Prisoners and paupers; a study of the abnormal increase of criminals, and the public burden of pauperism in the United States: the causes and remedies

Front matter

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Lies ty

Chapter I

Sie PAGE ABNORMAL INCREASE OF CRIMINALITY AND COST OF PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. ‘ : I

The Growth of the Criminal Class Nearly Three Times Greater than the Growth of Population—Vicious Immigration, Intemperance, and Unintelligent Laws the Chief Causes —Our Jails Nurseries of Crime—Our Court Penalties Often a Disgrace to Civilization.

Chapter II. The Condition In Pennsylvania . : * < 9

The Number of Criminals has Increased in a Decade over Fifty per Cent. Faster than Population, the Cost of County Jails More thanFour Times as Fast, and the Public Expenditures for State Institutions Five Times as Fast—Local Causes Examined—Importance of the Question—Proper Direction of Reformatory Action.

CHAPTER ILT

THE RECORD OF A SINGLE COUNTY : : 5 ee

Detailed Public Costs of Crime and Pauperism in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania— Appalling Increase—Unnecessary Waste of Half the Money Raised for Jails and Poor-houses—Costs Compared with Other Counties in Pennsylvania—Appeal for Local Action, ix

> 4 CONTENTS.

PAGE

CHAPTER IV. THE NEED OF REFORM BY LEGISLATION . ‘ ee

The Annual Costs of Criminality and Charity—The Evils of General Taxation for Local Purposes—Has the State a Right to Resort to this Policy—Some Figures about the Average Annual Tax and How It may be Reduced—Defective Penal Legislation—Unsystematic and Unconstitutional Methods,

CHAPTER YV.

What Is the Solution?— Punishment by Law Absurd—

Deterrence, Reformation, and Prevention Proper Objects of

Penal Code—Incongruity and Aimlessness of Poor-Laws—

True Purpose and Scope—Economy of Correct System Illustrated.

Chapter VI

UNRESTRICTED IMMIGRATION AS AN ELEMENT IN THIS INCREASE . . ‘ : . : - 42

Alarming Proportion of Foreign Criminals and Paupers— The Necessity and Possibility of National Regulation of Immigration—The Value of American Citizenship and How It should be Protected—The Land of the Bible and the Sabbath—Necessity of Inculcating American Principles—A ppeal to the Church.

Chapter VII

Remarkable Disparity between the Proportion of Criminals and Paupers from the Negro Race—Probable Causes: Social and Political—Political Status of the Negro in America— Responsibilities of the Government and People—Failure of the South to Remedy the National Evil—Duty of National Government—Importance of This in View of the Future Increase and Position of the Race—Responsibilities of the

CONTENTS. xi

PAGE White Citizen to the Negro—Absurdity of the Prejudice on Account of Color—Necessities of Education and Religion— Elevation or Repression.

Chapter VIII. The Urban Population As A Source Of Increase. 88

Contribution of the Urban Population Compared with That of the Rural—Rapid Growth of Urban Population—The Problem—Its Social Factors in the Three Classes of City Society—Interference with Family Life—Contamination of Children—Neglect of Domestic Duties—Dangers to Youth, of Tenement Life, of the Consolidated Business Systems, of Sabbath Desecration, of Gambling, of Club Life—Evils of Institutional Benevolence.

Chapter. IX

THE URBAN POPULATION AS A SOURCE OF INCREASE —Continued Prod ee ; : t Y -OT T.2

Political Factors of the Problem—Erroneous Principles of Urban Government—Proportion of Urban to Rural Population — Disparity of Density of Population in Cities— Remedial Suggestions— The Restoration of Equilibrium— Importance of Suburban Facilities of Transit—I. B. Potter’s Testimony—Results of Bad Country Roads in New York and Good Roads in France—Purification of Suffrage—Improvement of the Police Force — Necessity for Increased Religious Effort.

Chapter X

THE URBAN POPULATION AS A SOURCE OF INCREASE — Concluded : : : ; , 129

Idleness Due to Inadaptation the Prolific Cause of Crime and Poverty—Result of Inability to Meet Novel Requirements—Industrial Education the Remedy — Polytechnics and People’s Palaces—Especial Need in America—Elevate Idleness to its Work, or Transport it to Where it Exists.

xii CONTENTS.

