and little business men do to the people during the progress of the World
War? What did they do to each other when diving foreign exchange upheaved
home values? What did they do to every body for long months after prices
should have dropped pretty close to their normal level? Did they or did
they not play the game as I played it, until consumers got after them with
buying strikes, and the cry of stop thief? Did they or did they not?"
Well, "did they or did they not"? If they did, what had they on "the
imprisoned felon of the stripe in question"? That's a live wire, is that
question; a live wire of the kind concerning which the criminal presses
for answer, and he is entitled to an answer that doesn't squirm and
doesn't quibble.
As a dealer in the world's mart can you return an honest answer? If you
cannot, hadn't you better take inventory of conscience, and try to
understand that the meanest kind of thievery is that which raises the ante
on what should be common commodities and conveniences, beyond the
purchasing power of the average purse, say nothing of the plight of
millions of underdogs on whom the last curse of criminally-manipulated
price levels falls?
If you think yourself immune to such queries, make study of the
ever-tightening grip of the proletariat on the use that has been made of
them. Start with the French Revolution and come on down to glean the why
of it that workers mean to be served, as well as serving, in the future.
It is true that hosts of toilers swallow hook, line and sinker of the
crooked gamesters cast, and do it day in and day out: fatefully, to the
end that 95% of them are but six months removed from the poor-house at the
age of 65, in so far as their own financial resources are concerned. But
they now have the fists of their minds doubled to batter those who would
build and operate, from within a drawn circle, the like of the baronial
toll gate. Unlock such as interlocking thievery, say they, come out into
the open and do business with us man to make like men.
Next, let us hope, in order of the wrath of the honest toiler, will be
the meticulously groomed and brushed parasite; next, whether he plys deft
fingers backed by unbeatable odds, or a glib tongue to get a heap for
nothing.
First of all to feel the hand of the worker should be the blood-spilling,
pug-parasite; him who suggests war between brothers, dulls the finer
sensibilities, lowers both the mental and moral tonus of mankind, and
cheats even women into believing that he can, by any possibility, be of
any basic use in the big scheme of life.
Many good people think differently; many who will not trouble to think as
it is necessary to think, in order to classify men and motives. They are
therefore plastic clay for the clan parasite, inclusive of clever
criminals.
Crime? Why, only on criminals by legal edict are the keys of the turnkey
turned. Myriads of humans who never face a presiding judge, plan and
execute moral crime that is much more far-reaching than the average even
of capital crime.
Hence, by-choice felons flit sneeringly to and from prison, where they
have to be practically force-fed with moral precepts; that, very largely,
because they know millions of free men meaner than they, are immune to
legal force-feeding for the meanness.
So long as such conditions obtain in America, so long will recidivistic
criminals mount there in numbers; and so long will they justify
themselves to themselves, and to all who will listen to their half-baked
contentions.
"I see and approve the good--I follow the bad," says a far-famed poet,
whose bold declaration of spineless principle leaves him spokesman for
thousands of moral weaklings who are always on the fence, undecisive as to
which way to jump. It also leaves him open to the charge of angling for a
cheap, dirt-distributing notoriety.
Another, ostensibly an editor of a New England newspaper--shades of the
Pilgrims stand by--flares at men of the cloth who denounce such as the
late bestial scandal enacted at Jersey City. He is "convinced" that
Catholic and Protestant ministers are "impugning motives here and
blackening character there, because they have lost their tempers at the
disinclination of the people to follow them."
Passing motives "impugned" by the Infinite Mind, and character "blackened"
with the devil's own smudge, what would the scribe have vicars of God
Almighty do? What the implication of his own monstrous and most illogical
libel, if not that those on whom America does and must rely for moral
guidance, should remain as mentally shackled, and morally blind, while
blacklegs and backsliders establish schools for crime, and write the texts
books for them?
Hardly! True Americans of the "people" for whom the gentleman assumes to
speak, wax fatuous, not to say fat-headed betimes; but let us hope that
they may be relied upon finally to search out and set down those who would
yield American birth-right for the brew of the base at heart.
