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JUKES-EDWARDS
A STUDY IN EDUCATION AND HEREDITY
* * * * *
BY
A.E. WINSHIP, LITT.D.
* * * * *
HARRISBURG, PA.:
R.L. Myers & Co.
1900.
To HIM
Who, more than any other, has taught us how to afford opportunity for
neglected, unfortunate and wayward boys and girls to transform
themselves into industrious, virtuous and upright citizens through the
most remarkable institution in the land,
WILLIAM R. GEORGE,
FOUNDER OF
THE GEORGE JUNIOR REPUBLIC,
THIS STUDY IS DEDICATED.
R.L. MYERS & CO.,
PUBLISHERS OF
Standard Helps for Teachers,
Standard School Books.
SEND FOR CATALOGUE.
HARRISBURG, PENNA.
PREFACE.
Of all the problems which America faces on the land and on the seas, no
one is so important as that of making regenerates out of degenerates.
The massing of people in large cities, the incoming of vast multitudes
from the impoverished masses of several European and Asiatic countries,
the tendency to interpret liberty as license, the contagious nature of
moral, as well as of physical, diseases combine to make it of the utmost
importance that American enterprise and moral force find ways and means
for accomplishing this transformation. The grand results of the movement
in New York city inspired by Jacob Riis; the fascinating benevolence of
the Roycroft Shop in East Aurora, N.Y.; the marvelous transfiguration of
character--I speak it reverently--at the George Junior Republic,
Freeville, N.Y., added to the College Settlement and kindred efforts
merely indicate what may be accomplished when philanthropy supplements
saying by doing, and when Christianity stands for the beauty of
wholeness and is satisfied with nothing less than the physical, mental
and moral conversions of all classes among the masses at home as well as
abroad, in the East as well as in the West.
A problem is primarily something thrown at us as a challenge for us to
see through it. To solve a problem is to loosen it so that it may be
looked into or seen through. Whatever contributes to the loosening of a
problem by throwing light upon the conditions is of value in aiding in
its solution, hence the publication of this study of the family of
Jonathan Edwards as a contrast to the Jukes.
A.E.W.
Somerville, Mass., _June 1, 1900_.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Page.
THE JUKES, 7
A STUDY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS, 15
THE INHERITANCE AND TRAINING OF MR. EDWARDS, 20
THE CHILDREN'S START IN LIFE, 29
MRS. EDWARDS AND HOME TRAINING, 37
CAPACITY, CHARACTER AND TRAINING, 41
AARON BURR, 44
CONTRASTS, 53
TIMOTHY EDWARDS, 61
COLONEL WILLIAM EDWARDS, 67
THE MARY EDWARDS DWIGHT FAMILY, 74
CHAPTER I
THE JUKES
Education is something more than going to school for a few weeks each
year, is more than knowing how to read and write. It has to do with
character, with industry, and with patriotism. Education tends to do
away with vulgarity, pauperism, and crime, tends to prevent disease and
disgrace, and helps to manliness, success and loyalty.
Ignorance leads to all those things that education tries to do away
with, and it tends to do away with all the things that education tries
to cultivate. It is easy to say these things, and every one knows they
are true, but few realize how much such statements mean. It is not easy
to take a view of such matters over a long range of time and experience.
A boy that leaves school and shifts for himself by blacking boots,
selling papers, and "swiping" fruit often appears much smarter than a
boy of the same age who is going to school all the time and does not see
so much of the world. A boy of twelve who has lived by his wits is often
keener than a boy of the same age who has been well brought up at home
and at school, but such a boy knows about as much and is about as much
of a man at twelve as he will ever be, while the boy that gets an
education becomes more and more of a man as long as he lives.
But this might be said a thousand times to every truant, and it would
have very little effect, because he thinks that he will be an exception.
He never sees beyond his own boyish smartness. Few men and women realize
how true it is that these smart rascally fellows, who persist in
remaining in ignorance, are to be the vicious, pauper, criminal class
who are to fill the dens of vice, the poorhouses, and the prisons; who
are to be burglars, highwaymen, and murderers. In place of opinions, it
is well sometimes to present facts so clear and definite that they
cannot be forgotten.
R.A. Dugdale, of New York State, began the study of "The Jukes" family
in 1874, and in 1877 in the twentieth annual report of the New York
Prison Commission he made a statement of the results.[Footnote: G.P.
Putnam's Sons, New York, reprinted this study in "The Jukes."] This
brief summary of "the Jukes" is based upon the facts which Mr. Dugdale
has published.
"The Jukes" is a name given to a large family of degenerates. It is not
the real name of any family, but a general term applied to forty-two
different names borne by those in whose veins flows the blood of one
man. The word "jukes" means "to roost." It refers to the habit of fowls
to have no home, no nest, no coop, preferring to fly into the trees and
roost away from the places where they belong. The word has also come to
mean people who are too indolent and lazy to stand up or sit up, but
sprawl out anywhere. "The Jukes" are a family that did not make good
homes, did not provide themselves with comforts, did not work steadily.
They are like hens that fly into the trees to roost.
The father of "The Jukes" Mr. Dugdale styled "Max." He was born about
1720 of Dutch stock. Had he remained with his home folk in the town and
been educated, and thrifty like the rest of the boys, he might have
given the world a very different kind of family from "The Jukes."
Max was a jolly good fellow and not very bad. He was popular and he
could tell a good story that made everybody laugh. Of course he was
vulgar, such jolly good fellows are usually vulgar. He would not go to
school, because he did not like it. He would not stay in evenings, for
he did not like that. He did not enjoy being talked to, but always
wanted to talk himself, and to talk to boys who would laugh at his
yarns. He would not work for he did not like it. He wanted to go
fishing, hunting, and trapping; so he left home early and took to the
woods.
Max liked nature. He thought he was lots better than town people because
he knew more about nature. He found a lovely spot on the border of a
beautiful lake in New York State, where the rocks are grand, the waters
lovely, the forest glorious. There was never a more charming place in
which to be good and to love God than this place where Max built his
shanty about 1750. But he did not go there to worship or to be good. He
went simply to get away from good people, to get where he would not have
to work, and where he would not be preached to, and this beautiful spot
became a notorious cradle of crime. Nature is lovely, but it makes all
the difference in the world how we know nature and why we love it.
In 1874 Richard L. Dugdale was employed by the New York Prison
Commission to visit the prisons of the state. In this visit he was
surprised to find criminals in six different prisons whose relatives
were mostly criminals or paupers, and the more surprised to discover
that these six criminals, under four different names, were all descended
from the same family. This led Mr. Dugdale to study their relatives,
living and dead. He gave himself up to this work with great zeal,
studying the court and prison records, reports of town poorhouses, and
the testimony of old neighbors and employers. He learned the details of
540 descendants of Max in five generations. He learned the exact facts
about 169 who married into the family. It is customary to count as of
a family the men who marry into it. He traced in part others, which
carried the number up to 1,200 persons of the family of the Jukes.
The Jukes rarely married foreign-born men or women, so that it may be
styled a distinctively American family. The almost universal traits of
the family were idleness, ignorance, and vulgarity. They would not work,
they could not be made to study, and they loved vulgarity. These
characteristics led to disease and disgrace, to pauperism and crime.
They were a disgustingly diseased family as a whole. There were many
imbeciles and many insane. Those of "the Jukes" who tended to pauperism
were rarely criminal, and those who were criminal were rarely paupers.
The sick, the weak, and goody-goody ones were almost all paupers; the
healthy, strong ones were criminals.
It is a well-known fact in sociology that criminals are of three
classes: First, those who direct crime, the capitalists in crime, who
are rarely arrested, who seldom commit any crime, but inspire men to
crime in various ways. These are intelligent and have to be educated to
some extent. They profit by crime and take slight risks.
Second, those who commit heroic crimes and find some satisfaction in the
skill and daring required. Safe-breaking, train robbery, and some types
of burglary require men of ability and pluck, and those who do these
things have a species of pride in it.
Third, those who commit weak and imbecile crimes, which mark the doer as
a sneak and a coward. These men rob hen roosts, waylay helpless women
and old men, steal clothing in hallways, and burn buildings. They are
always cowardly about everything they do, and never have the pluck to
steal chickens even until they are half drunk. They often commit murder,
but only when they are detected in some sneaking crime and shoot because
they are too cowardly to face their discoverer.
Now the Jukes were almost never of the first or second class. They could
not be criminals that required capital, brains, education or nerve. Even
the kind of pauperism and crime in which they indulged was particularly
disgraceful. This is inevitably true of all classes of people who
combine idleness, ignorance, and vulgarity. They are not even
respectable among criminals and paupers.
There is an honorable pauperism. It is no disgrace to be poor or to be
in a poorhouse if there is a good reason for it. One may be manly in
poverty. But the Jukes were never manly or honorable paupers, they were
weaklings among paupers.
They were a great expense to the state, costing in crime and pauperism
more than $1,250,000. Taken as a whole, they not only did not contribute
to the world's prosperity, but they cost more than $1,000 a piece,
including all men, women, and children, for pauperism and crime.
Those who worked did the lowest kind of service and received the
smallest wages. Only twenty of the 1,200 learned a trade, and ten of
those learned it in the state prison. Even they were not regularly
employed. Men who work regularly even at unskilled labor are generally
honest men and provide for the family. A habit of irregular work is a
species of mental or moral weakness, or both. A man or woman who will
not stick to a job is morally certain to be a pauper or a criminal.
One great benefit of going to school, especially of attending regularly
for eight or ten months each year for nine years or more, is that it
establishes a habit of regularity and persistency in effort. The boy who
leaves school to go to work does not necessarily learn to work steadily,
but often quite the reverse. Few who graduate from a grammar school, or
who take the equivalent course in a rural school, fail to be regular in
their habits of effort. This accounts in part for the fact that few
unskilled workmen ever graduated from a grammar school. Scarcely any of
the Jukes were ever at school any considerable time. Probably no one of
them ever had so much as a completed rural school education.
It is very difficult to find anyone who is honest and industrious, pure
and prosperous, who has not had a fair education, if he ever had the
opportunity, as all children in the United States now have. It is an
interesting fact developed from a study of the Jukes that it is much
easier to reform a criminal than a pauper.
Here are a few facts by way of conclusion. On the basis of the facts
gathered by Mr. Dugdale, 310 of the 1,200 were professional paupers, or
more than one in four. These were in poorhouses or its equivalent for
2,300 years.
Three hundred of the 1,200, or one in four, died in infancy from lack
of good care and good conditions.
There were fifty women who lived lives of notorious debauchery.
Four hundred men and women were physically wrecked early by their own
wickedness.
There were seven murderers.
Sixty were habitual thieves who spent on the average twelve years each
in lawless depredations.
There were 130 criminals who were convicted more or less often of crime.
What a picture this presents! Some slight improvement was apparent when
Mr. Dugdale closed his studies. This resulted from evening schools, from
manual training schools, from improved conditions of labor, from the
later methods of treating prisoners.