PAGE

Chapter XI

Alcohol as the Physiological Cause of Crime—Proportion of Crime and Pauperism Due to Intemperance—Testimony of Experts—Alcohol to be Made to Pay as it Goes—Statistics of Consumption—The Increase of Beer-Drinking—Failure of License and Prohibition—Legislation for Drunkards— State Asylums—Substitutes for Saloons—Educate the Girls to Cook.

Chapter XII

Existence of a Large Congenital Criminal Class—Importance of its Identification and Special Treatment — Segregation Essential to Elimination—Special Penitentiaries Necessary —Criminality but Little Effected by Education or Wealth— Crime a Disease—To be Studied and Treated as Such—Evil of the Arrest—Consideration for Youthful Delinquents— Importance of Reorganizing the Penal Code—Results of Reformatory Treatment in Great Britain—County Jails Nurseries of Crime—Number of in the United States—Evils of Sheriff Control—Suggested Improvement in Management— Regulations and Diet.

Chapter XIII

Anomaly of Pauperism in the United States—Amount and Cost of It—Causes and Classification—Defectives—Victims of Accident — Hereditary and Incorrigible— Illegitimate Children: Number of and Treatment—Homeless Children —Four Objects of Charity—Out-Door Relief of—Prof. McCook’s Report on—Evils of—Heteronomic Paupers— Legal Reduction of Their Numbers—Almshouse Treatment —County Visitors—Location and Construction of Almshouses—Discrimination as to Admissions—The Four Motives of Management —Gradation of Responsibility—Religious Privileges—Conclusion.

CONTENTS. Xiil

PAGE

Chapter XIV

Peculiar Importance in United States — Reasons of, and Opportunities for Usefulness—Possibilities—The Personnel —How Chosen—Example of Milwaukee—Organization and Management—Appliances and Facilities—Proper Number of —Co-operation of Different Organizations—Discipline, Internal and External—Duty of the People to the Police.

Chapter XV

Summary of the Results of Investigation into Causes— Universal Abnormality of Criminals and Paupers—A Condition, Not a Disposition, Confronts Us—Fostered, Rather than Ameliorated, by Present Methods—Remedy Proposed, Advantages and Objections—Failure of Regenerative Methods in Humanity forThree Thousand Years—Supreme Vital Function of Marriage: Evils of Social Neglect of Its Regulation in General and in Detail— Dr. Strahan’s Evidence — Threatening the Republic — Principles which should Govern the Regulation of Reproduction—Grandeur of the Results to be Expected—The First Step of Decided Progress in the Regeneration of the Race.

_ CONCLUSION ; : : : : ; ‘ . 292 APPENDICES : : : f c : ‘ - 295

ILLUSTRATIONS.

SOPHOCLES. PHOTOGRAPH OF THE STATUE IN THE LATERAN MUSEUM. IDEAL TYPE OF WELL DEVELOPED MAN. : frontispiece

PAGE VENUS OF MILO. IDEAL TYPE OF WELL DEVELOPED

WOMAN . : - : : ° : ° I THE UNION. A GROUP OF DISTINGUISHED AMERI- CANS. PRODUCT OF AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS

IN STATESMEN , Says A GROUP OF SYRIANS FROM MT. LEBANON . che A TYPICAL RUSSIAN JEWS. dt eee he kee A GROUP OF SICILIANS . : ev VA A GROUP OF ITALIANS . : : ; : 2 aes! PORTRAIT OF REV, -J,-.C,.. PRICE, D.D,. >. : eae PORTRAIT OF REV. C. N. GRANDISON, D.D. . een7 0 PORTRAIT OF HON. J. H. SMYTH . ; : HVaso A GROUP OF WELL DEVELOPED PURE NEGROES . 86 A GROUP OF “‘INCORRIGIBLES” . : ET? PORTRAITS FROM THE ROGUES’ GALLERY . TLSO

A GROUP OF PAUPERS IN AN ALMSHOUSE 2 . 208 xV y

YRS”

VENUS OF MILO.