If the sporting-soaked must utter and shove counterfeit moral coin, they
owe it to common decency not to affect the mantle of the mentor; they
specifically do, because predal parasites bank on being able to point to
them as having said and done the last fool thing. They further do, for the
reason that they are the readiest gulls of the grafting gang they
champion.
Moral thieves are moral morons. Count them, and get the cut of the saw of
the "Passaic News."
IV
THE PSYCHIATRIST
Webster defines psychology as "The science of the human soul;
specifically, the systematic and scientific knowledge of the powers and
functions of the human soul, in so far as they are known to consciousness;
a treatise on the human soul."
Modified by the phrase, "in so far as they are known to consciousness,"
that definition will do, albeit we have arrived at but little "knowledge"
of the "_powers_ and functions of the human _soul_," and at less of
prescience that accounts for the by-choice criminal. Then, too,
distinction must be made as between the finite limitations of the brain of
flesh, and the infinite reach of the "soul" of man.
In any case, let us not cough over a too nice fitting of technical terms;
but envisage, in the broad, the matter of mental research and healing.
The more material powers of the mind of the criminal frequently elude the
examiner and tools which can be too "systematic." This, because the
examiner faces cards which the examined instinctively employ every means
at their command to euchre. Also, if his limited scope of criminological
vision causes him to over-emphasize present emphasis, and to bolt the
way-backward trail of his subject, the examiner will remain as half blind
to the basic reasons for a given criminal.
Cardinal causes for the criminal commonly hark back to remote ancestors.
And so, for example, one unacquainted with the early history of the
Sicilian people, the events of which changed so many of that people from
trustful, mutually helpful sons of the soil, into dagger-thrusting
brigands, lunging for the hearts of their blood brothers, has no call to
classify the alien Sicilian-Italian who makes America his base of
operations. That is essentially so, because the period from bib to puberty
is the most impressionable after-birth period, during which a lad will
tend to take on much that will aggravate congenital predisposition;
predisposition the more fateful for the reason that it lurks in the
unconscious, and there constantly presses upon its victim for expression.
Hence, psycho-physical research that does not cover the whole field of
motive and motion, is comparatively valueless. By the same token, the
investigator who is casehardened with technical lore, will be very likely
to miscall the turn, especially on the alien and near-alien criminal.
Above all else, the psychiatrist must measure the criminal with an
absolutely open mind, attuned alike to individual and racial
determination; attuned, also, to his own definitions, such as that psychic
contagion is "transfer of nervous disease by imitation"; and attuned to
the fact that the mode of operating employed with Awasco, the
sunny-hearted, comparatively ingenuous "Wop," anxious to help, won't do at
all with Hungarian Zynthner the sullen, who is evasive, suspicious, and
resentful alike of authority and the personal touch, because he still
bristles over hurts visited upon him and his by thick-lipped Hapsburgs.
Mental searching of the latter class of criminals usually yields next to
nothing that is specifically of capital importance. For want of the
master-key to the situation, the operator leaves the tested laughing up
their sleeves over having fundamentally over-reached the tester. Needless
to add, the master-key is mostly shaped of the metal of foreign soil, and
unlocks the far-removed circumstance.
First off, the really expert examiner will seek to win the undivided
attention, full confidence, and voluntary coöperation of his man, who is
to be led only by judicious degrees to the conviction that the questioner
is not a mere cog of a "scientific" machine, the purpose of which is to
bare the subject's soul, regardless of his feelings in the matter.
Call mental research by what name you will: state it in esoteric terms
laden with syllables, or so plainly that a recent past master at making
mud pies can understand, and it must still be led, as well as leading,
else miss the mark.
