prison population, hence is the greatest menace to social
well-being." What is the cause that compels a vast army of the human
family to take to crime, to prefer the hideous life within prison
walls to the life outside? Certainly that cause must be an iron
master, who leaves its victims no avenue of escape, for the most
depraved human being loves liberty.
This terrific force is conditioned in our cruel social and economic
arrangement. I do not mean to deny the biologic, physiologic, or
psychologic factors in creating crime; but there is hardly an
advanced criminologist who will not concede that the social and
economic influences are the most relentless, the most poisonous germs
of crime. Granted even that there are innate criminal tendencies, it
is none the less true that these tendencies find rich nutrition in
our social environment.
There is close relation, says Havelock Ellis, between crimes against
the person and the price of alcohol, between crimes against property
and the price of wheat. He quotes Quetelet and Lacassagne, the
former looking upon society as the preparer of crime, and the
criminals as instruments that execute them. The latter find that
"the social environment is the cultivation medium of criminality;
that the criminal is the microbe, an element which only becomes
important when it finds the medium which causes it to ferment; EVERY
SOCIETY HAS THE CRIMINALS IT DESERVES."[4]
The most "prosperous" industrial period makes it impossible for the
worker to earn enough to keep up health and vigor. And as prosperity
is, at best, an imaginary condition, thousands of people are
constantly added to the host of the unemployed. From East to West,
from South to North, this vast army tramps in search of work or food,
and all they find is the workhouse or the slums. Those who have a
spark of self-respect left, prefer open defiance, prefer crime to the
emaciated, degraded position of poverty.
Edward Carpenter estimates that five-sixths of indictable crimes
consist in some violation of property rights; but that is too low a
figure. A thorough investigation would prove that nine crimes out of
ten could be traced, directly or indirectly, to our economic and
social iniquities, to our system of remorseless exploitation and
robbery. There is no criminal so stupid but recognizes this terrible
fact, though he may not be able to account for it.
A collection of criminal philosophy, which Havelock Ellis, Lombroso,
and other eminent men have compiled, shows that the criminal feels
only too keenly that it is society that drives him to crime. A
Milanese thief said to Lombroso: "I do not rob, I merely take from
the rich their superfluities; besides, do not advocates and merchants
rob?" A murderer wrote: "Knowing that three-fourths of the social
virtues are cowardly vices, I thought an open assault on a rich man
would be less ignoble than the cautious combination of fraud."
Another wrote: "I am imprisoned for stealing a half dozen eggs.
Ministers who rob millions are honored. Poor Italy!" An educated
convict said to Mr. Davitt: "The laws of society are framed for the
purpose of securing the wealth of the world to power and calculation,
thereby depriving the larger portion of mankind of its rights and
chances. Why should they punish me for taking by somewhat similar
means from those who have taken more than they had a right to?" The
same man added: "Religion robs the soul of its independence;
patriotism is the stupid worship of the world for which the
well-being and the peace of the inhabitants were sacrificed by those
who profit by it, while the laws of the land, in restraining natural
desires, were waging war on the manifest spirit of the law of our
beings. Compared with this," he concluded, "thieving is an honorable
pursuit."[5]
Verily, there is greater truth in this philosophy than in all the
law-and-moral books of society.
The economic, political, moral, and physical factors being the
microbes of crime, how does society meet the situation?
The methods of coping with crime have no doubt undergone several
changes, but mainly in a theoretic sense. In practice, society has
retained the primitive motive in dealing with the offender; that is,
revenge. It has also adopted the theologic idea; namely, punishment;
while the legal and "civilized" methods consist of deterrence or
terror, and reform. We shall presently see that all four modes have
failed utterly, and that we are today no nearer a solution than in
the dark ages.
The natural impulse of the primitive man to strike back, to avenge a
wrong, is out of date. Instead, the civilized man, stripped of
courage and daring, has delegated to an organized machinery the duty
of avenging his wrongs, in the foolish belief that the State is
justified in doing what he no longer has the manhood or consistency
to do. The majesty-of-the-law is a reasoning thing; it would not
stoop to primitive instincts. Its mission is of a "higher" nature.
True, it is still steeped in the theologic muddle, which proclaims
punishment as a means of purification, or the vicarious atonement of
sin. But legally and socially the statute exercises punishment, not
merely as an infliction of pain upon the offender, but also for its
terrifying effect upon others.
What is the real basis of punishment, however? The notion of a free
will, the idea that man is at all times a free agent for good or
evil; if he chooses the latter, he must be made to pay the price.
