The diseases of society (the vice and crime problem)

Front matter

K-^li't-M¥tHfti-

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

Preface

Twenty-five years ago I witnessed a legal murder, — the har.g-ing of two unfortunate youths condemned for an illegal murac:. Neither was over twenty-one years of age. The assassmation was unprovoked, unpremeditated, and committed by stabbing. Neither man carried a weapon, the knife used being taken from a neighboring butcher-shop by the frenzied murderer, who, following an altercation with his victim, rushed after the weapon, returned, and killed him. Both of the men implicated in the killing were drunk on cheap whiskey — for the drinking of which society itself was indirectly responsible. They were ignorant toughs, bred in the Chicago stock-yards district. For their viciousness society was directly responsible, for it had made no effort to prevent them from becoming toughs and drunkards. The youths were poor and almost friendless. It was impossible that both could have been guilty ; one must have been innocent. Each, however, accused the other of the stabbing. Society said, '"They are of the better dead;" the law said, " Let no guilty man escape;" so both were hanged. I was much impressed by the judicial assassination, and ever after had a due and proper appreciation of the beauties of our penal system, and more especially of the occasional helplessness and fickleness of Justice, of which law is not always an intelligent agent.

Several years later I served for some time as Resident Surgeon to the Blackwell's Island Penitentiary, New York, where I had an unexampled opportunity to study the criminal and, m some measure, the absurdities of our criminal law and penal system. My interest in the crime question was thus excited early in my professional career.

My subsequent work in the field of criminal anthropology and allied subjects is familiar to the medical profession, and in a less

8 PREFACE

degree to the legal profession. My first paper, " The Pathogeny of Vice and Crime," appeared in 1883.^ Since then have appeared various essays on criminology and corelated subjects from my pen. "Studies of Criminal Crania;"" "Materialism versus Sentiment in the Study of Crime," = — the public address before the Kentucky State Medical Society in 1890 ; " Sexual Crimes Among the Southern Negroes ;" ^ " Asexualization as a Remedy for Crime;"'* "Aberrant Sexual Differentiation;"" " Sexual Perversion and Inversion ;" ^ " Nordau and his Critics ;" * and " Criminology in its Sociologic Relations," " — the public address before the National Prison Reform Association in 1895, — are among the more important of these. My paper on the emasculation of criminals as a remedy for crime was one of the earlier disquisitions on that subject. Some years since, a chair of Criminal Anthropology was tendered me by the Chicago-Kent College of Law, affording the opportunity of promulgating to excellent advantage the views set forth in this volume. Some of my published material has been deliberately appropriated without credit to the author, but this has been accepted as an evidence that criminology in America is daily attracting more and more attention. The good work has been going steadily on, and I am reconciled to the fate of some of my labor.

' Chicago Medical Journal and Examiner, 1883. Papers on the same subject appeared in the Western Medical Reporter, August, 1889, to December, 1889.

'Chicago Medical Recorder, May, 1891. Alienist and Neurologist, May, 1891.

"Transactions Kentucky State Medical Society, 1890, and "Essays and Addresses," 1892.

■'Virginia Medical Monthly, May, 1893.

"Medical News, May 17, 1896.

" Weekly Medical Review, November 2, i88g.

'Philadelphia Medical and Surgical Reporter, September 7 and 18, 1889.

' Medicine, September, 1895,

" Transactions National Prison Reform Association, 1895.

PREFACE 9

even though its identity has been lost and compilers of criminologic bibliography have overlooked it.

This work has been in process of preparation for many years. The sole reason for deferring its publication until now was the purely practical one that the surgeon, who must needs " live by the knife," has little time to devote to any eflforts, literary or other, outside of the limits of professional work. Especially is this true in these modern days of specialism.