Stamps of stigma are essentially subversive of the end sought. Designate a
lad by a disgraceful name, and you create the strongest of initial motive
for him to earn the name. Moreover, such procedure is usually as senseless
as harmful, since it is not within human gift to declare the morrow of the
disease-free, pre-adolescent mind. The writer is moved to stress this
paragraph, because he has observed so many cases whereof full-blown
puberty has marked mental metamorphosis; marked it both as to the positive
and negative, the which will usually depend on the sum of the subject's
bringing-up, inclusive, of course, of the sum of his environment; and
partly on his intrinsic moral fibre, born at his birth. And recollect that
juvenile predilections usually mark the confirmed criminal to be.
In any case, the negative conclusion should wait upon indubitable
evidence; and the positive, general statement be mostly guardedly made,
since the scales will likely tip to the weight of influence, and that may
be in the lap of change entirely beyond the ken of "little man." God,
alone, disposes, alike as to mind and matter. Furthermore, pre-criminal
motivations are never singular; hence the single-seeing reformer, or
investigator, cuts no swath in complex, crowding crime. And furthermore,
his conclusions may be absolutely correct, and his mode of applying
remedial measures be diametrically at variance with the crying exactions
of his subject.
Then again, crime is not a disease in the sense that it is so lightly
proclaimed. Crime may eventuate mainly because of congenital flaw,
physical, mental, or both; or it may crop out by acquirement in spite of a
sound heredity; but it always issues to relative mental disease in the
sense that habitually oblique reasoning becomes master of the subject,
either tentatively, or for good and all; tentatively, if the constant
weight of influence is preponderantly in his favor, and permanently under
the reverse circumstance.
More than that, the serviceable investigator will understand how the
weight of influence can be turned, one way or the other, by seeming straws
of effort or circumstance. For instance, the mood of the moment must be
understood not only, but as well, why it is the mood of the moment. Here,
pre-natal influence may carry in nothing more tangible than a lowering
sky. There, the marked face of the man betrays the erotic-neurotic in the
throes of the immediate aftermath of his self-indulged spree, in which
state of low vitality he naturally looks out upon an ugly, drab world.
Another nurses a fetich: a ridiculous fetich, to be sure, but one of which
you shall not purge his mind with a club of words; indeed, in no way else
than through patiently building to his better understanding. Per contra,
looms up the capsheaf of them all: the parent-spoiled ego-centric
mouther, who is certain sure he could plan a better world than ever
Almighty God could think of. Very good, encourage him to build it; then
pick it to pieces, preferably with terse, pregnant parables that leave him
not a stone to stand on. Do it often, do it advisedly, and do it
thoroughly. You will not thereby win him at once to rational thought, but
you have better than a fighting chance to switch him for it, if you are
kindly tactful, and do not attempt to stuff your opposed views down his
throat.
We are not concerned here with those doomed mentally in state of embryo,
save that it is well to have in mind Dr. A. Jacobi's "Report to the Prison
Congress of 1892," to the effect that "No congenital chronic thickening of
the brain membranes, no fixed changes in the brain substance, unless it be
syphilitic perhaps, have ever been cured." So much is indisputable fact,
qualified by the word "cured."
With Dr. Jacobi's further assertion, many will, without presumption,
disagree: "It is not necessary to resort to material impressions (in the
embryonic state) as the cause of physical, intellectual and moral
anomalies in the offspring: that theory may safely be left to nurses and
poets."
Passing the poet--who usually culls and adorns, yet has been known to
probe and create--while objecting strongly for the grateful nurse who
often guides to health where the physician, single-handed, would have
failed, is Dr. Jacobi's second sweeping conclusion unassailable?
What is the last power of the protoplasmic germ, and what is the last
influence from which it derives that power? Can any man answer
unqualifiedly, and if he cannot, just why exclude the psychic from the
possibilities? If morbidly by "psychic contagion" is admitted, why refuse
pre-natal impressions of psychic origin?
We know that hereditary transmission is persistent as to physical
attributes. It may appear to drop stitches here and there, though we shall
note more or less of reversion to type if we follow through far enough;
but let opinion be as it may, how is one to check up variations of mood,
temperament and disposition with physical figures? As to the last three,
Jimmy the first and Johnny the second of the same family are antithetic.
