accumulation of property was greater, and the inequalities perhaps more
marked than in any other land; likewise the poor were more independent.
Gradually we came to rely more and more upon the power of law and the
force that goes with it to preserve the old order. Legislatures and city
councils all over the United States began to limit and forbid carrying
firearms. The Constitution of the United States was held no impediment
to this legislation. Gradually laws have forbidden the carrying of guns
by the common man, and these laws are growing stronger every year. In
many states robbery with a gun may mean life imprisonment, while the
mere carrying of a revolver is a serious offense. The passage of these
drastic laws and the number of prison inmates confined for these
offenses show that the invention and use of firearms has affected crime,
and likewise that the government is constantly growing more doubtful of
the common man.
Civilization largely has to do with the creation and protection of
property. Although it is related to literature, architecture, politics,
art and the like; even these things if not actually rooted in property
are stimulated or affected by property. Civilization has created new
crimes and new ways to commit crime. It has likewise created many wants
and desires that furnish the motive power of property crimes. Each new
invention of civilization adds to these needs and these desires,
increases the power of committing crime, and necessitates stricter
measures to prevent it. Civilization has likewise created many new
outlets for the emotions, strengthened old ones, weakened others and
added to the complexity of life. It has imposed added strain and stress
upon man's nervous system and through this has caused the abnormalities
and excesses that are either crimes or lead to crimes.
Civilization has created the big cities; in other words, the powers and
forces that made civilization have made the big cities. The invention
and development of the railroad has taken men from the air and sunlight
and comparative freedom of motion of the country and the small village,
and placed them in an atmosphere not really fitted for normal animal
life, especially the life of the young. It has likewise stimulated crime
by offering the opportunities and making the suggestions that are
potent factors in crime. In country and village life everyone was known,
the smallest detail of every life was an open book. This fact furnished
a moral restraint to the individual and likewise made it hard for him to
violate the rules of the game. The opportunities for collecting large
numbers of people who might encourage each other with their conversation
and association were very few in rural life. The man who would violate
the law must do it alone. Not only this, but he must take his first
steps almost without suggestion or aid. This confined criminal conduct
largely to the feeble-minded and the seriously defective, and even these
could generally live in a country atmosphere where life is simple and
easy, without serious danger to themselves or others.
The great city with its swarms of people, its wealth and poverty, its
unhealthy atmosphere, its opportunities for everyone to have many
associates and still be lost to the community at large, makes irregular
lives not only easy, but almost necessary to large numbers of men.
Civilization has no doubt created crime as it has created luxury,
wealth, refinement and ease. Much luxury has always led to deterioration
and decay and is doubtless leading that way now.
One of the latest products of civilization that has had a marked effect
on crime is the automobile. Stringent laws are on the statute books of
all states against stealing automobiles, yet stealing and selling
automobiles is a flourishing and growing business. A large percentage of
the boys in the juvenile courts of our cities are there for stealing
automobiles. Yet this is the work of a very short period. I do not mean
to say that many of the boys brought into court for stealing automobiles
would not have committed some other crime, if automobiles had not been
invented and come into general use, but I feel quite sure that many of
them are victims of the automobile madness alone.
The automobile is one of the latest manias and fashions that
civilization has provided. Almost no one is free from the disease.
Conservative business men must have motor cars; clerks and salaried
people who cannot afford them must get them; mechanics and professional
men who have no need for them, except that others use them, must
contrive to buy them. Automobiles are much more important today than
houses. Men go into debt and struggle for money to buy gasoline so that
they may drive somewhere for the sake of coming back. It has created a
psychology all its own, a psychology of movement, of impatience, of
waste, of futility. Men in Chicago start to drive to Milwaukee without
the slightest reason for going there; they travel the road so fast that
they could get no idea of the scenery even if there were something to
see. They hurry as if going for a doctor. They reach their destination
and then start back home. The specific desire that is satisfied by this
expense and waste is a new one, an emotion of no value in the life
processes and probably of great injury in life development. It is a
craze for movement, for haste, for what seems like change.
The automobile has made its list of criminals, and it is making them
every day. Probably it will continue to make them until the flying
machine is perfected, and then to some extent at least the airplane will
take its place.
The truth is that man is not adapted to the automobile. His reactions
are too simple; his inherent needs are not adjusted to the new life; he
has not been built up with barriers to protect him from this insidious
temptation which is claiming its victims by the hundreds every day.
The boy is perfectly helpless in the presence of this lure. He wants to
do what others do. He is by nature active and venturesome and needs to
keep on the move. The mechanism itself appeals to him. He wants to work
in a garage. He is anxious to be a chauffeur. He cannot resist an
automobile. No such temptation should be placed before a boy. It has
added a great deal to the responsibility of parents and teachers, and so
far they seem not to have been able to meet that responsibility in any
way. Aside from the boys' thefts it has played a great part in crime.
The doctor, the real estate agent, the business man cannot afford to be
without automobiles. No more can the burglar, the hold-up man, the bank
robber, if he would keep up to date. The automobile has raised the
robbery of country banks from a vagrant crime, infrequent and dangerous,
to a steady occupation coupled with a great deal of excitement and some
chance for profit. So far no one has ever suggested anything to
counteract or lessen the evil effects except to increase penalties. The
crimes committed with and for automobiles are a result of the conditions
of life. Out of a thousand men and boys, a certain percentage must
commit these crimes just as a certain percentage must die of
tuberculosis. The temptation is very great. The human equipment is not
strong enough in many people to withstand the temptation. They either
buy them when they cannot afford to own them, or they steal them, and
either way leads to disaster. No doubt men will some time become
adjusted to the automobile as they have become adjusted to the horse,
but until that time comes, it will demand its heavy toll of
unfortunates.
Not only, it seems to me, does the growth of civilization mean the
growth of crime, but that civilization likewise leads to decay. The
world has seen the result over and over again, but it cannot learn. Man
is an animal; the law of his being demands that he shall live close to
nature; he needs the outdoors, the country, the air; he needs to walk
and run; otherwise his digestive apparatus will fail, his brain power
will decay, and the strength of his legs will be impaired. Civilization
runs too much to stomach and nerves, and Nature will have revenge. To be
sure, the professional American rhapsodist points out that we are immune
from natural law because we have a chance to vote for presidents once in
every four years. But there are ample signs that Nature knows little
about political institutions or other man-made devices and that she will
have her way.
How much the natural limitations of man will permit him to learn and
understand; how far his instincts and emotional nature would allow him
to be controlled by knowledge, if he had it; what would be the results
to life if reason could control him, are pertinent questions that affect
all discussion and which may never be satisfactorily answered. It is
entirely possible that the student who tries to point out better ways
and teach better methods does it only to satisfy his own emotions and is
often conscious that it does nothing else. But, whatever the inducing
cause or result, given a brain and nervous system and the material that
civilization furnishes for reflection, these and other important
subjects will be interesting topics of study and furnish material for
the reflective powers of man.
XXIX
WAR AND CRIME
All natural phenomena affect the activities of man. It has been
repeatedly observed that the number of crimes of assault and murder
increases in the summer months and fluctuates with extreme heat or a
cooler temperature. The nervous system of man is responsive to all sorts
of physical and psychological influences, and criminologists take these
into account in considering crime, as doctors take them into account in
treating disease. Man is influenced by substantially all the things that
affect other structures and by many things that do not. His nervous
system is more delicate, his emotional nature more complex, and his
brain permits the handling of impressions in a way not possible to lower
organisms.
The effect of war has always been manifest in human conduct. Man acts
largely from habit and custom; he does as others do, without reflection
as to why he should do it or why others do it. War is a sudden, violent
and spectacular destroyer of all established habits. In its conduct and
preparation it has rules of its own which have no analogy in civil
life. The battlefield is a reversion to the primitive; a reversion which
man finds it easy to make, for it appeals to fundamental instincts which
civilization holds in leash with great difficulty and never with entire
success. War especially appeals to the young. Their desire for activity,
their impatience with restraint, their love of the spectacular, their
untrained emotions, all find a ready outlet in war. Even those who are
too young to fight still read of it, talk of it, play at it to the
exclusion of other games. War is a profound and rapid maker of mental
attitudes and of complexes that are quick to develop and slow to pass
away. Both the quick development and slow decay are probably due to the
fact that war meets a decided response in the primitive nature of man.
Nearly all the newspapers of America are now calling attention to the
increase of crime since the close of the Great War. It is a topic of
pulpit and platform discussion. Wild appeals are made for convictions
and extreme penalties. Governors and boards of pardon and parole are
urged to refuse clemency to prisoners and are roundly condemned when
they do their plain duty, even though they do it very reluctantly and
tardily.
It is probably true that the close of the war has shown a large increase
in criminality, especially in crimes of violence. This is true not only
of America but of all European countries. In some of the most afflicted
ones civil government for a time has virtually broken down. Both the
great need for food and clothing and the overthrowing of conventions,
customs and habits are responsible for the change. Here we perceive a
notable example of the almost instantaneous disruption of established
folk-ways.
For more than four years most of the western world did nothing but kill.
The whole world talked of slaughter and devoted its energy to killing.
Every sentiment of humanity was forgotten. Even religious ties and
religious commands were ignored. The prayers to the Almighty contained
requests that He help the various fighting nations to kill their
enemies. Everyone was taught to hate. The leaders in the war knew that
boys could not do efficient killing unless they learned to fear and
hate. The most outrageous falsehoods were freely circulated by every
nation about its enemies and their conduct of the war. The highest
rewards were offered for new and more efficient ways to kill. Every
school was turned over to hate and preparation for war, and, of course,
all the churches joined in the universal craze. God would not only
forgive killing but reward those who were the most expert at the game.
The newspapers carried stories of battles every day, the dead and
wounded often running into the tens of thousands. None of the reports
was exact. Nothing was true. Everything was wild and exaggerated. Facts
were not strong enough to make an impression. Lies were deliberately
circulated to help the cause.
Every tradition and habit of life was broken and broken all the time.
The commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," was repealed. Property was not
only ruthlessly destroyed but openly confiscated. Lying was a fine art.
When this bears a harvest after the war, the public loudly clamors for
hanging boys whose psychology is a direct result of long and intensive
training by the leaders of the world.
One life is not worth considering in the face of the holocaust that has
taken its hundreds of thousands and has been defended in the schools and
churches. It is not strange that the after-war harvest of crimes should
come largely from boys, often those boys who did their part on the field
of battle. Whether they got the psychology from killing or reading or
hearing or playing soldier or training makes no difference. Everyone who
has any reasoning power knows that they got it, that it was deliberately
given to them if not forced upon them, and that just as deliberately the
state is killing them because they took it.
It is not alone the young who show this psychology of killing that has
grown out of the war. Organized society, the public, juries, judges,
pardon boards and governors, show that war has made them cruel and
wanton of human life. The great number of hangings since the war is
patent to all observers. In normal times juries were very loath to
pronounce the death penalty. With any possible excuse they always saved
life. Now they pride themselves on taking life. Even insanity does not
always prevent an execution.
Numerous are the evidences of the derangements the war has created and
left behind. A few years ago a prize fight would not have been permitted
in more than one or two states in the Union. Now state after state is
passing laws to permit prize fights to take place, and even the best
society has given its sanction to this sort of sport. Whether the state
should permit prize fights is not the question. The fact is, as everyone
knows, that it is permitted on account of a psychology growing out of
the war. We content ourselves with saying it will never do to raise our
boys as molly-coddles; they must learn to fight.
It is not alone murder that can be traced directly to the war
psychology. Robbery and burglary have rapidly increased, and much of
this is due to the emotions of boys. The robbing of country banks has
grown to be almost a pastime, and often one or more participants in
these raids is a returned soldier.
What should be done to meet these new conditions? Common honesty,
common sense and common humanity alike plainly show that a large part of
the crimes of violence are due to the war. Will hangings and life
sentences stop them? And, if so, is it right for organized society to
ignore its responsibility and place it on the young men that they
innoculated with the universal madness? It is expecting too much to
think that there is any process by which society can be made to think
and feel. Some day, however, when the war fever passes away crime will
again take its normal place.
This phenomenon is not new in the world. Everyone interested has noted
it before. It has followed all great wars. War means the breaking up of
old habits, the destruction of many inhibitions, which in the strongest
civilization are only skin deep at the best. It means the return to the
primitive feelings that once ruled man.
The Napoleonic Wars left a long heritage of crime. Every nation in
Europe was affected by them. Many years passed before the world grew
tranquil. Our Civil War brought its harvest of crime. It was felt both
North and South. It was not confined to homicide but was shown in all
sorts of criminal statistics, especially crimes of violence.
I do not write as a pacifist. There is nothing in the constitution of
man that makes pacifism anything but a dream. Man is largely ruled by
fear and hate, and it is not possible to imagine an individual or a
race that under sufficient provocation will not fight. Neither is it
possible that nations will not always, from time to time, find the
provocation sufficiently great. Individuals and nations can philosophize
and reason and make compromises when they are calm; but let them be
moved by fear and hatred, and these emotions will sweep away every other
feeling. The conditions for war were ripe in 1914, and it was inevitable
that America should be in it too. This should not make one wish for war
nor believe in war nor close one's eyes to its horrors and results. Much
less should it prevent him from trying to do his part to restore sanity
to the world.