No apology is offered for the radical tone of some of the ideas expressed in this volume, nor for what may seem to be sociologic pessimism, displayed here and there. I have presented what I believe to be truths, gleaned from study and observation. The chapters on Anarchy, and Sexual Vice and Crime, in particular, contain ideas that are not consonant with those entertained by the great majority of people. Nevertheless, I believe them to be well grounded, and if my premises are not correct, human nature and psychology have presented themselves to me en masque. Whether or not it is easy for human nature to masquerade before the physician is left for my professional brethren to answer.

It is hoped that the volume may do a little missionary work for an important cause, but, as it is intended primarily for professional readers, it has been impossible to avoid the use of many technical terms that may not be comprehended by the layman. The subject of sociology, however, has attracted so much attention of late, that most of the language of criminology, at least, is familiar to the reading public.

It will be understood that the views of the vice and crime problem presented in this volume are based mainly upon the conditions prevailing in America. The American view-pomt must necessarily be somewhat different from the European. Special environmental influences operating for ages in the development of the criminal class are responsible for much of the apparent radicahsm of Lombroso and his school. The same is true of the work of other European criminal anthropologists.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Social Pathology 13

II. The Principles of Evolution in their Relations to Criminal Sociology and Anthropology, and to Social Diseases IN General 4i

Chapter I

General Considerations. — Society is composed of human integers, upon the physical and psychic health of which its integrity depends. Morbid phenomena affecting the social body exist analogous to those affecting the individual integers. Just as diseases affecting certain areas of cells — the individual integers of the animal body — may vitiate the health not only of the neighboring cells, but of the entire body, so may the mental, moral, and physical diseases of the human body entity react injuriously upon other individuals, and also upon the society of which they are a part. In like manner, a constitutional disease may produce secondarily diseases of remote cell areas of the body, whether the cells be general or special in their function, and serious disturbances of the social body may produce disastrous effects in the physical and psychic constitution of individuals, whether taken alone or as specialized groups or classes.

There is, then, a pathology of the social body, comprising most of the evils from which society suffers. Crime, prostitution, pauperism, insanity in its sociologic relations, anarchy, political corruption, and adverse economic and industrial conditions and their causes, congeners, and results will be discussed in this volume as the most important phases of social disease. The fact that social diseases are often due to actual physical disease in offenders against society in itself justifies the use of the term,

social pathology.

This work, then, is not a treatise on sociology, cnmmology, criminal anthropology, penology, nor yet upon that latest omnibus to which some assign all moral or psychic aberrations,— degeneracy, — but is intended to comprehend all of these subjects, in so far as they bear upon social disease in its various divagations.

Vice and crime are coeval with the human race. There is no race so low that it does not have word equivalents for " good man," " bad man," " thief," " murderer," and " prostitute." Man has evolved, physically, mentally, and morally, and his necessities, desires, and ambitions have correspondingly varied. The social systems that he has established have evolved proportionately. As evolution has progressed in these directions, there has been a variation in moral standards, by which they have been adapted to the necessities of man for self-protection against his kind, — i.e., against the other atoms of the social fabric of which he is a part. Out of the necessities of man's environment has been developed conscience. The capacity for development of conscience varies with different races and different individuals of the same race. It varies with environment and with the physical and mental attributes of the individual. Its basis is largely physical, but when viewed along broad and comprehensive lines, there are many other factors to consider. These factors are often subtle, and are intimately associated with the pathology of the body social. The evolution of conscience and morals will be considered later.

The orthodox explanations and methods of study and repression of crime are based upon the old-time fallacy of human equality, which laid the burden of responsibility for vice and crime upon the individual will. They are out of date, because founded upon principles originally formulated by man in his primitive state. Human environment has broadened with human progress, and vice versa. The view-point of the penologist and sociologist has, however, in the main, remained narrow, so far as crime and its causes and remedies are concerned. Science is gradually broadening the social view, and hopes to eventually improve the methods of society in its efforts at self-protection trom its own vicious products.