IDEAL’ TYPE OF WELL DEVELOPED WOMAN.

PRISONERS AND PAUPERS.

Chapter I

ABNORMAL INCREASE OF CRIMINALITY AND COST OF PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES.

The Growth of the Criminal Class Nearly Three Times Greater than the Growth of Population.—Vicious Immigration, Intemperance, and Unintelligent Laws the Chief Causes. —Our Jails Nurseries of Crime.—Our Court Penalties Often a Disgrace to Civilization.

THE eleventh census of the United States, as it is being published, furnishes statistics of a national growth in numbers, wealth, and general prosperity unparalleled in the history of civilization. Our own people, if not the whole world, seem to have accepted these marvellous records as indicating the existence on the American continent of conditions and environments of a national vitality destined to develop here, in the immediate future, the supreme race and people of the world—the consummate flower of humanity. Some of the disclosures made are, however, shocking, if not appalling, in the highest

z degree to our confidence in the future. One of these is the abnormal and disproportionate increase in the criminal class in society. That increase is from 1 in 3,500 of our population in 1850 to I in 786.5 in 1890, or of 445 per cent. ; while the population has increased but 170 per cent. in the same period.’

In the last decade, with an increase of 24.5 per cent. in population, the number of the inmates of our penitentiaries, jails, and reformatories has increased 45.2 per cent., or nearly twice faster than the general population!’ This, too, in spite of the enormous multiplication of churches, Christian efforts of all kinds, schools, educational progress, and various philanthropic agencies of an elevating and conservative nature, attended with a lavish expenditure of money and labor.

Such a disproportion cannot continue indefinitely without a relapse into barbarism and social ruin. It is more startling because such a state of things does not exist in other civilized nations, as public records show.

In England criminal convictions have fallen from 15,033 in 1868 to 9,348 in 1889. In Scotland, from 2,490 to 1,723 for the same years, and in Ireland from 3,084 in 1870 to 1,225 in 1890. During this decade there has been a fair increase in the population of those countries; also a considerable growth in wealth; a notable influx of foreigners from the Continent, mostly of the lower orders, into London

' Statistics of the Tenth U. S, Census, and Bulletins Nos. 71, 72, and 95 of the Eleventh Census,

—

ABNORMAL INCREASE OF CRIMINALITY. 5 particularly, similar in social conditions to the mass of emigrants to the United States. The number of imprisonments in France has increased but threefold in half a century.

Such an exposition of the actual foundations for our boasts of the beneficence of free government and American institutions cannot be permitted to continue. This horrid growth must be stopped. It will be when the people, who are the rulers, understand the causes and learn how to apply the necessary remedies ; as Bishop Gillespie has well said, “ Public abuses do not exist where there is public knowledge.” Of course it is understood that exceptional and peculiar conditions have contributed somewhat to increase this disappointing disproportion between the worthy and unworthy in our citizenship. In 1850 our colored population was mostly enslaved, and it was the interest and policy of the slave-holder to keep his property out of the public criminal list by the infliction of domestic punishment and by personal management. But now our colored population, emerging from the degradation of slavery and naturally prone to allow the excitement of liberty to run into license, furnishes over one third of our convict class, although it numbers only 7,470,040, about one eighth, or 13.5 per cent., of our total numbers.’ Doubtless, too, the ignorance and comparative helplessness of the colored race, with the unreasonable prejudice of white officials, the desire of politicians to disfranchise voters, and of others to secure a greater plenty of convict labor, have unduly swelled the number of arrests and convictions among them out of proportion to the actual criminality of the Facer

Another circumstance peculiar to our country is the almost unrestricted immigration of the lower classes of foreigners from alllands. Foreigners of the first and second generations constitute at present about twenty per cent. of our population. But they furnish more than half the inmates of our reformatories, over one third of our convicts, and nearly three fifths of all the paupers supported in almshouses! Our paupers, foreign born, or of foreign parentage, equal in number all the white native paupers of purely native origin with the colored paupers taken together! These figures are derived from Rev. F. H. Wines’ report upon the eleventh census, and are believed entirely reliable.’