Why, if the physical is final?
How, by purely physical analysis, are we to account for the fact that the
original Clay family of horses were notoriously high-strung and hard to
school to rein: whereas the Morgan family were supremely easy to break and
groove? Why, where the blood line was kept pure, did the family
temperament persist, with few deviations, and even then breed on again
back to original family "manners"? Why, with mixture of those breeds,
mixture of manners?
What made the intrinsic difference in mental bent and physical outlook as
between Webster and Hayne? Why was the one a stickler for centralized
governmental power, and the other champion of the rights of individual
States, and why was each cock-sure of his ground of contention under the
Constitution? In the final analysis, did anything out of physiology decide
the question, and how did, what did decide, take up its abode in the
national consciousness?
Do hopples employed in effecting change in the original, instinctive gait
of a mare from trot to pace, alone account for change of gait? If so, why,
when her instinct of motion is changed mechanically from the trot to the
pace, does she transmit the latter-acquired instinct to her progeny, to
the near exclusion of the gait she was born to? Why, when the hopples are
removed, does she not revert to the trot?
Way back of Civil War days, a gentleman-horseman of Rhode Island changed
the gait of the saddle horse of the lady of his choice to the pace,
agreeably with the fastidious taste of the lady. Then, it was, the "pacer"
made his bow to the horse world. To-day, he speeds better than fifty-fifty
with trotters through the "Grand Circuit," and almost surely transmits the
instinct to pace. Hopples now are employed mainly to prevent "breaking";
in fact, pacing champions have been leg-free of them.
What's the answer, if not transmitted instinct, and who is to draw the
boundary line thereof? If the instinct to play a base horn, why not the
instinct to play a base part? If the instinct to play a base part, why not
the instinct to brood and abnormally berate oneself, or flippantly break
laws, or froth over fol-de-rol, or "fake" the whole human scheme?
At any rate, the instinctive intent of the habitual criminal is summed up
in the last phrase of the preceding paragraph. Therefore, we needs must
sharpen our tools of amendment and repair accordingly.
Sharpening, we shall learn on the one hand that bloviation brands the
surface-sign, self-seeking examiner; and on the other hand, that be his
lip-service never so fulsome in favor of this or that man, method, or
régime of reform, the examined is dealing from the bottom of the deck if
he does not hearken unto "The stern daughter of the voice of God."
The subject is hearkening if he has the grit to pass up "gutter guff"
always circulating in the criminal crowd, while he puts forth earnest
efforts for fundamental averages. Contrariwise, if he juggles those
averages with his mind clamped to the sporting schedule of the place, he
is "faking"; he is faking, even though he cunningly steers clear of the
house disciplinarian. Hence, the rational régime of reform will require
him to do the one, while making it practically impossible for him to do
the other, and make an early parole--as he now does.
Save for congenital deviates the like of those named by Dr. Jacobi,
determination of his reactions is but the first step in the social
rehabilitation of the recidivistic felon; in truth, the determination so
far is in appreciable measure self-evident. By the very fact that he
elects to be and remain a lawbreaker, he is somewhat of a mental dud, and
more of a moral pervert. Moreover, whether he was slated mainly by nature
to play the part, or it was pressed upon him by the cumulative weight of
spiteful circumstance, he plays the part.
The part is the part of the predal parasite, the which he likes fully well
and will not cast aside lightly at call to carry his rightly weighted
share of the social load, be that never so light.
Opinions differ as to the capacity of the criminal to adjust to social
exactions, but there can be no two judgments as to the duty of the State
to require of him that he shall make earnest bid for the best social
expression of which he is capable. Thereof his number in the average is
not so close to zero as it is commonly marked. Added to his positive
mental response, a certain cleavage in favor of his brain and betterment
must nearly always be allowed, since he usually plays possum in prison for
"easy pickin'" in line with his anti-social predilections.