The philosophic, materialistic study of crime is one of the newer phases of advancement in sociologic and medical science, and is the best evidence at our command of general progress and enlightenment. Time w^as when it would have been dangerous to advance such views as are being promulgated to-day. When reasoning upon the crime question was based entirely on sentiment, the study of the criminal was governed chiefly by dogma and moralistic sophistry. That the question is a practical, not a sentimental one is shown by the expensiveness of the criminal to society. Most of the disbursements of a community in times of peace are for the suppression of vice and crime. All the machinery of justice is necessary to protect the good from the evil. The cost is between three and five dollars per year for every honest man in America. The nation expends two hundred million dollars on this account. The depredations and non-productiveness of the crime class bring this up to about five hundred million dollars. The direct expense to the family, due to the criminal, is about twenty-five dollars. This tremendous cost is increasing, and the cost per capita is more than we pay for our children's education. As Dumas once said of mendicancy, criminality is an organized body, a kind of association of those who have not against those who have. Those who have must bear the burden.

The census of 1890 showed that our principal degenerate classes — criminals, paupers, and insane— numbered about two hundred and fifteen thousand. This is almost as large as the army organized by the United States during the war with Spain. It is larger than the population of some of our flourishing States. It is almost half that of Colorado. Approximately, one person in every three hundred and twenty in this country is criminal, insane, or a pauper, and is confined in some public institution. This takes into account only the 73,045 paupers in almshouses ; the entire pauper estimate is three millions.

Facetiously and otherwise, Chicago has been said to be the wickedest city in the world. If statistics count for anything, there is more truth in this assertion than is comforting to our civic pride. This much is true — viz., there is no better place to study the crime question than here.

In a recent document the State's attorney substantiates the claim that Chicago otifers a profitable field for the criminologist:

" In volume of business and number of convictions, the Criminal Court of Cook County is the greatest criminal tribunal in the world. More prisoners are arraigned at its bar than in any similar court in the world, including London, with a population of over four million. In the latter city, during the year 1898, the total number of convictions for felonies and misdemeanors was 2659. The total number in Cook County from March, 1898, to March, 1899, was 2819 ; the following year it was 2837. During the year 1898, there were 3234 persons arraigned in the London court, while from September, 1899 (the court year), the total number of indictments found in Cook County was 3501. From December, i8g6, to October, 1900, the grand juries passed upon 16,518 cases, being an average of over four thousand cases each year, and resulting in an average of over three thousand indictments a year." ^

The total number of arrests by the police of Chicago in the last five and a half years is as follows: 1897, 83,680; 1898, "]"],- 441; 1899,71,349; 1900,70,438; 1901,69,442; first six months of 1902, 32,139. Of those taken into custody in 1901, 3912 were arrested for assault, 1709 for burglary, 32,469 for disorderly conduct, 1306 for gambling, 5307 for larceny, 599 for malicious mischief, 29 for murder, 859 for robbery, and 750 for vagrancy. However much we may blush at our civic and legal defects, we have no occasion to feel ashamed of our reform methods, as shown by the records of our Juvenile Court and of the John Worthy school, and our State laws for the protection of childhood.

While acknowledging the flaws in our administration of justice, we are proud of some features of our police department. The Bertillon anthropometric system was first adopted in this country by Chicago, through the efforts of my talented friend, Major McClaughry. Our Bureau of Identification is second only to Paris in its number of records. It contains the histories, descriptions, and photographs of nearly sixty thousand criminals, as the fruit of twenty years' labor.

^Annual Report of Hon. C. S. Deneen, State's attorney.

Criminology was once a very simple subject for study. The entire field of research was covered from the inquiring, searching eyes of science by a blanket of dogma and egotistic reasonings or, rather, lack of reasoning. How simple the Pharisaic doctrine that the delinquencies of criminal man are due to the fact that he is bad — that he is not so good as we are. And how simple the remedy ,-^to punish him, preach to him, and make him good as we are. The self-conceit and absurdity of this dogmatic view are sufficiently obvious to the thinking mind.