In addition to these extraneous causes may be noted some of a domestic character.

First, an unnatural increase of intemperance, which is the first cause of nearly all crime. Whether this is at all due to peculiarities of climate, the fervid, nervous energy of life here, exciting desire for alcoholic stimulus, and the freedom of indulgence which is everywhere possible, as some think, or not, it is certain that the legal or legislative handling of intemperance has so far been an absolute and complete failure, either in prevention, restriction, or cure. The drink habit is still spreading. Drunkards are increasing in numbers, and no enactments have yet

ABNORMAL INCREASE OF CRIMINALITY. & been framed which provide a rational and scientific force or authority for dealing with the subject either with a view to prevention or cure.

A second cause of the increase of crime and pauperism is found in the crowding of the people to the centres, or the constant increase of the urban population. Twenty-eight of our largest cities have increased 44.86 per cent. in ten years, while the twenty-eight cities of England increased but 11.2 in the same time. Our total urban population has grown from 12.5 per cent.in 1850 to 27.7 percent. in 1890, there having been in the last ten years an increase of 60.5 per cent. in our urban population in cities of ten thousand and over. The packing of these millions of humanity into blocks and squares in tenements means vastly more than the mere crowding of the depraved and criminal together, where they teach and aid one another in crime. It involves the huddling whole families—father, mother, and children —into one room, in which to live and sleep in the midst of the uncleanness of beastly poverty and the indiscriminate cohabitation of the sexes. It involves not only the greater temptations to intemperance, licentiousness, and crime, with increased facilities and opportunities, but far worse, the universal disgorging of the children indiscriminately into the streets for air, exercise, and play. In these streets the human tide mingles.much as, in the sewers beneath, the pure rains and waters of the service pipes are mixed, compounded, and lost in all the waste and filth of the city, and flow away in a conglomerate uniform flood. So the children of the street soon reach a social and moral equilibrium of a complexion and character not far removed from the death-gendering dregs from which the city must be cleansed. Girls and boys crowd the curb-stones and door-steps late into the night, corrupting one another and familiarizing themselves with sin before they reach their teens, so that the very source and springs of social life are poisoned.

A third cause for the increase of criminals is found in the existing laws for their punishment and the unintelligent manner in which they are administered. In their principles and scheme these laws are an inheritance of mere barbarism, with modified penalties. Deprived generally of their chief efficacy by the diminution of the death penalty and continuous durance in their execution, upon the demands of an advancing civilization, they have retained most of the evil effects of false ideas concerning the treatment of criminals and crime. Hence they now contribute to the increase of both, and tend to nullify the very purpose of their existence. Our criminal court and jail system are a reproach upon our intelligence, a disgrace to our civilization, an unnecessary extravagance in our social economy, a curse upon our philanthropy and religion, and an outrage upon humanity.

Our jails are conducted as public schools of crime and nurseries of criminals. Into them our constabulary and courts hustle ravishers, sodomites, corrupters of youth, murderers, burglars, thieves, drunkards, prostitutes, and all the foul members of society they can lay hands upon, with children convicted of

ABNORMAL INCREASE OF CRIMINALITY. 7 petty larcenies or of incorrigibility, with detained witnesses, and people accused of misdemeanors or crimes not tried. Inside the walls, comfortably housed, clothed, and fed, supplied with tobacco and, cards, with promiscuous intercourse permitted during a part, if not all, the day, the professional criminal and the hardened sinner recount their adventures to an interested audience, and delight to initiate the more ignorant into all the mysteries of iniquity. Incarceration here has no deterrent dread for the “rounder, while the “erring one;*confined for a first assault, soon becomes assimilated to his companions, and joins the ranks of crime. Except for the brief period that the victims are restrained of their freedom of action, our jails are a menace rather than protection to society.

