THE DANGEROUS EDUCATED CROOK
One of our modern fallacies is that education is a cure for all the ails
and weaknesses of life. There never was a greater mistake. When we think
of humanity in its deranged and weakened condition and the constant
liability to err—a liability that is inherent in all men—learned and
unlearned—making them subject to temptations and crime which at any
moment may blast their lives, we must be cautious about believing that
education alone can make men and women honest and virtuous. Education is
only a means to an end, and serves its purpose best when joined to moral
training and industrious habits as taught in a well regulated life.
Without moral training, education alone will only generate a type of
cunning crookedness, that will be dangerous alike to the home and the
republic at large.
I believe that education in its best and broadest sense, means not only
mental culture, but carefully trained habits of industry, together with
morality and religion as founded on the basic principles of the
Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount—all of which tend to promote the
happiness of the human family.
John Howard, the Morning Star of Prison Reform, who in his day
encouraged popular education, was careful to say, “Make men diligent and
you will tend to make them honest,” and he added that he did not believe
education of the head would amount to much unless it was followed by
“education of heart and hands.”
Within recent years Christian penologists are almost unanimous in the
opinion that mental training _alone_ has little influence in decreasing
crime. Nor does it follow that in countries where illiteracy stands high
that crime is greater than in countries where the opposite is true. In
Spain, where two-thirds of the people are illiterate there is less
crime, according to the population, than in Massachusetts where
nine-tenths of the people can read and write.
So also in rural settlements where there is always less educational
privileges than in large cities, crime is vastly less in the former than
in the latter.
In the early history of this country petty crimes were usually committed
against domestic products, but with the advance of our present
civilization such crimes are nothing compared to stealing railroads,
coal mines, gold mines, safe cracking, colossal swindling and bank
wrecking in which millions are stolen yearly. And all of these crimes
are the work of well educated men.
Victor Hugo says, “He who opens a school closes a prison,” which is true
if that school teaches the morality of the ten commandments and the
Sermon on the Mount, but not otherwise.
In Great Britain in 1880 the number of pupils in the schools increased
to 3,895,324, while the prisoners numbered only 30,719; but the greatest
decrease in the prison population is seen in 1899, when the school
pupils numbered 5,601,249, while the prison population fell to 17,687.
That is to say, the prison population decreased 38 per cent. while the
population of the country increased 11 per cent.
Notwithstanding all that may be said, it is our humble opinion after
years of observation that criminality is largely the result of
ignorance, idleness and indolent habits. Since I have been in the habit
of visiting reformatories I have often thought of Isaac Watts’
philosophy, “Satan finds mischief for idle hands to do.” It is the young
loafer and idler who is around the streets night and day “killing time”
that gets into trouble. Whenever parents rear their children in idleness
they simply sap the foundations of personal character and fit them for
criminality. A report of the Elmira Reformatory shows that of thousands
of persons who were received into that institution since it was first
opened over 83 per cent. are classed as laborers and idlers.
For more than fifty years it has been said that a greater advance in
education would reduce crime to a large extent. But this is only true in
part. Secular education does not reduce murder, forgery, grand larceny,
embezzlements and other heinous crimes. There must be moral education.
Indeed, such offences are usually the work of well educated men.
Those best able to judge will not deny that the most dangerous person
to-day is the educated crook. He plans crime scientifically, at the same
time exercising the greatest care. Indeed, he makes it a business, and,
as is sometimes said, goes into it for all he is worth. The college
graduate behind the bars is becoming very common. At the present time
nearly all of our large prisons have doctors, lawyers, editors, teachers
and others of keen minds and large professional experience. Some of the
articles found in the Star of Hope, the State Prison paper, show a wide
range of reading, and could only be written by scholars. And at the
lowest calculation, most of our large prisons contain from five to ten
per cent. of college graduates, and the number is rapidly increasing.
One of the most scholarly men that I ever knew came from a little town
in Massachusetts. He was so exceptionally bright that had he put his
native talents and energies into an effort to keep the Ten Commandments,
instead of aiming continually to plunder his fellow men, he might have
been a Morgan or a Rockefeller. The man of whom I speak began life as a
school teacher, then a clerk in the office of a country attorney. After
this he became a full-fledged lawyer, and drifted into politics.
From politics he went into crime, and soon became an expert forger and
swindler on a large scale, and as a rule he always worked for “big
game.” As a confidence man he had a shrewd way of getting hold of
millionaires and fleecing them.
A most noted and clever crook some time ago came to grief in an effort
to impersonate an English earl. This man had a charm of manner about him
and other polished ways that would have given him a place in any
society. But he used all his cleverness and scholarship only to make for
himself a criminal career of the most romantic character. He was
afterwards sent to Sing Sing Prison, where he became the first editor of
the Star of Hope, and a regular “mogul” among the inmates because of his
scholarly attainments. It was said that he wrote sermons for an ignorant
chaplain now no longer there.
Another college graduate whom I have known, and who had a national
reputation for crookedness, was born in western New York. At his
father’s death he inherited $600,000. After he had graduated from
Columbia Law School, he went West and became a land and grain
speculator. He afterwards opened a bank and was made president. Then he
was elected mayor of the city and state senator; he ran for Congress,
but was defeated. He was an expert gambler, and he told me that he more
than once lost $40,000 in one night, in the Tenderloin. Having been a
banker himself for several years, he knew how to “work” banks for all
they are worth by the use of forged checks. He was arrested five or six
times, but only convicted twice, and was then able to cheat the prison
by a technicality.
No person is so much exposed to crime as the mental and industrial
illiterate, and it will always be so till the end of time. But education
that does not elevate, purify and generate high ideas in man is nothing
short of a curse to the individual. Furthermore, the educated crook can
do vastly more harm in the world than the ignorant crook, and is much
more dangerous when at large. It does not necessarily follow, therefore,
that the more educated the man is the better the citizen, nor that he is
less liable to crime. The fact is well admitted that in nearly all the
northern and western cities the prison inmates are able to read and
write, and scores are classed as really educated. Among the young men
that go to Elmira Reformatory only six to nine per cent. are classified
as illiterate, and the number of illiterates admitted to Sing Sing is
said to be nine per cent., a very small proportion when we think of the
large number of persons who are sent there.
The Rev. Fred H. Wines, D. D., defines education as labor, instruction
and religion. He says:
“The best preventives against crime are a well trained mind, industrious
habits and a good moral life. And the power of a good example and a pure
conversation is incalculable in leading young people into steady habits
and a noble life such as they should everywhere follow. Let New York
follow out the teaching of Solomon, and there is sure to be less crime
in the future than in the past: ‘Train up a child in the way he should
go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.’”
[Illustration:
The only Man on Record who is known to have Pardoned himself out of
Prison. He began life as a School Teacher, Clerk in a Law Office,
full fledged Lawyer and Treasurer of a Political organization in New
England, with whose funds he decamped. He has been in Prison a dozen
times under as many aliases, where he has spent twenty-five years.
When he pardoned himself out of prison he was in Nashville, Tenn.,
under the name of Henry B. Davis. He is now supposed to be dead.]
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