But what of the result ? What has been accomplished through this simple and childlike reasoning? The statistics of our jails and penitentiaries show an increased proportion of criminals in every social system, as compared with that of past years, and an increasing cost of correction of crime, that are not reassuring. Increasing refinement of civilization should have produced an improvement in our criminal statistics. The intelligence of our legislators has not been above reproach, or they would have seen that our penal system was radically wrong, else it could not have been such a colossal failure. The efforts of the reformer have been, on the average, no more fruitful of results, chiefly because he has endeavored to accomplish the desired end by moral persuasion, with an almost total disregard of the physical conditions underlying the perverted psychology of the delinquent. His intentions have been good, his theory and methods wrong. The fallacy of the old method of study and reform of criminals lies chiefly in the fact that their bodies have been forgotten.

The social pathologist should concern himself with the moral aspect of the question only in so far as it may be one of the many factors in the etiology and cure of crime. That the element of morals is to a certain degree potent in the causation and cure of crime is admitted, but the function of science is to inquire into all the circumstances leading up to the physical, mental, and moral degeneracy of social offenders, of whatever kind. Science is indifferent as to whether the moral aspect of the question is minimized or not, seeking only the cold facts, without fear or favor. The true investigator has no desire to discourage the efforts of the sentimental, non-scientific moralist. The true scientist, more than other men, believes that he should " render unto Csesar those things which are Csesar's."

The scientific criminologist should not deny the importance of that often indefinite quantity termed morals, in its relations to social disease. His function is ( I ) to show that moral qualities are ultimately dependent upon physical conditions, even though these conditions are not always demonstrable; (2) to harmonize existing theories of the causes, prevention, and cure of crime; and (3) to reduce the subject to a material, scientific, and, so far as possible, evolutionary basis.

It is unfortunate that some who pretend to be abreast of modern scientific thought, and accept evolutionary law as applied to biology, consider the social ofifender as something apart from the general scheme of nature, to be measured only in the moral balance, according to his relative degree of deliberate wickedness. This is fallacious, for after making due allowance for j:he elements of family influence, religion, and social habit, there is still a wide margin of vice and crime to be accounted for. To cover its causes exhaustively it would be necessary to follow minutely all of the religious, political, and moral conditions of each social system.

Reasoning on the crime question must be broad to be effective, and too much must not be expected from advanced ideas. As George A. Winston, President of the State University of Texas, once remarked,^ " Even if we could prevent by legislation the production of offspring by the criminal, the vicious, the defective, and the diseased, and even if we could secure by education the mental, moral, religious, esthetic, and physical culture of every child in the land, crime would not be prevented unless we also controlled the social, political, industrial, and climatic environments. All the forces of civilization enter into the causation of crime." Ferri covers this point very comprehensively when he says, "The volume of crime will not be materially diminished by codes of criminal laws, however skil-

' Transactions of the National Prison Reform Association.

fully they may be constructed; but by an amelioration of the adverse individual and social conditions of the community as a whole. Crime is a product of these adverse social conditions, and the only way of grappling with it is to do away, so far as possible, with the causes from which it springs."

Punitive, corrective, and repressive legislation has hitherto failed absolutely in diminishing the volume of crime, and will always fail, in great measure, unless it grapples with final causes which, try as it may, it can never completely control. It can, however, ameliorate them to a certain degree, even though the disease is too deep-seated to be eradicated. It cannot be completely extirpated and the patient — society — live.

The various phases of social evolution are familiar to every student of history. For example, we may read Hallam, May, Buckle, and Guizot, and follow the people of England through her erratic phases of progress from the days of the chaste and goutless Saxon to the enlightened, gouty, and physically deteriorated aristocracy of to-day, without increasing our confidence in human nature ; nor will we be able to see any great moral or physical benefits occurring to Europeans in general from their progressive civilization, if statistics count for anything. If the last of the Saxon kings were to return to earth to-day, he would have little of morals, although much of civilization, to learn from the latter-day courts of Europe.

The assumption that the criminal, in particular, is a product of evolution, is in absolute harmony with the evolutionary theory in general. Evolutionary law is evidenced all along the line of the physical, intellectual, moral, and social development of man through the long vista of years that lies behind us, through which the human species has evolved from its most primitive type to what is alleged to be the acme of perfection, as seen in the Indo-European and Semitic races of to-day.