Although this theory has long been exploded, and thrown upon the
dustheap, it continues to be applied daily by the entire machinery of
government, turning it into the most cruel and brutal tormentor of
human life. The only reason for its continuance is the still more
cruel notion that the greater the terror punishment spreads, the more
certain its preventative effect.
Society is using the most drastic methods in dealing with the social
offender. Why do they not deter? Although in America a man is
supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty, the
instruments of law, the police, carry on a reign of terror, making
indiscriminate arrests, beating, clubbing, bullying people, using the
barbarous method of the "third degree," subjecting their unfortunate
victims to the foul air of the station house, and the still fouler
language of its guardians. Yet crimes are rapidly multiplying, and
society is paying the price. On the other hand, it is an open secret
that when the unfortunate citizen has been given the full "mercy" of
the law, and for the sake of safety is hidden in the worst of hells,
his real Calvary begins. Robbed of his rights as a human being,
degraded to a mere automaton without will or feeling, dependent
entirely upon the mercy of brutal keepers, he daily goes through a
process of dehumanization, compared with which savage revenge was
mere child's play.
There is not a single penal institution or reformatory in the United
States where men are not tortured "to be made good," by means of the
blackjack, the club, the straightjacket, the water-cure, the "humming
bird" (an electrical contrivance run along the human body), the
solitary, the bullring, and starvation diet. In these institutions
his will is broken, his soul degraded, his spirit subdued by the
deadly monotony and routine of prison life. In Ohio, Illinois,
Pennsylvania, Missouri, and in the South, these horrors have become
so flagrant as to reach the outside world, while in most other
prisons the same Christian methods still prevail. But prison walls
rarely allow the agonized shrieks of the victims to escape--prison
walls are thick, they dull the sound. Society might with greater
immunity abolish all prisons at once, than to hope for protection
from these twentieth century chambers of horrors.
Year after year the gates of prison hells return to the world an
emaciated, deformed, willless, ship-wrecked crew of humanity, with
the Cain mark on their foreheads, their hopes crushed, all their
natural inclinations thwarted. With nothing but hunger and
inhumanity to greet them, these victims soon sink back into crime as
the only possibility of existence. It is not at all an unusual thing
to find men and women who have spent half their lives--nay, almost
their entire existence--in prison. I know a woman on Blackwell's
Island, who had been in and out thirty-eight times; and through a
friend I learn that a young boy of seventeen, whom he had nursed and
cared for in the Pittsburg penitentiary, had never known the meaning
of liberty. From the reformatory to the penitentiary had been the
path of this boy's life, until, broken in body, he died a victim of
social revenge. These personal experiences are substantiated by
extensive data giving overwhelming proof of the utter futility of
prisons as a means of deterrence or reform.
Well-meaning persons are now working for a new departure in the
prison question,--reclamation, to restore once more to the prisoner
the possibility of becoming a human being. Commendable as this is, I
fear it is impossible to hope for good results from pouring good wine
into a musty bottle. Nothing short of a complete reconstruction of
society will deliver mankind from the cancer of crime. Still, if the
dull edge of our social conscience would be sharpened, the penal
institutions might be given a new coat of varnish. But the first
step to be taken is the renovation of the social consciousness, which
is in a rather dilapidated condition. It is sadly in need to be
awakened to the fact that crime is a question of degree, that we all
have the rudiments of crime in us, more or less, according to our
mental, physical, and social environment; and that the individual
criminal is merely a reflex of the tendencies of the aggregate.
With the social consciousness awakened, the average individual may
learn to refuse the "honor" of being the bloodhound of the law. He
may cease to persecute, despise, and mistrust the social offender,
and give him a chance to live and breathe among his fellows.
Institutions are, of course, harder to reach. They are cold,
impenetrable, and cruel; still, with the social consciousness
quickened, it might be possible to free the prison victims from the
brutality of prison officials, guards, and keepers. Public opinion
is a powerful weapon; keepers of human prey, even, are afraid of it.
They may be taught a little humanity, especially if they realize that
their jobs depend upon it.
But the most important step is to demand for the prisoner the right
to work while in prison, with some monetary recompense that would
enable him to lay aside a little for the day of his release, the
beginning of a new life.
It is almost ridiculous to hope much from present society when we
consider that workingmen, wage slaves themselves, object to convict
labor. I shall not go into the cruelty of this objection, but merely
consider the impracticability of it. To begin with, the opposition
so far raised by organized labor has been directed against windmills.
Prisoners have always worked; only the State has been their
exploiter, even as the individual employer has been the robber of
organized labor. The States have either set the convicts to work for
the government, or they have farmed convict labor to private
individuals. Twenty-nine of the States pursue the latter plan. The
Federal government and seventeen States have discarded it, as have
the leading nations of Europe, since it leads to hideous overworking
and abuse of prisoners, and to endless graft.