Furthermore, mental search made in a strange and stressed atmosphere, with
tools utterly foreign to the subject's attention, will get on his nerves
to a degree, and may prove baldly misleading; misleading not only as to
his latent mental content, but as well upon him, if negative procedure
following the search causes him to throw up his hands in deep-seated
disgust.
Under restrictive conditions, for which a bungling operator may be
primarily responsible, a hyperesthetic might suffer close to acute sensory
aphasia; and he who bears the burdens of hebetude would probably fare no
better if the clicking of his mind were clocked to an arbitrary time
allowance.
In any case, the final test should revert to material practices, and
processes of intellection whereof the subject had worked from motive to
excel, shall the motive have been good, bad, or indifferent.
Particularly, the examiner should beware a habit of mind that sends him
fetich stalking: as for instance, to establish the ultimate, unconscious,
sexual base of neurasthenia; or a given percentage of morons, applicable
in general to felonious offenders against the public law, or even as
constant for different prison populations. The danger that lies in
determination to prove what one is predisposed to prove, is not easily
overestimated; indeed, the test should, in such case, pass from tested to
tester.
When a man gets that way as to any human question, he is relatively in the
same state of mind as the fetichist who fondles milady's shoe, to the
exclusion of the body and soul of her, provided: the shoe is high-heeled
and buttons. Such an one should turn awhile from the criminal crowd, to
care-free thinking in the wide open. Before resuming his duties, he should
further check up with one of his craft who planes his blocks to square
with well-battened conclusions.
While it is true that no structural change to man's hand is possible in
the brain built in embryo, it is also true that the pernicious custom is
to overdetermination of the damage done in that state. For example, the
fact that a given subject may never hope to master calculus, doesn't mean
that he may not be stretched to the size of a serviceable breadwinner. In
line with that truth, take one, of many, extreme cases that have come
under the writer's observation and treatment:
R., age sixteen, lowest-grade imbecile and borderline idiot, so dense that
it took the writer three weeks to establish in his mind the difference
between right and left. When so much of mental awakening came, came with
it a pitifully wistful smile of blowing pride. Another three weeks, and he
could execute on command with few slips through the "School of the
Soldier." At the end of three months, he worked regularly and reliably
with his company in battalion drill through intricate "Successive
Formations"; and within the year, he could take his company to and from
any formation with which he had been taught to form. More than that, he
picked up nicely at common school, and made relatively good progress at
"Sloyd."
Surely, all of that does not come under the heading of "reflex action";
and if it does, what of it? If a megacephalic, splay-footed, slab-sided,
lumbering imbecile like R., so close to the idiot as to give off the
latter's proverbial scent, can be carried even to the stage of mental and
physical development R. was carried "within the year," what cannot be done
for the mounting millions of mentally and physically backward girls and
boys of America classed as "Morons"? How are we to get the
down-to-the-ground work of the land done without the aid of such?
In any event, it is at once informing and encouraging to note that the
school authorities of New York City have called check on the near mania of
the period to attach negatively overdrawn advalorem tags to such children;
and then, when so tagged, practically to dump them into the social
discard, there to hate themselves, each other, and everybody.
For one, cardinal thing, the named school authorities rightly hold that
the humane burden is upon New York City's teaching staff to dig out and
decide upon ways and means better than those which make social pariahs of
unfolding lads and lassies.
The same authorities further hold rightly that the benefits accruing to
such children through mixing with the better-equipped mass is, in itself,
a consideration not to be lightly brushed aside. And once more, that
mental backwardness is in appreciable measure chargeable to false methods
of educative approach and attack.
Gentlemen who lie awake o'nights devising bizarre means by which alleged
criminal "morons" can best be cheated of that which the school authorities
of the City of New York insist New York's mentally backward children shall
have, will do well to follow the effects of the edict of those
authorities. Certainly that edict won't visit arresting embargo upon the
normal mass of children, and must prove a boon to approximately ten
thousand children who don't just measure to arbitrarily-spaced mental
tape; tape which is not, and can not be, out of the hand of the Almighty,
and tape which can not measure to fully unfolded years.