Modern criminolog}' is paying its attention chiefly to the body of the criminal, in the belief that if bodily defects and physical depravity are corrected, the mental organization— the " soul"-- will do something in taking care of itself. No advance in criminology and penology has been, or will ever be, made that is not founded mainly upon scientific materialism. To this materialism moral persuasion must be subservient and secondary, else we shall drop back into the absurdities hitherto prevailing in the study of the crime question. " Try to reform your man,^ try to purify and elevate his soul, and if he doesn't come to time, lock him up or hang him." This has been the war-cry of the average reformer through all the ages. " Make a healthy man of your criminal, or prospective criminal, give him a sound, well-developed brain to think with, and rich, clean blood to feed it upon, and an opportunity to earn an honest living, — then preach to him if you like." This is the fundamental principle of the scientific criminologist. Which is the more rational?

As civilization advances and theology and religion become enlightened in theory and methods, a corresponding improvement in the moral tone of the social body should naturally be expected: Unfortunately, however, there has been thus far no improvement, so far as available statistics show, sufficient to encourage the efforts of the moralist. Not that he does not do individual good, but the factors which he ignores more than offset such results as he attains. The futility of moral measures alone in reducing the mass of crime, as demonstrated by past experience, is explicable only upon the ground that there is something more than free will to account for criminal development. Free will is operable only in the case of the individual, and incidentally the circumstances that sway the conduct of the criminal. It accomplishes little or nothing in correcting the evolutionary influences responsible for the production of the criminal class.

The failure of moral means of repression alone may be readily shown. We will suppose, for example, that a certain portion of the human body is affected by disease, dependent, to a greater or less degree, upon a depraved constitutional condition. Measures of local correction, — i.e., correction of the local depravity of tissue, — although useful to a certain extent, must fail, unless the general and constitutional influences that enhance the local trouble are corrected. The individual is but an atom of the social fabric. When he is depraved, logic demands the correction of the morbid general influences pervading the social body, which cause perversion of thought and action in the individual. Moral persuasion acting alone is usually almost impotent; the law cannot cope with the question, and punishment is futile, so far as mass results are concerned, because these influences operate upon the isolated integer, and not upon the law of causation. Granting that certain criminals are so by reason of structural peculiarities and evolutionary development, the inefhcacy of moral persuasion as a panacea is evident.

That criminality is due to certain influences operating by a fixed law has been claimed by several more or less recent eminent historical and statistical authorities.

Buckle' and Ouetelet* have aa,vanced some striking arguments bearing upon the influences rnodifying the moral conduct of the human race. They claim that many of the actions of mankind which we attribute to individual free will and independent action are really the result of a fixed and immutable law controlling the moral world, almost as definite and arbitrary as the laws controlling the physical world.

It has been shown by the statistics of Great Britain and France that there is a constant proportion in the ratio of criminal acts to the number of population in tho^e countries.

Rawson ^ says, —

" No greater proof can be given of the possibility of arriving at certain constants with regard to crime than the fact that the greatest variation in the proportion of any class of criminals at the same period of We during a period of three years has not exceeded a half of one per cent."

Quetelet says, —

" In everything which concerns crime the same numbers recur with a constancy which cannot be mistaken. This is the case with those crimes which seem quite independent of human,, foresight— such, for mstance, as murders, which are generally commit^^ed after quarrels ansmg from circumstances apparently casual. Nevertheless, we know from

"History of Civilization in England.

*Sur I'Homme, Paris, 1883.

' Statistics of Crime in England and Wales.

experience that every year there takes place not only the same proportionate number of murders, but that even the very instruments with which they are committed are employed in the same proportion."

Buckle says, — ■

" Suicide is merely a production of the general conditions of society. The individual's volition only carries into effect what are the necessary consequences of preceding circumstances."