These causes sufficiently account for the humiliating and disappointing record of our social development. It is absolutely essential to the arrest of the serious disease that the potency of each should be recognized, carefully and patiently diagnosed in the light of the present science of penology and sociology, if effectual remedies are to be discovered and applied. The subject is one of paramount interest, not only to the sociologist, philanthropist, and Christian, but it reaches and powerfully affects the welfare of every individual member of society, even to those who regard only their own selfish enjoyment, prosperity, and existence. It demands instant and intelligent consideration and immediate action by citizen and legislator alike. Aside from the lossand damage to society entailed by robbery and arson, and the waste of life energy of the criminal, the cost of criminal arrests and maintenance is, next to that for education, the largest item of public expenditure, as it constitutes nearly one tenth of the total burden of taxation in the state.

CHAPTER IL.

THE CONDITION IN PENNSYLVANIA.

The Number of Criminals has Increased in a Decade over Fifty per Cent. Faster than Population, the Cost of County Jails More than Four Times as Fast, and the Public Expenditures for State Institutions Five Times as Fast.—Local Causes Examined.—Importance of the Question.—Proper Direction of Reformatory Action.

THE statements which we have made upon the disproportionate increase of the criminal class in the United States cannot be dismissed as only of general or national importance, to be dealt with solely by legislators, boards of charity, and philanthropic societies. Their baneful and terrible influence extends to the home and pocket of every individual member of society.

The official statistics of Pennsylvania speak on this subject in a language which all can understand. Let us examine and consider them, even if they ~should proclaim unpalatable or humiliating truth. They are of vital and personal interest to us all: A study of the detailed reports of the Board of Public Charities of Pennsylvania for the years, 1880 and 1890 reveals a very alarming and unnatural increase in the number of criminals and of all other wards supported at public expense. The total number of inmates of the various public institutions in the State, on the 30th of September of each of those years, with the percentage of increase in each class, is shown in the following table.

Per Cent. 1880 1890 of Increase Population of State 4,282,891 5,248,574 22.5 Inmates, Penal Institutions 5,449 7,340 34,7 Defective Classes 6,070 9,712 60.

Sane in Almshouses 6,648 6,905 38. Totals, 18,167 23,957 4150 InCounty Jails, (includedabove) 1,648 2,195 33.19 Committals during the Year 45,842 54,950 19.8

The aggregate of all classes supported and assisted at the cost of the public, including “ out-door relief” and reported vagrants, in 1890 was 61,816; one in 84.9 of our population ; about 1.18 per cent.

The following table also shows the expenditures of the various penal and eleemosynary institutions of the State during the years 1879 and 1889 respective.

Penitentiaries $536,056 $570,857 Reformatories, Workhouses, and Jails 980,016 I, 329,353 State and Private Insane Asylums 527,207 1,222,475 Deaf, Blind, and Imbecile Asylums 262,707 439,477 Almshouses 1,193,512 1,184,495

An increase of 35.3 per cent. in a single decade.

The Huntingdon Reformatory and the Norristown and Warren Insane Hospitals were not in operation in 1879.

THE CONDITION IN PENNSYLVANIA. im é

The cost of county jails alone, was $372,290 in 1880, and $723,013, in 1890, an increase of 94.2 per cent. There was expended in support of all classes, including hospitals, homes, etc., (some of which items were estimated, as accurate returns could not be secured) in 1880, $4,480,351, and in 1890, $9,511,970, an increase of 110.9 per cent. in a single decade !

It appears, then, from these official tables that the number of criminals has increased in the last decade 54.6 per cent. faster than the population. The cost of county jails has multiplied more than four times as fast, and the public expenditures upon all penal, reformatory, and charitable classes about five times as fast. The cost was equal in 1890 to the burden of a bonded debt, bearing interest at four per cent., of $237,799,250. Such a debt resting upon the Commonwealth would mean ruin and bankruptcy. Capital and manufactures would flee beyond our borders from it as though our soil were smitten with the plague. But the incubus is dragging upon the neck of our prosperity just as heavily as though it were a bonded debt, whether we realize it or not.

