Prison life is often more cruel than generally supposed through the fact that the prisoner is so often insane. It is well established that insanity is more frequent among criminals-especially the inmates. of prisons-than among people at large, which is really explicable through their degenerate ancestry and vicious lives. Laurent, an undoubted authority, regards the number of criminal insane as much larger than represented by statistics. "In three cases of insanity, only one, at most, is recognized and noted in official statistics; the others pass unmarked most frequently it was by the merest chance that I discovered these unfortunates, but how many others raved in their cells whom I have never seen! Most of them serve their full term in prison, where, like the epileptic and hysterical cases, they serve as playthings for the other prisoners, who provoke their hallucinations and enjoy their terrors, excite them purposely, and then laugh at their anger and their tears."

Through the plan of perpetual detention we should make of these miserable captives life-long slaves, we should take from them every means of enjoyment, and what appears to them the sweetness of life would be a thing gone forever. That, with their congenitally defective natures, these victims of perpetual imprisonment should continue to live thus entombed in torment we cannot reasonably regard as of any profit to them now nor in the

1Dr. E. Laurent, Les habitués des prisons de Paris, p. 276. Paris,

2 Ibid., p. 287.

hereafter. A plan so cruel could hardly, in this altruistic age, find general adoption.

There is a feature of this proposed perpetual detention having an important bearing upon its practicability, which I cannot but mention. The strongest of all human motives (with occasional exceptions) is the desire for life. The next strongest (also with exceptions, which are very rare among the degraded) is the sexual desire. Now, these incorrigible criminals have given themselves, for many years, to the gratification of this instinct, and have intensified it by habit until it has become an irresistible need of their life. Suddenly they find themselves in a lifelong prison, with the satisfaction of their greatest need denied them forever.' Will these untamed tigers submit like lambs to this torturing privation? This phase of prison-life cannot be laid bare to the general public, but it exists, and must constitute a grave factor in any wise consideration of a plan for the life-custody of incorrigibles.'

There can be no doubt but that a satisfactory solution of the great problem of crime still remains to be evolved. Crime can no more be reduced by punishing (or even reforming) the criminal, than an epidemic of smallpox can be stopped by curing its victims. The criminal is a product, and crime can be decreased only by stopping the production."

3

1The sudden passage from a licentious life to the restraints of prison is recognized as one of the exciting causes of insanity, so common among convicts.—Dr. E. Laurent, Les habitués des prisons de Paris, p. 274. Paris, 1890.

9 Appendix 4.

3 W. F. Spaulding, Forum, xii., 666.

"What we most want is the curative principle. The defensive system we know something about-but as to the curative one we are still in the dark.”1 It is in the hope of throwing more light upon this great question, and as an exhortation to more rational and more hopeful activity in our measures for the elimination of weakness and the suppression of vice, that the present book has been written. It is by no means a pessimism which I am about to preach.

1 Reviewer of Ferri's Criminal Sociology, New York Times, Feb. 29, 1896.

CHAPTER II

THE DARK SIDE OF HUMAN EXISTENCE

WE

E shall now do well to portray for ourselves some of the more prominent phases of human wretchedness. Let us occupy ourselves first with poverty, that oldest of evils.

The earth is a storehouse of inexhaustible treasure from which, however it has been in the past, the men of to-day may draw a sufficiency for the comfort and happiness of each individual. There is no lack of the crude material of wealth; yet poverty is the fate of the great majority of our race. Many writers have sought for, and thought to have found, some single cause for poverty, but the only cause which we can reasonably regard as constant is that fundamental one-defect in the minds or bodies of men. Neither over-population, nor the greed of capitalists, nor intemperance, can be justly regarded as the sole root from which poverty grows; we shall never have swept this evil away until we have changed the mental and physical aspect of human nature. Many men are deficient in intelligence or in bodily vigor, many are incorrigibly lazy,' many

1 The number of tramps in the United States is estimated to be from 90,000 to 100,000, of whom about four-fifths are under fifty

are prone to sickness, many of good capacity constantly mar their efficiency through their vices; men are basely selfish, unworthy of each other's confidence,' jealous of each other's success, not only indisposed to co-operate, but often, through their mutual antagonism, completely neutralizing each other's efforts, or even finding pleasure in destroying the products of one another's labor. With such unsocial traits of character, how can humanity. prosper ? Were, under such circumstances, the riches of the world increased tenfold, there could hardly be any amelioration of human poverty.

Very instructive, in this connection, are the records of loss through the disagreements inducing strikes. In the United States, from January 1, 1881, to June 30, 1894, there were 14,389 strikes, affecting 69,166 establishments; if we include lockouts, the latter number rises to 75,233. During these thirteen and one-half years, 4,080,921 persons were thrown out of employment through strikes and lockouts, and the aggregate loss to employees was $190,493,173—an average wage-loss of $2532 to the employees in each establishment. The loss to employees during this period, from strikes and lockouts, was $94,825,237. Combining these losses of employees and employers, we have as an aggregate $285,318,410.*

According to the U. S. census of 1880, there were years of age and are able-bodied.-Geo. C. Bennett, Paupers, Pauperism, and Relief-Giving in the United States, p. 14. New York, 1896.

1 Appendix 5.

2 Tenth Annual Report of U. S. Commissioner of Labor (1894). Strikes and Lockouts, i., 31.