the Inspectors of the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, dated January 10, 1853, pp. 24.

These two documents embrace the details of the convict-discipline of the State of Pennsylvania for the year 1852. It is well known that both the institutions are established on one and the same principle, and are administered, so far as the discipline is concerned, under one and the same law. It may not be uninteresting to review them briefly in connection.

+----------------------------------+ | E. State Penitentiary. | +-------------+-------------+------+ | Whites. | Blacks. | | +-----+-------+-----+-------+ + | | | | | | |Male.|Female.|Male.|Female.|Total.| +-----+-------+-----+-------+------+ On hand January 1, 1852, | | | | | 310 | Received during the year, | 109 | 4 | 12 | 1 | 126 | In custody at date of report,| 219 | 12 | 48 | 4 | 283 | Disch'd by exp. of sentence, | 56 | 5 | 28 | 8 | 92 | " by pardon, | 40 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 45 | " by death, | | | 2 | | 2 | Removed, | 12 | | 2 | | 14 | -----------------------------+-----+-------+-----+-------+------+

+----------------------------------+------+ | W. State Penitentiary. | | +-------------+-------------+------| | | Whites. | Blacks. | | | +-----+-------+-----+-------+ | | | | | | | | Grand| |Male.|Female.|Male.|Female.|Total.|Total.| +-----+-------+-----+-------+------+------+ On hand January 1, 1852, | | | | | 174 | 484 | Received during the year, | 84 | 1 | 10 | 1 | 96 | 222 | In custody at date of report,| 165 | 3 | 18 | 1 | 181 | 470 | Disch'd by exp. of sentence, | | | | | 56 | 148 | " by pardon, | | | | | 24 | 69 | " by death, | | | | | 3 | 5 | Removed, | | | | | | | -----------------------------+-----+-------+-----+-------+------+------+

In the Eastern State Penitentiary, the labor of the prisoners has nearly defrayed the expense of their subsistence; while in the Western State Penitentiary, the labor of the convicts has not only earned their support, but has paid four-fifths the salaries of the officers.

The number of commitments to the Western State Penitentiary has increased so much, as to require the erection of a new range of cells--for want of which in the crowded state of the prison, the required separation has been in some cases impracticable. But no departure from the strict observance of the discipline has been allowed, except where a necessity which knows no law, required it.

If it should be supposed that the apparent increase of crime betokens the inefficiency of the discipline, it would be an unwarranted inference. The increased number of convictions might tend to show the increase of crime, or of sagacity and thoroughness in detecting and prosecuting it; but there is another and abundantly adequate cause to account for the increase in the present case, and it is the one assigned by the inspectors, viz.--the intemperate use of intoxicating drinks. Of the ninety-six received during the year, eighty-nine are regarded as having been brought to the felon's home by such indulgence! Of one hundred and twenty-six received into the Eastern State Penitentiary during the year, only thirty-two are registered as temperate, leaving ninety-four on the list of drinkers, moderate or immoderate.

Of the one hundred and twenty-six admissions to the Eastern State Penitentiary, ninety-eight were never apprenticed to a trade; and of one hundred and eighty-seven in custody at the Western State Penitentiary at the date of the report, forty-one were never bound; and of the one hundred and forty-six that were bound, ninety-seven (or two-thirds) ran away from their masters!

Among the 126 admissions to the Eastern State Penitentiary, there were fifty-six different trades or occupations, and of thirty-eight of these only one representative. The largest of any class were laborers, 27; the next, boatmen, 10; shoemakers, 7; and store-keepers, and farmers, and butchers, 5 each. Of the 187 in custody at the Western State Penitentiary at date of report, 67 were laborers, 18 shoemakers, 12 boatmen, of farmers and blacksmiths 6 each, cooks, 5.

The Warden of the Eastern State Penitentiary gives us, as the result of another year's experience, an increased conviction of the unabated confidence and regard to which the system of separate confinement is entitled; and the Warden of the Western State Penitentiary speaks of the success of the past year "as having proved the separate system to be what its earliest friends desired."

In the report of the medical officer of the Eastern State Penitentiary we have the following testimony:

I think I may state without hesitation, that there has never been, during the history of the institution, so great an exemption from disease for so long a time, as during the period for which I now report. There are but four men in the Infirmary who are not at work. It is true, there are some others in delicate or infirm health, but the greater part of these were received in that state, of whom again the majority are greatly improved.

And from the medical officer of the Western State Penitentiary we have a similar report of the uniform prevalence of good health. There has been less indisposition within the prison during the year just terminated, he says, "than during any similar period of time since my professional connection with this institution, and yet the number of prisoners has never been so great."

As to the mental health of the convicts in the Eastern State Penitentiary, the physician reports it to be "no less satisfactory than their physical condition;" and of the Western State Penitentiary the medical report is, that "no case of insanity has originated within the prison during the year."

Of the sentences of the one hundred and twenty-six admitted, ninety-one were for three years or less. And of ninety-six received into the Western State Penitentiary, seventy-five were sentenced for three years or less.

Of the one hundred and twenty-six commitments to the Eastern State Penitentiary, ninety-six were for offences against property, only seven of which were accompanied with violence; twenty-five were for offences against the person, and five for violation of marriage laws. While of the ninety-six admissions to the Western State Penitentiary, eighty were for offences against property with and without violence, and sixteen were for offences against the person. The general summary of the two Institutions is as follows:

East. West. State Peni. State Peni. 23 years. 26 years. Of the whole number received, there were disch'd by expira'n of sentence, 2005 1061 Pardoned, 422 305 Deaths, 230 81 Removed, 31 4 Escaped, 1 10 Remaining December 31, 283 187 ---- ---- Total, 2972 1648

A very slight examination of this statement reveals some singular differences, especially in the items of pardons and deaths, which an analysis of the annual returns would doubtless satisfactorily explain.