Rhode Island, the State dominated by Aldrich, offers perhaps the
worst example. Under a five-year contract, dated July 7th, 1906, and
renewable for five years more at the option of private contractors,
the labor of the inmates of the Rhode Island Penitentiary and the
Providence County Jail is sold to the Reliance-Sterling Mfg. Co. at
the rate of a trifle less than 25 cents a day per man. This Company
is really a gigantic Prison Labor Trust, for it also leases the
convict labor of Connecticut, Michigan, Indiana, Nebraska, and South
Dakota penitentiaries, and the reformatories of New Jersey, Indiana,
Illinois, and Wisconsin, eleven establishments in all.
The enormity of the graft under the Rhode Island contract may be
estimated from the fact that this same Company pays 62 1/2 cents a
day in Nebraska for the convict's labor, and that Tennessee, for
example, gets $1.10 a day for a convict's work from the Gray-Dudley
Hardware Co.; Missouri gets 70 cents a day from the Star Overall Mfg.
Co.; West Virginia 65 cents a day from the Kraft Mfg. Co., and
Maryland 55 cents a day from Oppenheim, Oberndorf & Co., shirt
manufacturers. The very difference in prices points to enormous
graft. For example, the Reliance-Sterling Mfg. Co. manufactures
shirts, the cost of free labor being not less than $1.20 per dozen,
while it pays Rhode Island thirty cents a dozen. Furthermore, the
State charges this Trust no rent for the use of its huge factory,
charges nothing for power, heat, light, or even drainage, and exacts
no taxes. What graft!
It is estimated that more than twelve million dollars' worth of
workingmen's shirts and overalls is produced annually in this country
by prison labor. It is a woman's industry, and the first reflection
that arises is that an immense amount of free female labor is thus
displaced. The second consideration is that male convicts, who
should be learning trades that would give them some chance of being
self-supporting after their release, are kept at this work at which
they can not possibly make a dollar. This is the more serious when
we consider that much of this labor is done in reformatories, which
so loudly profess to be training their inmates to become useful
citizens.
The third, and most important, consideration is that the enormous
profits thus wrung from convict labor are a constant incentive to the
contractors to exact from their unhappy victims tasks altogether
beyond their strength, and to punish them cruelly when their work
does not come up to the excessive demands made.
Another word on the condemnation of convicts to tasks at which they
cannot hope to make a living after release. Indiana, for example, is
a State that has made a great splurge over being in the front rank of
modern penological improvements. Yet, according to the report
rendered in 1908 by the training school of its "reformatory," 135
were engaged in the manufacture of chains, 207 in that of shirts, and
255 in the foundry--a total of 597 in three occupations. But at this
so-called reformatory 59 occupations were represented by the inmates,
39 of which were connected with country pursuits. Indiana, like
other States, professes to be training the inmates of her reformatory
to occupations by which they will be able to make their living when
released. She actually sets them to work making chains, shirts, and
brooms, the latter for the benefit of the Louisville Fancy Grocery
Co. Broom making is a trade largely monopolized by the blind, shirt
making is done by women, and there is only one free chain factory in
the State, and at that a released convict can not hope to get
employment. The whole thing is a cruel farce.
If, then, the States can be instrumental in robbing their helpless
victims of such tremendous profits, is it not high time for organized
labor to stop its idle howl, and to insist on decent remuneration for
the convict, even as labor organizations claim for themselves? In
that way workingmen would kill the germ which makes of the prisoner
an enemy to the interests of labor. I have said elsewhere that
thousands of convicts, incompetent and without a trade, without means
of subsistence, are yearly turned back into the social fold. These
men and women must live, for even an ex-convict has needs. Prison
life has made them anti-social beings, and the rigidly closed doors
that meet them on their release are not likely to decrease their
bitterness. The inevitable result is that they form a favorable
nucleus out of which scabs, blacklegs, detectives, and policemen are
drawn, only too willing to do the master's bidding. Thus organized
labor, by its foolish opposition to work in prison, defeats its own
ends. It helps to create poisonous fumes that stifle every attempt
for economic betterment. If the workingman wants to avoid these
effects, he should INSIST on the right of the convict to work, he
should meet him as a brother, take him into his organization, and
WITH HIS AID TURN AGAINST THE SYSTEM WHICH GRINDS THEM BOTH.