Each year the demands of our charitable and penal institutions grow larger, more urgent, and numerous upon the public treasury, as well as upon private benevolence. Our best people seem to devote their chief thought to the relief of present distress, without consideration of the causes which produce the growing requirements; while our law-makers occupy themselves more with projects for increasing the revenues by taxation, in order to provide larger sums to pour into these public sieves,

I2 PRISONERS AND PAUPERS.

than with the study of measures for stopping the leaks in oursocialeconomy. Already the majority of our people, the tillers of the soil, complain that the burden of taxation is greater than the wide and fruitful acres of their grand domain can bear. Hence they are striving to shift its weight upon the shoulders of commerce and manufactures, which will surely slip from under it far easier than they imagine. If relief is necessary for our farmers, it must come from a wiser economy of expenditure, a diminution of the needs of a philanthropic social organization, by intelligent legislation calculated to remove the causes and cure the diseases which afflict society ; rather than by a lavish extravagance of appropriations wrenched from other sources. Indiscriminate public charity nourishes and cultivates public pauperism just as certainly as indiscriminate private charity increases mendicity.

The increase in the number of convicts in Pennsylvania has been quite as great as the general increase in the nation; and this, too, notwithstanding the fact that our foreign-born population is only about 16 per cent. and our colored population only 2.09 per cent. of our total numbers.’ These two prolific sources of criminals in the country at large must be, therefore, practically eliminated from our consideration of the causes of the increase in our own State. The population of our cities having 10,000 or more inhabitants has increased in the last decade 35.6, which is just .o per cent. more than the increase of criminals in the State.? We are con-

1 Census Bulletin No, 183. * Census Bulletin No, 165,

THE CONDITION IN PENNSYLVANIA, 13 strained, therefore, to the conviction that very grave and serious reasons exist in our domestic administration and our social conditions for this unenviable prominence of criminal growth.

It may be observed that the cost of our county jails has increased over 94 per cent. in ten years. This aggregated in the 69 county jails $723,013 in 1890, an average weekly cost per prisoner of $4.10, with a range for the individuals of from $7.51 to $2.03.

The inspection of the Board of Charities reveals an almost total disregard in all jailsk—managed, as most are, by county sheriffs—of any consideration for the reformation of the prisoners, or moral preservation of the falsely accused. These jails permit a promiscuous and unrestrained commingling of the most depraved and vilest professional convicts with children, accused persons, and detained witnesses without let or hindrance. In many cases even sexes are not separated. Total idleness of inmates, with double beds, and two inmates of the same cell at night seem to be the rule. There is a general lack of regular chaplains, of religious or moral instruction, or of even philanthropic visitation. Unrestricted visitation by outside friends and companions, and supply of depraving papers, literature, cards, tobacco, and often liquor, are permitted. In short, there is an utter absence of all conservative and reformatory influences, a prevalence and activity of almost every means of corruption; which must inevitably result in the confirming of all inmates in a criminal course of life.

A single case, which is vouched for by the author’s personal inspection, is believed to be a fair type of the jails in the State and country.

A recent visit to the jail in Sunbury, which is reckoned one of the best in the State, disclosed the circumstances and privileges of fifty-four inmates of all classes. Among them were two bright, nicelooking boys, one thirteen and the other fourteen years old, who had been incarcerated already two months, and would have to remain two months longer before trial. They were accused of stealing four bottles of ginger-beer !

Another boy of sixteen years was waiting trial for attempted rape—a depraved and vicious-looking wretch.

In the female department, which was merely separated from the male corridor of cells at one end by a wooden partition, through which access was had to it, there were placed six females. Here was a Polish woman with her three children, all under ten years of age, none of whom could speak or understand English, indicted for selling liquor without license! Probably the poor creature had never so much as heard of a license. Here in one cell, to which all had access, lay a woman apparently dying of syphilis. A good-looking fourteen-year-old girl, confined as an “incorrigible,” and three other hardlooking creatures completed the complement.

The two boys and the budding girl had been committed by the same “ Justice,” whose elevation to office would seem to have added quite an increment to his original want of sense. These may be taken

THE CONDITION IN PENNSYLVANIA. 15 as specimens of the life placed in durance in this public institution.

Now can there be any doubt but that this whole body of fifty-four inmates will be as hopeless criminals as the worst among them before three months shall elapse ?

If any are not, they will be miracles of grace, triumphant over a most adverse system. This is not an abnormal or even an unusual condition in Pennsylvania jails, as even a casual visitation will reveal. Nor can the chief blame be laid upon the jailers, many of whom do the best they can with their perplexing charges and inadequate provision and powers.

The fault is in the system which makes possible such a foolish and fatal administration. Judges and justices plunge children into these hot-beds of vice, apparently without thought of consequences, or because no alternative is left them in their clearance of court duty. Those who have fallen under penalty of law for a first or trivial offence are huddled indiscriminately with hardened villains, and left indefnitely often, where scarcely a single hand is stretched out to save or help them. It would seem that philanthropy even exchanged hope for despair at the portal of a county jail.

Another fruitful source of criminality in our State is the growing laxity of parental discipline and care. Children are turned over more and more to secular and Sunday-school teachers for training and religious instruction. Warden Brush, of Sing Sing Prison, who has given much study to penology, and has had long experience with prisoners, in an admirable paper read at the last Prison Congress, gave as the cause which sends most men to prison “ the lack of family discipline.” Children on the streets, in the saloons, brothels, and places of public amusement, neglected at home, can hardly fail of moral ruin.

It is impossible to say whether unrestricted liquor selling has contributed to any disproportionate increase of intemperance in this State, or whether the utter lack of intelligent legal dealing with drunkards differs with us from that existing elsewhere. Certainly we are no better in that respect than are others, and we may discover in our inadequate statutes concerning drunkards a sufficient reason for their increase in numbers and general failure to reform.

Much too is doubtless due toa very general misconception of duty which prevails among the officers of the law, the constabulary and police, who are apt to regard themselves simply as agents for the apprehension of criminals rather than for the prevention of crime, which is the real and main purpose and object of their office. Doubtless also our very increase in wealth and material prosperity, making prominent before the eyes of all classes of our people a liberality of expenditure and luxury of living heretofore unknown, has excited cupidity, enyy, and desires for indulgence, which cannot be honestly satisfied. In confirmation of this, we find that over 76 per cent. of the crimes punished in our penitentiaries were against property, and only 24 per cent. against the person.

THE CONDITION IN PENNSYLVANIA. 17

We will consider causes more fully in connection with projects of remedy hereafter. It is desired first to arouse public attention to the fact that our present methods of dealing with crimes and criminals are a monstrous and dangerous failure.

The number of the indigent and defective classes has. increased over 30 per cent.—that is, about 8 per cent. more than our population (almost I per cent. per annum); and almost the entire increase of the amount expended upon all classes has been in support of charitable institutions of various kinds, making evident as impressive a failure in our management of the dependent classes as appears respecting the criminal classes. The flood of crime must be checked, and the number of criminals diminished; a more intelligent and economical support of dependants inaugurated, or our social and civil organization must of necessity crumble into chaos. It is impossible that this disparity of criminal and pauper increase should continue indefinitely, or even long, without disaster. This is not a figure of speech, but a mathematical verity, as certain as the multiplication table.

Christianity and philanthropy have been anxious, exercised, and diligent in the amelioration of the condition of the poor and the prisoner; but it would appear that the exigencies of this noble work had so completely absorbed attention as to obscure and distract thought from the grander object of reducing their numbers by operating wisely to diminish the causes of poverty and crime, and to restore the pauper and criminal to a self-supporting, honorable, and productive condition in society. The inspections of the Board of Public Charities show now, however, that the indigent of the State are well provided for, and that its prisoners are everywhere | treated with humanity and kindness. Under its careful supervision there has been a constant improvement and progress toward excellence in the management of public institutions of all kinds, and even solitary instances of bad or brutal treatment have become exceedingly rare. The popular tendency indeed is to coddle the jail-bird, so that in many jails he fares better than when he is free. The time has come to govern the methods of treatment by principles which will discourage pauperism and crime and decrease their burden upon society without inhumanity.