THE CAUSES OF CRIME.
The great practical division of causes of crime may be made into
preventible and non-preventible. Among the preventible, or those which
can be in good part removed, may be placed ignorance, intemperance,
over-crowding of population, want of work, idleness, vagrancy, the
weakness of the marriage-tie, and bad legislation.
Among those which cannot be entirely removed are inheritance, the
effects of emigration, orphanage, accident or misfortune, the strength
of the sexual and other passions, and a natural weakness of moral or
mental powers.
IGNORANCE.
There needs hardly a word to be said in this country on the intimate
connection between ignorance and crime.
The precise statistical relation between them in the State of New York
would seem to be this: about thirty-one per cent. of the adult criminals
cannot read or write, while of the adult population at large about six
(6.08) per cent. are illiterate; or nearly one-third of the crime is
committed by six-hundredths of the population. In the city prisons for
1870, out of 49,423 criminals, 18,442 could not write and could barely
read, or more than thirty-three per cent.
[Illustration: THE FORTUNES OF A STREET WAIF. (Second Stage.)]
In the Reformatories of the country, according to the statement of Dr.
Bittinger before the National Congress on prison-discipline at
Cincinnati, out of the average number of the inmates for 1868, of 7,963
twenty-seven per cent. were wholly illiterate.
Very great criminality is, of course, possible with high education; but
in the immense majority of cases a very small degree of mental training
or intellectual tastes is a preventive of idleness and consequent crime
and of extreme poverty. The difference between knowing how to read and
not knowing will often be the line between utter poverty and a capacity
for various occupations.
Among the inmates of the city prisons a large percentage are without a
trade, and no doubt this idle condition is largely due to their
ignorance and is one of the great stimulants to their criminal course.
Who can say how much the knowledge of Geography alone may stimulate a
child or a youth to emigrate, and thus leave his immediate temptations
and escape pressing poverty?
ORPHANAGE.
Out of 452 criminal children received into the House of Refuge in New
York during 1870, only 187 had both parents living, so that nearly sixty
per cent. had lost one or both of their parents, or were otherwise
separated from them.
According to Dr. Bittinger, [Transactions of the National Congress, p.
279.] of the 7,963 inmates of the reformatories in the United States in
1870, fifty-five per cent. were orphans or half orphans.
The following figures strikingly show the extent to which orphanage and
inheritance influence the moral condition of children.
Mettrai, the celebrated French reformatory, has received since its
foundation 3,580 youthful inmates. Of these, there are 707 whose parents
are convicts; 308 whose parents live in concubinage; 534 "natural"
children; 221 foundlings; 504 children of a second marriage; and 1,542
without either father or mother. [Une visite a Mettrai. Paris, 1868.]
An intelligent French writer, M. de Marsangy, [Moralisation de l'enfance
coupable, p. 18.] in writing of the causes of juvenile crime in France,
says that "a fifth of those who have been the objects of judicial
pursuit are composed of orphans; the half have no father, a quarter no
mother, and as for those who have a family, nearly all are dragged by it
into evil."
EMIGRATION.
There is no question that the breaking of the ties with one's country
has a bad moral effect, especially on a laboring class. The Emigrant is
released from the social inspection and judgment to which he has been
subjected at home, and the tie of church and priesthood is weakened. If
a Roman Catholic, he is often a worse Catholic, without being a better
Protestant. If a Protestant, he often becomes indifferent. Moral ties
are loosened with the religious. The intervening process which occurs
here, between his abandoning the old state of things and fitting himself
to the new, is not favorable to morals or character.
The consequence is, that an immense proportion of our ignorant and
criminal class are foreign-born; and of the dangerous classes here, a
very large part, though native-born, are of foreign parentage. Thus, out
of the whole number of foreigners in New York State, in 1860, 16.69 per
cent. could not read or write; while of the native-born only 1.83 per
cent. were illiterate.
Of the 49,423 prisoners in our city prisons, in prison for one year
before January, 1870, 32,225 were of foreign birth, and, no doubt, a
large proportion of the remainder of foreign parentage. Of the
foreign-born, 21,887 were from Ireland; and yet at home the Irish are
one of the most law-abiding and virtuous of populations--the proportion
of criminals being smaller than in England or Scotland.
In the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, according to Dr. Bittinger,
from one-fourth to one-third of the inmates are foreigners; in Auburn,
from a third to a half; in Clinton, one-half; in Sing Sing, between
one-half and six-sevenths. In the Albany Penitentiary, the aggregate
number of prisoners during the last twenty years was 18,390, of whom
10,770 were foreign-born. [Transact. of Nat. Cong., p. 282.]
It is another marked instance of the demoralizing influence of
emigration, that so large a proportion of the female criminal class
should be Irish-born, though the Irish female laboring class are well
known to be at home one of the most virtuous in the world.
A hopeful fact, however, begins to appear in regard to this matter; the
worst effects of emigration in this country seem over. The machinery for
protecting and forwarding the newly-arrived immigrants, so that they may
escape the dangers and temptations of the city, has been much improved.
Very few, comparatively, now remain in our sea-ports to swell the
current of poverty and crime. The majority find their way at once to the
country districts. The quality, too, of the immigration has improved.
More well-to-do farmers and peasantry, with small savings, arrive than
formerly, and the preponderance, as to nationality, is inclining to the
Germans. It comparatively seldom happens now that paupers or persons
absolutely without means, land in New York.
As one of the great causes of crime, Emigration will undoubtedly have a
much feebler influence in the future in New York than it has had in the
past.
WANT OF A TRADE.
It is remarkable how often, in questioning the youthful convicts in our
prisons as to the causes of their downfall, they will reply that "if
they had had a trade, they would not have been there." They disliked
drudgery, they found places in offices and shops crowded; they would
have enjoyed the companionship and the inventiveness of a trade, but
they could not obtain one, and therefore they were led into stealing or
gambling, as a quick mode of earning a living.
There is no doubt that a lad with a trade feels a peculiar independence
of the world, and is much less likely to take up dishonest means of
living than one depending on manual labor, or chance means of living.
There is nearly always a demand for his work; the lad feels himself a
member of a craft and supported by the consciousness of this membership;
the means of the "Unions" often sustain him when out of employment; his
associates are more honest and respectable than those of boys depending
on chance-labor, and so he is preserved from falling into crime.
Of course, if such a lad would walk forth to the nearest country
village, he would find plenty of healthy and remunerative employment in
the ground, as gardener or farmer. And to a country-lad, the farm offers
a better chance than a trade. But many city boys and young men will not
consent to leave the excitements of the city, so that the want of a
mechanical occupation does expose them to many temptations.
The persons most responsible for this state of things are the members of
such "Unions" as refuse to employ boys, or to encourage the training of
apprentices. It is well-known that in many trades of New York, hardly
any young laborers or apprentices are being trained. The result of this
selfish policy will be to reduce the amount of skilled labor in this
city, and thus compel the importation of foreign labor, and to increase
juvenile crime and the burdens on the poor.
Another cause of this increasing separation from trades among the young
is, no doubt, the increasing aversion of American children, whether poor
or rich, to learn anything thoroughly; the boys of the street, like
those of our merchants, preferring to make fortunes by lucky and sudden
"turns," rather than by patient and steady industry.
Our hope in this matter is in the steady demand for juvenile labor in
the country districts, and the substantial rewards which await industry
there.