Last, but not least, is the growing realization of the barbarity and
the inadequacy of the definite sentence. Those who believe in, and
earnestly aim at, a change are fast coming to the conclusion that man
must be given an opportunity to make good. And how is he to do it
with ten, fifteen, or twenty years' imprisonment before him? The
hope of liberty and of opportunity is the only incentive to life,
especially the prisoner's life. Society has sinned so long against
him--it ought at least to leave him that. I am not very sanguine
that it will, or that any real change in that direction can take
place until the conditions that breed both the prisoner and the
jailer will be forever abolished.
Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
Out of his heart a white!
For who can say by what strange way
Christ brings his will to light,
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
Bloomed in the great Pope's sight.
[1] CRIME AND CRIMINALS. W. C. Owen.
[2] THE CRIMINAL, Havelock Ellis.
[3] THE CRIMINAL.
[4] THE CRIMINAL.
[5] THE CRIMINAL.
PATRIOTISM: A MENACE TO LIBERTY
What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of
childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it
the place where, in childlike naivety, we would watch the fleeting
clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not run so swiftly? The place
where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken
lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our
little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of
the birds, and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant
lands? Or the place where we would sit at mother's knee, enraptured
by wonderful tales of great deeds and conquests? In short, is it
love for the spot, every inch representing dear and precious
recollections of a happy, joyous, and playful childhood?
If that were patriotism, few American men of today could be called
upon to be patriotic, since the place of play has been turned into
factory, mill, and mine, while deafening sounds of machinery have
replaced the music of the birds. Nor can we longer hear the tales of
great deeds, for the stories our mothers tell today are but those of
sorrow, tears, and grief.
What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of
scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest
anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that
will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that
requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the
making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a
trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of
the average workingman.
Gustave Herve, another great anti-patriot, justly calls patriotism a
superstition--one far more injurious, brutal, and inhumane than
religion. The superstition of religion originated in man's inability
to explain natural phenomena. That is, when primitive man heard
thunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and
therefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater than
himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and in
the various other changes in nature. Patriotism, on the other hand,
is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a
network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his
self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.
Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of
patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is
divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate.
Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot,
consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than
the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the
duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die
in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.
The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course,
with the result that, from early infancy, the mind of the child is
poisoned with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French,
the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood, he
is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord
himself to defend HIS country against the attack or invasion of any
foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a
greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition. It is for
that purpose that America has within a short time spent four hundred
million dollars. Just think of it--four hundred million dollars
taken from the produce of the PEOPLE. For surely it is not the rich
who contribute to patriotism. They are cosmopolitans, perfectly at
home in every land. We in America know well the truth of this. Are
not our rich Americans Frenchmen in France, Germans in Germany, or
Englishmen in England? And do they not squander with cosmopolitan
grace fortunes coined by American factory children and cotton slaves?
Yes, theirs is the patriotism that will make it possible to send
messages of condolence to a despot like the Russian Tsar, when any
mishap befalls him, as President Roosevelt did in the name of HIS
people, when Sergius was punished by the Russian revolutionists.
It is a patriotism that will assist the arch-murderer, Diaz, in
destroying thousands of lives in Mexico, or that will even aid in
arresting Mexican revolutionists on American soil and keep them
incarcerated in American prisons, without the slightest cause or
reason.
But, then, patriotism is not for those who represent wealth and
power. It is good enough for the people. It reminds one of the
historic wisdom of Frederic the Great, the bosom friend of Voltaire,
who said: "Religion is a fraud, but it must be maintained for the
masses."
That patriotism is rather a costly institution, no one will doubt
after considering the following statistics. The progressive increase
of the expenditures for the leading armies and navies of the world
during the last quarter of a century is a fact of such gravity as to
startle every thoughtful student of economic problems. It may be
briefly indicated by dividing the time from 1881 to 1905 into
five-year periods, and noting the disbursements of several great
nations for army and navy purposes during the first and last of those
periods. From the first to the last of the periods noted the
expenditures of Great Britain increased from $2,101,848,936 to
$4,143,226,885, those of France from $3,324,500,000 to
$3,455,109,900, those of Germany from $725,000,200 to $2,700,375,600,
those of the United States from $1,275,500,750 to $2,650,900,450,
those of Russia from $1,900,975,500 to $5,250,445,100, those of Italy
from $1,600,975,750 to $1,755,500,100, and those of Japan from
$182,900,500 to $700,925,475.
The military expenditures of each of the nations mentioned increased
in each of the five-year periods under review. During the entire
interval from 1881 to 1905 Great Britain's outlay for her army
increased fourfold, that of the United States was tripled, Russia's
was doubled, that of Germany increased 35 per cent., that of France
about 15 per cent., and that of Japan nearly 500 per cent. If we
compare the expenditures of these nations upon their armies with
their total expenditures for all the twenty-five years ending with
1905, the proportion rose as follows: