the effects of heredity can no more be doubted in man than in animals.
Still there are important questions to be asked and grave dangers to be
encountered. When we say that the well-bred Berkshire hog is better than
the "razor-back," we mean that it will produce more meat for food. In
other words the hog is better for man. If we were to ask which would be
the better, if the hog were to be considered, the answer would probably
be the "razor-back." The fact that the food consumed by the Berkshire
produces a large quantity of fat, makes him unfitted to live if he were
living for his own sake. Turn both hogs out to run wild, and the
"razor-back" will live and the Berkshire die. Nature will make her
selection and adapt the hog to his environment. The Berkshire will
produce more lard, but it will not run so fast; it has no more brains
and cannot adapt what it has so well to the preservation of life. The
same thing is doubtless true of other animals and likewise of plant
life. The Jersey cow would not survive in a natural state. She gives too
much milk and for too long a time. Man has made of her a milk-machine.
Turn all thoroughbred horses out on the plains to shift for themselves,
and they would either die or gradually be modified until they were
adapted to the free and wild life of the plains. This would not be so
good for man, but would be better for the horses. In plants and animals,
man can by selection breed or cultivate any characteristics that he may
choose, but he cannot produce a horse which is both a draft horse and a
running horse; he cannot produce cattle that are the best both for milk
and beef. He is urged to try scientific breeding on the human race. How
would he have man changed? Would he experiment for more intellect, or a
bigger and stronger physique? Would he breed for art and civilization or
would he breed for strength and physical endurance? What qualities are
desirable for the human race? This would be a very hard question even to
entrust to a popular vote. While the capacity of cattle to produce milk
can be increased, cattle cannot increase their own capacity or improve
their own quality. This can be done only by the slow and patient
processes of Nature in the line of adapting the animal to its
environment. The rapid change that is to come about by breeding must be
directed and controlled by man. The cattle have nothing to say about the
process. No doubt a higher order of beings who could control man might,
and perhaps would change him by selective mating. How they would change
him would depend on the use they wished to make of him, not on what the
man himself would like to do. The contemplation of a higher order of
beings experimenting with the human race is not a pleasant one for
intelligent men.
Can we imagine men, through government, forcibly experimenting with each
other? Who would settle the kind of man that was to be evolved or the
specific changes that would be required? Or, what was to be done and
how? Who could prophesy what man would be like when he should be made
over in the likeness of something else? Who are the people with the
breadth and tolerance and infinite wisdom, in whose hands it would be
safe to place the remodeling of man? It is hard to conceive that it can
be seriously considered.
Nature in her own way is a eugenist. By her slow processes she is
continually wiping out the unfit and adapting man to the environment
where he must live. Perhaps by saving too many of the unfit man is more
or less interfering with the processes of Nature, and it may be that the
interference with her method of work is bad. But Nature is mindful of
this tendency and if it is not in accordance with the profoundest laws
of being, Nature will have her way in spite of man's meddling. Any
change that can be brought about by selective mating must come by
natural processes aided by the education of each individual through a
closer study of the origin and evolution of life. This must leave
everyone free to do his own selecting, rather than to trust it to the
state. Society can do much toward giving man an environment which will
more or less be adjusted to his heredity. To give him a heredity that
will conform to his environment is quite another thing and probably must
be kept practically free from the theories, vagaries and experiments of
man. It would seem so absurd and dangerous as not to be worth discussing
except for the fact that the movement, both for sterilizing and some
degree of control of mating has already gone far in some of the states.
There is no limit that fanaticism or hatred will respect.
No doubt the popular opinion that in some way crime and pauperism are
inherited has been strengthened by the literature concerning the family
that has been given the name of "The Jukes." The first extensive study
of this family was made by Richard L. Dugdale, who was connected with
the New York Prison Association. It was first published in 1877 and may
almost be regarded as the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" of the scientific study of
crime in America.
Mr. Dugdale was evidently a careful student, an honest investigator and
a humane man. Strange to say, deductions have been freely and carelessly
made from his book, which the investigations do not warrant, and against
which he carefully cautioned the reader. No one can examine Mr.
Dugdale's book without being impressed with the quiet unassuming modesty
and worth of the author, and yet in the hands of those who have so often
carelessly and unscientifically generalized from his studies, it has
possibly brought more harm than good.
The book covers investigations made by Dugdale between 1850 and 1870, a
period in which little was known about the laws that govern inheritance,
and necessarily, much evidence was pure hearsay without the data of
careful investigation at hand. The case, however, does show a surprising
number of criminals, paupers, harlots and misfits, descending from their
original ancestor. From time to time further investigation has brought
the history of the family down to 1918.
The ancestor with whom the investigation begins was born some time
between 1720 and 1740. In the report the original is called "Max." He
has been described as a "hunter and fisher," "a hard drinker," "not fond
of work," fairly intelligent and leaving no record of crime. He probably
left behind a large family, some of whom were legitimate and some
illegitimate. The family came from a barren, rocky, lake region in New
York and several generations grew up in the vicinity. The only industry
was rough work like quarrying stone, logging and the like. Later a
manufacturing plant was located in the region. The Jukes early got a bad
name in the small community. Even when they wanted to find employment it
was hard to get a job. They were socially ostracized and individually
boycotted. The region was poor, and for the most part the family grew up
in poverty. Often several members of a family lived in one room and
slept on the floor indiscriminately, regardless of sex. For several
generations few of them wandered far from the ancestral home. The
locality was one that naturally came to be the resort of the poor and
the outcast; these are always driven to the cheapest and most barren
land. Whether the community was related by blood or not, the residents
would almost inevitably be of the same class. Rich people cluster
closely together for association and fellowship. The poor and wretched
do the same. Common observation in city and country shows that this is
inevitable. It comes from deeper and more fundamental laws than human
statutes. It is born of the gregarious instinct and fostered and
developed by economic law.
In the main, lax habits grow from surroundings and association. The
tendency of all human beings is to revert to the primal. It is only
association that keeps the individual units up to the tension that
civilization expects and demands. Every community shows many examples of
this inevitable tendency. Nature is constant; civilization spasmodic.
Especially with sex relations, conditions are the chief factor. Nature
knows little or nothing of the regulations fixed by society and custom.
Poverty and wretchedness reach outward through a community and by
association between the old and the young pass down the generations.
Nothing but a complete change of environment can counteract the
inevitable tendency. When social classes arise and the cleavage is clear
and established, no great effort is made by the superior members to aid
the inferior. In fact they are almost invariably left to themselves.
Poverty and wretchedness are not transmitted in the blood, but in the
environment.
It is not many years since physicians and communities believed that
tuberculosis was inherited. In all communities there were instances of
this dread disease spreading out through families and down the
generations. It required the sacrifice of many lives and the careful
investigation of scientists to discover that tuberculosis was the result
of germs, generally accompanied by an impoverished system. These germs
were transferred by close association and lack of sanitary conditions.
It is as easy to transmit shiftlessness, idleness and lax habits as
disease.
Dugdale's figures of delinquency in the Jukes family are doubtless much
too high. A large percentage of facts was gained from gossip and hearsay
about those long since dead. The details show that many crimes charged
were not even proved, others were evidently not crimes, and in any small
community suspicion would rest upon a member of this family who was
accused. Then too, the poor in court and out have a hard time defending
themselves. They are frequently convicted when accused. The evidence in
regard to the subnormal and defective is still less satisfactory.
Without close examination and thorough tests, illiteracy generally
passes as subnormality. Very few of the subjects were submitted to a
careful test. It is at least probable that this family was not much
different from the other families who lived in like circumstances in the
community.
Dugdale's original examination covered 709 cases out of about 1200 that
were supposed to be living at the time. Of this number, 180 are put down
as having received institutional and outdoor relief. The criminals and
offenders are put down at 140. Habitual thieves convicted and
unconvicted are listed at 60. Common prostitutes are put down at 50.
After Dugdale's investigation the family, from industrial and other
conditions, became scattered and spread out over many states. A record
has lately been made of the descendants of this family, the later record
showing much improvement in the stock. This must be due to environment.
It seems fairly certain that with time and opportunity, it will not much
longer be a marked family.
Quite aside from the history, it seems certain that no results such as
shown by Dugdale could have followed from inheritance. Defectiveness is
a recessive factor; normality a dominant one. If such were not true,
this would be a world of feeble-minded. If the Mendelian law held good
in this regard, from a union of a defective and a normal person, three
out of four would be normal, but as a matter of fact, the percentage of
normal is no doubt much greater. It is only when both father and mother
are feeble-minded that feeble-mindedness is sure to show in the
offspring. With the modern care of this sort of defectives, the chance
of breeding is growing rapidly less.
The Kallikak family is cited as another illustration showing the
possible inheritance of criminality and poverty through a defective
strain. This family, so far as shown, makes it still clearer that what
some authors have charged to heredity is simply due to environment.
These investigations do not show the need of controlling birth but do
prove the necessity of improving environment. It is not possible to
speak with certainty as to heredity and environment. The thorough
investigation of these two factors which make up life is still in its
infancy, but scientists are working out the problem, and we may be
confident that with the right attitude toward crime, a remedy will be
found for such cases as result from environment.
XXXIII
CRIME, DISEASE AND ACCIDENT
The criminologist has always looked for the cause of crime in some other
direction than in the inherent wickedness of the criminal. Only those
who make and enforce the law believe that men commit crimes because they
choose the wrong.
Different writers have made their catalogues of causes that are
responsible for crime, and most of these lists are more or less correct.
There can be no doubt that more crimes against property are committed in
cold weather than in warm weather; more in hard times than in good
times; more by the unemployed than the employed; more during strikes and
lockouts than in times of industrial peace; more when food is expensive
and scarce than when it is cheap and plenty; more, in short, when it is
harder to live. There is no doubt that there are more crimes of violence
in extreme hot weather than in cold weather. That is, heat affects
crimes as it affects disease and insanity and death; in short, as it
affects all life. More crimes of violence are committed after wars or
during heated political campaigns than at other times; more of such
crimes when, either by climatic or other conditions, feelings are
intensified or aroused and less subject to control. Likewise there are
more crimes committed by young men between seventeen and twenty four or
five years of age than at any other age. Neither the very young nor the
old commit crimes, except in rare cases. All the old people could be
safely dismissed from prisons. Some few of the senile would need
attention, and many need support and care, but none is dangerous to the
community. There can be no question that practically all criminals are
poor. Even when bankers get into prison they almost never have much
money when they start that way, and none when they arrive. They are sent
for something that would not have happened except for financial
disaster. There is no longer any question that a large number, say
probably from ten to twenty per cent of the convicted are, in fact,
insane at the time the act was committed, and that the demented, the
imbecile, and the clearly subnormal constitute many more than half of
the inmates of prisons. Most of the rest can be accounted for by
defective nervous systems, excessively strong instincts in some
directions, weak ones in another, or a very hard environment. Add to
this the facts that only a few have ever had any education worthy of the
name, that most of them have never been trained to make a fair living by
any trade or occupation, that almost all have had a poor early
environment with no chance from the first, and most of them have had a
very imperfect heredity. In short, sufficient statistics have been
gathered and enough is known to warrant the belief that every case of
crime could be accounted for on purely scientific grounds if all the
facts bearing on the case were known.
Is there anything unreasonable in all of this? Is it outside of the
other manifestations of life? Let us take disease. Clearly this is
affected by heat and cold; beyond question it is largely the result of
inherited susceptibilities. Poverty or wealth has much to do with
disease. Many poor people die of tuberculosis, for instance, where the
well-to-do would live. The span of life of the rich is greater than that
of the poor. The long list of diseases from under-nourishment is mainly
from the poor. Age affects disease, increasing the hazard of death. The
food supply seriously affects health. Ignorance is a prolific cause of
disease. Or, to speak more correctly, the lack of education and
knowledge prevents men from living so that sickness will not overtake
them, or so that they can recover when they are attacked by disease. The
strength or weakness of the nervous system is a material factor.
The times of life, too, when the ravages of disease are greatest are as
distinct as those of crime. And barring the fact that the few who are
left at seventy rapidly drop away, the time of the greatest disasters
would rather closely correspond with that of crime. Tuberculosis and
insanity, for instance, take their greatest toll in the period of
adolescence between fifteen and twenty-five years, just as crime does,
and the percentage of both begins falling off rapidly after thirty.
Accidents can be as surely classified, and many of them in the same way.
The poor naturally have more accidents than the rich; the ignorant more
than the educated; the poorly-fed more than the well-nourished.
Accidents are directly affected by climatic conditions; they are
affected by human temperaments, by the strength and weakness of the
nervous system, by the environment, by heredity, and by all the manifold
stimuli that act on the human machine.
Legislatures have long since recognized that crime does not really stand
as a separate and isolated phenomenon in human life. They have long
since passed laws to safeguard the community against loss by accident
and disease. A lengthening list of statutes can be found in our code
regulating dangerous machinery, the operation of railroads, the running
of automobiles, the construction of buildings, the isolation of the
tubercular and those suffering from other contagious diseases, the
amount of air-space for each person in tenement and work-shop, the use
of fire-escapes and all of man's conduct and activity for the
prevention of accidents and disease.
Quite apart from the question of the wisdom or the foolishness of all
this line of legislative activity, over which there will always be
serious discussion, it is evident that criminal conduct even now
occupies no unique or isolated place in law or human conduct. All
unconsciously the world is coming to look on all sorts of conduct either
as social or anti-social, and this regardless of what has already been
classified as criminal. A few years since science was absorbed in the
study of man's racial origin and development. Today, biology and allied
sciences are devoted to unraveling the complex causes responsible for
individual development. It is fair to presume that this new effort of
science may be able in time to solve the problem of crime, and that it
may do for the conduct and mental aberrations of man what it has already
done for his physical diseases.
XXXIV
LUCK AND CHANCE
Accident and luck may seem to have no place in a world of law, and yet
the fate of lives rests almost entirely on what can be better classified
under this head than any other.
This is a pluralistic universe. The world is made up of an infinite
number of independent machines, each having its own existence and
controlled by the laws of its own being. In going its several ways and
living its own life, inevitably it often clashes with others and is
seriously affected by them. The fox and the rabbit both roam the woods,
apparently at will, at least independently of each other. By an infinite
number of circumstances, at a particular time and place, their paths
cross and the fox devours the rabbit. Had they not met at the time and
place, the fate of the rabbit would not have been the same. The fox
would have traveled farther and eaten another rabbit or some other
animal in its stead.
An engine is running on a railroad track. It makes the trip day after
day without accident or disaster. An automobile is one of a million
built in a far off city. Its mechanism is marvelous, and each part is
dependent on the rest for its normal functioning. Some vital piece of
the machine contains a flaw. How it chanced to be imperfect is another
story involving endless speculation. An inherent natural defect in the
ore, or a tired workman anywhere from the original smelting place to the
last hand that touched it, may have been the cause; or, the reason may
be still more impossible to discover. The machine is purchased and does
its work perfectly for months. It is driven thousands of miles without
any mishap. It is propelled along the highway and reaches the railroad
track over which the engine runs. It is filled with happy people
enjoying a vacation. The automobile and the engine reach the crossing at
almost the same time. The automobile driver sees the engine and applies
the brakes. For the first time since it left the shop, the machinery
does not work. The car forges ahead and reaches the tracks just in time
to be struck by the engine. The merry party meets disaster. No power
could foresee the catastrophe, nor provide against the death that must
result. Inevitably comes the clash of independent machines. Each human
being is a separate machine. Along the road of life he meets countless
others like himself. Some chance meetings are fortunate and help the
journey. Some other chance meeting with a human machine, a mechanical
device, an infinitesimal microbe that happened to be at the same place
at the same time brings disaster or death. This is luck or chance or
fate, and this really hovers over every life, controlling its course and
destiny and deciding when the puppet shall be laid away!
Luck and chance are the chief of all factors that really affect man.
From birth to death the human machine is called on to make endless
adjustments. A child is born and starts down the road of life. He starts
blindly and, for the most part, travels the whole way in the mists and
clouds. On his pathway he meets an infinite number of other pilgrims
going blindly like himself. From the beginning to the end, all about him
and in front of him are snares and pitfalls. His brain and nervous
system are filled with emotions and desires which lure him here and
there. Temptations are beckoning and passions urging him. He has no
guide to show the way and no compass to direct his course. He knows that
the journey will bring him to disaster in the end. He does not know the
time or the nature of the last catastrophe he shall meet. Every step is
taken in doubt and pain and fear. His friends and companions, through
accident or disease, drop around him day by day. He cannot go back or
halt or wait. He must go forward to the bitter end.
The whole journey of life is largely a question of luck. Let anyone ask
himself the question how often he has escaped disaster or how often
death has just passed him by. How often has he done some act that would
have led to degradation had it been known? How many hair-breadth escapes
has he met? How many accidents has he had which luckily were slight but
which easily might have caused his destruction?
Chance is the great element in life. Two men invest money; one gains a
fortune, the other loses all. Two men are riding in a machine and it
goes over a cliff; one is killed, the other escapes. The deadly germ is
taken by one, it passes the other by; or, it is taken by one when his
health will make him immune, by another at the time that it will destroy
his life. How many temptations to violate the law has one just missed by
a lucky accident? How many times has a previous experience, education,
or a friend at the right time saved him from destruction?
The imperfect man travels this road; he is poor and friendless; his life
is a long series of accidents great and small. The first accident that
weakens his structure makes the second more certain and so on in
increasing ratio until the end. Good luck crowds around one life, while
ill luck and disaster follow another's footsteps wherever he goes with
the persistency of his shadow.
In all the infinite number of chances one false step may be enough to
bring final disaster. All depends on the nature of the step. Every
pilgrim makes innumerable false steps; often luck alone saves the
situation; often luck alone compasses the destruction.
Insurance companies know just when accidents will befall the insured. If
a man lives long enough he will die from a mischance. In a thousand men,
a certain number will meet accident in a given time. It is just the same
whether the insurance is written to be payable when a leg is cut off by
a train or when money is embezzled from an employer. In either event the
time can be figured out, and inevitably it will come if the time is long
enough.
Neither is it necessary that the bad luck shall be great at the first
misfortune. It may be but the loss of a few dollars which another could
easily stand. It may be only a few days of sickness which would be of no
consequence to someone else. It may be the death of a father or an
uncle, while the same sort of tragedy might be the source of another's
wealth. It may be some other person's hard luck which takes him from
school and leaves him to follow a life of hard and constant toil. It may
be that he had the bad luck not to marry the person of his choice, or it
may be that he had the bad luck to marry her. It may be because he had
no children; it may be because he had too many. It may well be that he
has been saved from prison by dying early of tuberculosis. He may have
been saved from a railroad wreck by going to jail. Infinite are the
tricks of chance. Infinite are the combinations and consequences that
may come from turning the cards in a single deck.
Who is the perfect one that should be willing to punish vengefully his
fellow-man? Let one look honestly into his own life and pick out the
important things that lead to fortune or disaster from birth onward, and
say how many are the results of circumstances over which he had no
control.