Another consequence of war which America is passing through is the
spirit of super-patriotism. This is always aroused and must be aroused
to carry on the war. It is potent in creating the psychology that makes
men fight. Every people teaches that its own country is the best; that
its laws and institutions excel those of all other lands. This spirit is
taken advantage of and used by designing men. It is used to send to jail
those who criticise existing things. It is used to hamper and destroy
any effort to change laws and institutions. The one who criticises
conditions is a disturber and a traitor. Those who profit by existing
things are always intense patriots and by means of cheap appeals and
trite expressions seek to stifle discussion and criticism. This war has
borne a deadly harvest of restrictive legislation in America. We are no
longer an asylum for political offenders. We no longer stand for freedom
of speech. Old traditions and constitutional and legal guarantees have
been swept aside under the hysteria which has prevailed during and since
the war. These results were inevitable and will follow war as long as
man is man.
All the after-effects of the World War show how completely man is ruled
by forces over which he has no control. If considerable numbers of the
people have been moved by war hysteria, and if a large part of crime is
directly traceable to war, it seems plain that all human action could be
traced to some controlling cause, if only man could be wise enough and
industrious and humane enough to find the cause. It is plain that the
law of cause and effect influences mental phenomena as it does physical
acts, and sometime, perhaps, men will seek to avoid the effect by
removing the cause.
XXX
CIVILIZATION AND CRIME
As children we have all amused ourselves by looking into a kaleidoscope,
turning it around and around and watching the changing patterns formed
from the mixing bits of different colored glass in the other end. Each
turn makes a different pattern and each bit of glass seems to seek a
spot in the general medley where it can be settled until another turn
drives it to find a resting place somewhere else. The organization of
individual units into a group is more or less such a formation, each
seeking to adjust itself to a pattern and finding that the pattern is
ever-changing and the individual units obliged to seek new positions and
make new adjustments.
It is vain for social theorists to talk of a perfect order, a system of
social organization that will find the proper place for each unit and
bring social symmetry out of the whole. Such a society is not consistent
with the varied capacities and wants of men. Neither is a perfect order
possible with ever-changing and moving physical forces, with new mental
conceptions, with new needs and wants, with constant births and deaths,
and with the innate instincts of man.
Some system may be the best for a time but must in turn give place to
new formations. In this process the old is ever mixed with the new. The
past hangs on to plague the present, and the vision of the future
disturbs the quiet and stability that the present inherited from the
past. Organizations of society are necessary and automatic. The frost on
the window pane takes its pattern, the crystals in the glass and stone
have their formations, the grain of sand, the plant--all forms of animal
life--the solar system and, doubtless, an infinite number of other
systems which the eye cannot see or the mind comprehend take on form and
order. The symmetry and shape of any of these organizations may be
shattered by growth or catastrophe, and new forms may take their place.
All life is constant friction and constant adjustment, each particle in
a blind way trying to find a more harmonious relation, but never
reaching complete rest.
The social and political patterns that men have taken have been of many
forms. All through the past these have changed, and the laws and habits
that were meant to hold men together, have been made and discarded as
fast as new emotions or ideas have gained the power to make the change.
Men are of all degrees of adaptability. Some can readily conform to the
new. Some adjust themselves very slowly. Man's structure is fixed; his
inherent instincts are of ancient origin, always urging him to primitive
reactions; his habits are slowly formed and slowly changed. Slowly he
settles himself to the conditions that surround him. He learns their
demands; he manages to conform, but the folk-ways that he knew and the
way of life he learned must be changed to something else. Every new
adjustment, every change of organization, every modification made by
civilization, bears its toll of victims who have not been able to adjust
themselves to the new order.
The first criminal regulations, doubtless, had to do with the personal
relations of men. The number of offenses was small for life was simple,
wants were few, and ambition rare. The growth of religion created a
ferocious criminal code, regulating every thought and action that God's
agents thought might offend the Deity or threaten their power on earth.
Anyone interested in the story of punishment for heresy, sorcery or
other crimes growing out of religious fanaticism, can read the story in
Lecky's _History of Rationalism in Europe_, in White's _A History of the
Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom_, in Draper's
_Intellectual Development of Europe_, and in many other books. The
Spanish Inquisition alone furnished about 350,000 victims in the two
centuries of its power. Many of them were burned alive, many others were
killed by the most cruel torture that could be devised by man. Up to
recent times more victims have been put to death for heresy and kindred
crimes against religion than for any other cause. Next to this no doubt
stand political crimes. Even America hanged old women for witchcraft, a
crime they could not commit. Practically all the victims of religious
and political persecution have been guiltless of any real crimes, and
among them were always many of the noblest of their age.
Every general change of religious or political ideas bears its quota of
crimes. For whatever the religious or political organization, it always
uses every means in its power to perpetuate itself. This is as true of
republics as of monarchies, although the severity of punishment and the
amount of heresy permitted change from time to time. Each age is sure
that it has the true religion and the God-given political organization.
In every age the accepted religion is true, and the king and the state
can do no wrong.