As showing how regularity in the course of human events may manifest itself in the most trifling details of every-day life, one of Buckle's statements is very interesting :

" It is not infrequent for individuals to drop undirected letters in the mail-box. This might naturally be attributed to individual carelessness, but statistics show that in Paris and London, due allowance being made for varying circumstances, increased population, etc., there is practically the same number of undirected letters found in the mails every year."

The subtle influence suggested as causative of crime by the investigators quoted assumes a material aspect in the light of modern research. Assuming a physical basis for the acts of human beings, it is fair to conclude that under past and present conditions every social system has, of necessity, a certain proportion of degenerates and persons of unstable nervous equilibrium. That this proportion is not necessarily fixed in any given social system, is shown by the increase of crime, not only in America, but in other countries of recent years.

The profundity of the crime question is nowhere better illustrated than in the relation of weather to crime. There is little reason to doubt that thermometric and barometric changes exert a profound influence on the quantity and quality of criminal acts in any given community. The crime wave, especially so far as crimes of impulse are concerned, has a curve which corresponds fairly well with the temperature curve. It is traditional in Spain that the crime wave rises when the east wind blows. Burglary and robbery, especially of the " hold-up" variety, are more frequent in winter. Murder and suicide occur most often in the summer months. During January, February, and March of

1901, twelve hundred suicides were reported in the United States, as against sixteen hundred during July, August, and September. In the same periods the number of murders was seventeen hundred for the cold, and two thousand five hundred for the hot months. The number of lynchings in the hot months was double that during the cold. The hot weather increased the murderous mob instinct. Leffingwell has written very convincingly on the relation of seasons to crime.**

Hot weather seems to have an effect chiefly in increasing crimes of impulse. Neuropathic individuals adjust themselves with great difficulty to changes of climatic environment. The predisposition to crime existing, anything that destroys the already unstable mental equilibrium, and at the same time makes the nervous centres hyperesthetic, has the same effect. Hot weather is in no wise different in this respect from alcohol. Indeed, the greater consumption of alcoholic beverages during the summer months is inseparable from the effects of the weather per se. Auto-intoxication, which, as will be noted later, I believe to be a prominent factor in the etiology of crime, is in some subjects more marked in summer, despite the increase of skm activity, because of a relatively great increase in tissue metamorphosis that over-balances elimination. The effect of direct sunrays upon neuropaths is well known. Sunstroke and subsequent criminality by impulse is not rare. The increase of robbery during the winter months is due, not to the effect of temperature upon criminal neuropathy, but to the increased necessities, both of the criminal and the working class. The struggle for adjustment of nervous equilibrium during the depressing weather of spring and fall, and especially the former, is productive of a marked increase in suicides.

Increase in suicides is often associated with an increase m diseases of various kinds. The grippe season in Chicago generally shows a marked increase in suicides. Whether the same atmospheric conditions that favor grippe also act unfavorably

"Illegitimacy and the Influence of Seasons upon Conduct, Albert Leffingwell, M.D.

upon the unstable brain of the neuropaths in the community is an open question, but it is to me a logical explanation. Cases of suicide of sufferers from grippe, or other " season" disorders are, of course, easily explained.

The tonic effect of cold weather in maintaining the nervous and mental equilibrium of neuropaths, and thus inhibiting crimes of impulse, is obvious. The physiologic turmoil in the sexual system ushered in by Spring is well known. Poets have sung of it, and rapists have been hanged for it. It bears a relation not only to sexual crimes, but to all crimes of impulse, such as murder and suicide.

In special localities crime in general is decreased by cold weather. The " red light" districts and the sections of our large cities devoted to low places of amusement show a great diminution in the criminal record during the cold months. Here, especially, warm weather and drink co-operate. The denizens of the " levee" district in Chicago are much less active during cold weather, but this local decrease of crime must be discounted, so far as robbery is concerned. There is no profit to the denizens of the slums in robbing each other, and, as curiosity and "thriH" seekers with money do not visit the levee in cold weather so often as in summer, the denizens of the levee hie them to the sand-bag and the belated home-goer of the outlying sections of the city.