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CHAPTER I.
PHILANTHROPY AND THE SCIENCES.

The science of political economy, as we know it, is hardly more than a century old; while the art of aiding the poor has been practised from time immemorial. When the patriarch Job was justifying himself, he spoke of his work for the unfortunate in language which is still considered suitable for describing an ideal philanthropist, and which in part is now used as a motto by several charity organization societies. (1) Before Christianity was a power, and far beyond the influence of the Hebrew faith, the instinct of sympathy for those in distress prompted to kindly acts which philosophers commended and religious leaders enjoined. An imposing array of texts exhorting to charity, and prescribing the methods of it, may be gleaned from the pagan writers of antiquity. The beggar is known to almost all literatures with which we are acquainted, and where beggars are, there must also be those that give. In China, long before the Christian era, there were refuges for the aged and sick poor, free schools for poor children, free eating-houses for wearied laborers, associations for the distribution of second-hand clothing, and societies for paying the expenses of marriage and burial among the poor. (2)

(2) See Crooker, "Problems in American Society," chapter on "Scientific Charity," for this and other references to antiquity.

Intermittently from the first, the altruistic instinct seems to have been reenforced, or its acts counterfeited, by egoistic instincts, originating in educational, or political, or religious considerations. The first of these subsidiary motives was doubtless the weakest of the three. The desire to promote self-culture by development of the benevolent impulses is largely a modern form of selfishness, and yet we find traces of it among the ancients.

Formerly, as now, political considerations frequently led to acts of charity when the motive was absent. Free or greatly cheapened corn for the Roman people, though nominally only rendering to them what was their own, was, in fact, a mischievous gratuity; and while sympathy for the people undoubtedly actuated many who favored the largesses, yet the efficient cause of their continual increase was political self-seeking. (3) So the legislation for the better care of exposed infants, and for the support of young women with children (Puellae Faustinianae), of the later Roman Empire resulted partly from sympathy for the unfortunates, and largely from a wish to fill up the depleted ranks of the Roman and Italian population.

The commonest and most powerful incentive to benevolence has been everywhere and at all times that supplied by religion. Any impulse or habit that is for the good of the race is likely in the course of time to be fixed and intensified by religious sanctions. Almost all customs, including the organization of the family and of the government, and even habits of dress, diet, and cleanliness, have been thus confirmed. For present purposes we need not bother ourselves with teleological considerations, nor inquire whether the useful impulses and habits originated in a divine command supernaturally revealed, or whether they had their origin in spontaneous variation or rational adaptation, and were then seized upon, and perpetuated by the religious instincts. To whatever source we may trace the sentiment of pity and the desire to relieve the destitute, it certainly had not been in existence long before its cultivation was enjoined by religious authority.

Religion, however, like the subsidiary motives based on educational or political considerations, has too frequently substituted self-seeking for self-sacrifice as the motive power in aiding the poor. Mr. Crooker well says that the charity of antiquity was very largely "a means of obtaining merit." "The riches of the infinite God," says the Vendidad, "will be bestowed upon him who relieves the poor;" or, according to a Hindu epic, "He who giveth without stint food to a fatigued wayfarer, never seen before, obtaineth merit that is great." It was when Job was justifying himself that he enumerated his works of mercy.

On the other hand, while rewards were offered for benevolent work, punishments were promised for hard-heartedness. The grim threat of the Talmud, "The house that does not open to the poor shall open to the physician," is typical of many passages that might be quoted from the earlier religious writings. Under the influence of such threats or of more direct ones, believers felt constrained to aid the poor for purely selfish reasons, to do some overt act that seemed to have been prescribed, in order that it might be accounted to them for righteousness. Subjectively considered, the act itself was not one of charity, but of penance; its motive was not a desire to aid the distressed, but to propitiate a more or less unreasonable deity or fate.

The influence of religion upon the benevolent instincts of man can be studied in nearly all its phases in the history of charities administered by the Christian church; and in that history can be traced the power of an accepted theology both to exalt and to degrade the charitable impulse. While the antiquarian may be able to point out many traces of active benevolence before the Christian era, while there is much genuine philanthropy outside of Christianity, and while it may even be said that the church of the present day that administers its charities most wisely is not Christian at all, but Jewish, -- it yet remains true that charity, as we know it, gets its chief religious sanction and incentive from Him who gave as the summary of all the law and prophets the coordinate commands to love God and to love our neighbor, and who, in explaining these commands, pronounced the parable of the Good Samaritan. At first, Christianity brought to the world a purified and ennobled charity, a love of fellow-men very different from the semi-selfish motives that prompted to prayer, penance, and almsgiving as means to a common end -- that of securing divine favor. The diaconate of the early church seems to have been a satisfactory way of organizing what is now called "friendly visiting."

But the voluntary and congregational charity of the early churches before Constantine was soon replaced by the mediaeval ecclesiastical methods of parishes, bishops, monasteries, orders, and institutions, and with the worldly success of the church came degeneration. (4) As the church became an institution administering progressively large revenues, its service of the poor degenerated, partly from worldliness, and partly from "other-worldliness." Overt worldliness, leading to the misapplication of revenues designed for the relief of the poor, sometimes attained great proportions and was a tendency that honest ecclesiastics found it necessary to fight continually. But such palpable evils wrought little harm, as compared with the dry rot of spiritual selfishness, which caused charity to degenerate into almsgiving for the benefit of the one who gave. The doctrine of Augustine that "alms have power to extinguish and expiate sin," though taught only with qualifications, became the motive power in the charities of the Middle Ages. Gifts to the church for charitable purposes became merely a method of securing a satisfactory balance on the books of the recording angel, a way of getting one's self or others out of purgatory.

As an agent for securing gifts both of property and of personal service the church was almost incredibly successful. If the devotion of material wealth to the relief of the poor could alone have cured destitution, it would have been cured. But we are all familiar with the disastrous results that followed so much indiscriminate giving. A rich church among a multitude of poor, which Emminghaus declares to have been always the ecclesiastical ideal, did not prove a satisfactory arrangement. When Hubert-Valleroux, in discussing the rural charities of France, shows that all the great charitable institutions of that country originally owed their existence to the influence of Christianity through the church, he is historically correct. But when he makes this statement of fact the basis of a plea for the non-intervention of the state in the present administration of charitable institutions, he is wrong; for the history of charitable institutions shows that, while they originated through the influence of the church, it was also through ecclesiastical influence that they degenerated and became mischievous.

The state interfered for many reasons, some of them certainly unworthy; but one sufficient cause was everywhere present -- ecclesiastical mismanagement, and the necessity the community was under to protect itself from the spreading disease of pauperism. "In no case," says Lecky, "was the abolition of monasteries effected in a more indefensible manner than in England, but the transfer of property, that was once employed in a great measure in charity, to the courtiers of King Henry was ultimately a benefit to the English, poor; for no misapplication of this property by private persons could produce as much evil as an unrestrained monasticism." (5)

In almost every European country, the state first tried to stop beggary and vagabondage by repressive measures, and only when these failed was obliged to assail the evil at one of its sources by taking charge of relief work. This work was taken in hand by the state in Scandinavia at a very early period, in England at the time of the Reformation, in France at the time of the Revolution, and in Italy within the last few years. In Germany, Luther suggested that the church and state should work together to root out beggary, and to lessen as much as possible the misery caused by destitution and disease. The religious wars that followed the Reformation in that country interfered with the immediate transfer of relief work to the state. "The Protestant authorities," says Emminghaus, "were not more prudent than their predecessors where valuable property of the church for the benefit of the poor remained; and wherever the care of the poor was still in ecclesiastical hands, the only alteration in the way in which it was conducted arose from the fact that the church had less abundant means at its disposal. But," he adds, "this fact alone may be considered a great gain, for abundance of means is the greatest danger of all in the relief of the poor." (6)

From what has been said regarding the failure of the church as an almoner, it must not be inferred that its influence was wholly perverse and mischievous. On the contrary, even Lecky, whose opinion as to the good effects of the secularization of the monastic properties in England has been already noticed, says that the value of Catholic services in alleviating pain and sickness and the more exceptional forms of suffering can never be overrated; and even in the field of charity he says: "We must not forget the benefits resulting, if not to the sufferer, at least to the donor. Charitable habits, even when formed in the first instance from selfish motives, even when so misdirected as to be positively injurious to the recipient, rarely fail to exercise a softening and purifying influence on character. All through the darkest period of the Middle Ages, amid ferocity and fanaticism and brutality, we may trace the subduing influence of Catholic charity, blending strangely with every excess of violence and every outburst of persecution." (7) In fact, the church educated the community up to a point where it insisted that a large amount of relief work must be done, and only in attempting to administer large funds did the ecclesiastical machinery work badly and break down. It was inevitable that the state should undertake relief work, but that relief work, and the great access of sympathy for our fellow-men which compelled it, would never have existed except for the influence of the church. But the change from ecclesiastical administration of relief to administration by the state hardly seemed for a time to be an improvement at all. In various parts of Europe public charities were at times as inadequate to meet the necessities of the poor or to improve their industrial condition as those under the church had been. In England at the beginning of the nineteenth century as much was heard of the failure of the poor law as of the monastic system of poor-relief. This administrative weakness had already drawn attention to the economic aspects of poor-relief. Defoe, for example, in his paper on "Giving Alms No Charity," said that the reason why so many pretended to want to work was that they could live so well with the pretence of wanting work. Ricci, in a book on the reform of the institutions of charity in Modena, (8) traced the gigantic development of mendicancy in Italy to the excessive charity of the people. He seemed to regard as an evil "all charity which sprang from religious motives, and was greater than. would spring from the unaided instincts of man." (9)

(8) Published In 1787.

(9) Cited by Lecky, vol. ii., p. 98.

This appeal to a natural man back of the actual man influenced by religion and law, marks Ricci as one moved by the spirit of the times which immediately preceded the French Revolution. This time-spirit influenced the relief of the poor in two ways: one through politics, and one through economics or political economy. Liberty and equality were the two words which represented the regnant ideas of the times. The religious dogma of the brotherhood of man was paralleled by the political dogma of the equality of man, and the result was a tendency to relieve distress with greater promptness and completeness. The revolutionary governments of France guaranteed to all not only opportunities to work, but security against starvation, and the facile manner in "which the state in that country still assumes the care of abandoned infants perhaps shows the influence of such philosophers as Rousseau, who believed that children should be raised by the state, and who gladly turned over his own children to be brought up by that agency. Indirectly it is probable that the belief in the political dogma of the equality of men also influenced the administration of the English poor-law, until it culminated in the great abuses which compelled the reforms of 1834. But liberty, not equality, was the first word in the sociological creed of the revolutionary period from 1789 to 1848. And while this word was constantly used by the politicians, the group of men who stood most consistently for it in industrial affairs were the students of the new-born science of political economy.

The earlier economists had little to say regarding the relief of the poor, though the subject was mentioned by Sir James Steuart and Adam Smith, and others took tip the subject of the English poor-laws. It received very full consideration, however, in Malthus's work on the "Principle of Population," where he gave two chapters to the English poor-law and two other excellent ones to the consideration of certain proposals for improving the condition of the poor. Many of the extracts from chapter nine of the second edition of his work might serve as mottoes for modern charity organization societies; though it would not be expedient to use them, since people have insisted on connecting with the name of this English clergyman so much that is brutal and materialistic and hopeless. As a matter of fact, he does not deprecate the exercise of charity, and would even give to it a much broader field than that recently accorded to it by Herbert Spencer; but he calls attention to the fact that there is no direction in which human ingenuity has been more exerted than in the endeavor to ameliorate the condition of the poor, and that there is certainly none in which it has so completely failed. "There is no subject," he adds, "to which general principles have been so seldom applied; and yet, in the whole compass of human knowledge, I doubt if there be one in which it is so dangerous to lose sight of them, because the partial and immediate effects of a particular mode of giving assistance are so often directly opposite to the general and permanent effects." (10)

Among the economists of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Whately and Chalmers dealt quite extensively with the poor-law and the problems of poor-relief. Chalmers re-enforced his teachings in this matter by doing away with public relief of the poor in his parish, and providing for their care entirely through voluntary contributions. He believed that all public relief of the poor was bad; and, besides what is contained in his political economy, he wrote upon the subject at length in the three volumes which appear under the title of "The Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns."

In the second quarter of the century the economists and philanthropists were destined to come into direct collision. They joined issues on two questions, and the victors in one case were vanquished in the other. Curiously enough, each party was defeated on the ground that seemed especially to belong to itself. The economists won in the fight for the reform of the poor-laws, and the philanthropists won in the fight for the protection of women and children in the mines and factories of England. The English economists in their contention for the limitation of the poor-law relief, and for a repeal of the corn-laws, rendered great services to English industry by simply abolishing governmental interference. It is not strange, therefore, that they should have been inclined to go to the extreme in thinking that government could never interfere without doing more harm than good.

The English poor-law, before its reform in 1834, is used by Francis A. Walker to point the moral that while "the legislator may think it hard that his power for good is so closely restricted, he has no reason, to complain of any limits upon his power for evil." Describing the operations of the act, Walker says: --

"All its details were unnecessarily bad. The condition of the person who threw himself flat upon public charity was better than that of the laborer who struggled on to preserve his manhood in self-support. The disposition to labor was cut up by the roots. All restraints upon increase of population disappeared under a premium upon births. Self-respect and social decency vanished before a money premium on bastardy."

Professor Senior was an active member of the commission of inquiry regarding the operations of the poor-law, and for some time the reports of the poor-law commission were written in line with the views of the economists. It was "while reviewing these reports that Carlyle characterized political economy as "the dismal science." He thus summarizes the teachings of the economists as evidenced in the reports: --

"Ours is a world requiring only to be well let alone. Scramble along, thou insane scramble of a world; thou art all right and shall scramble even so. And whoever in the press is trodden down has only to lie there and be trampled broad; such at bottom seems to be the chief social principle, if principle it have, which the poor-law amendment act has the merit of courageously asserting, in opposition to many things."

A similar view of the disastrous effects of the poor-law administration is expressed by Cunningham, who says: --

"It is impossible to overestimate the irreparable mischief which was done to Englishmen for many generations through the demoralizing influences exercised by some of the administrative methods then in use. The granting of allowances per child has been freely stigmatized as a mischievous stimulus to population; as a matter of fact, it was much worse; there is abundant evidence to show that it acted as a direct incentive to immorality. But the evil of the whole system was most patent from the various ways in which it conspired to render the inefficient pauper comfortable at the expense of the good work-man who tried to earn a living. The allowance must have had an extraordinary effect in diminishing the rate of wages and forcing men to depend upon supplementary payments out of rates; and an even worse mischief in some ways was the labor rate; by this system a rate-payer was obliged to employ a certain number of pauper laborers in accordance with his assessment and to pay them regular wages without reference to their work. An employer might thus be forced to dismiss good hands in order to give employment to inefficient paupers." (11)

It may be questioned, however, whether the earlier interpretation of the results of the poor-laws has not overlooked other factors of equal if not superior importance in the wretched condition of the English working-classes of this period. Marshall declares: --

"Year by year the condition of the working-classes in England became more gloomy: an astonishing series of bad harvests, a most exhausting war, a change in the methods of industry that dislocated old ties, combined with an injudicious poor-law to bring the working-classes into the greatest misery they have ever suffered, at all events since the beginning of trustworthy records of English social history." (12)

In a brief historical review of the political and industrial changes which took place just before the reform of the English poor-laws, Devine protests against the dominant idea that the lax administration of relief was solely or even chiefly responsible for the deplorable prevalence of pauperism in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He says: --

"England was saved from pauperization, revolution, and other unforeseen disasters, not by deciding to distribute less relief or by deciding that the able-bodied poor, if assisted at all, should be assisted only in the workhouse, wise as these decisions were, but by the rise of religious and political liberty, by introducing in advance of other countries modern forms of agriculture and industry, by developing her commerce and trade, by the adoption of a more nearly democratic organization of society, and by listening to the voice of humane and public-spirited counsels. The lessening of the poor rates was made practicable by and was not the principal cause of the progress of the period." (13)

Seligman regards the abuses of the early nineteenth century as chiefly due to the change from the domestic to the factory system. "The old poor-law," he says, "did not create English poverty, and the new poor-law did not abolish it." (14)

But whatever view be taken of the relative significance of the poor-law and of poor-law reform as an explanation of the misery of English laborers and their subsequent progress, the economists of the time were right in standing out for the restriction and modification of public poor-relief.

The laxness of administration may have come in part from the humanitarian bearings of the doctrine of political equality and in part from greater actual need, resulting from the war taxes, the primitive methods of agriculture, industry, and commerce, and other unreformed features of English life of that period; but whatever its cause, it had become by 1832 wholly mischievous. Even if regarded as merely one element in a transitional period, it still is no exception to the established principle that the offer of relief upon easy terms is demoralizing.

In the other struggle of the same period, that for factory legislation, the economists and philanthropists were distinctly opposed; but this time it was the economists that were deservedly beaten. The issue involved the welfare of three hundred thousand operatives, male and female, in the factories of England, and of forty thousand children under thirteen years of age. The question was complicated with many political considerations and was championed by the conservatives, not so much perhaps because the country gentlemen sympathized with the mill-hands, as because it seemed a method by which they could get even with the representatives of the manufacturing towns for the repeal of the corn-laws. Lord Ashley, afterward the Earl of Shaftesbury, leader in the fight for the protection of the operatives, is now acknowledged to have been actuated by the purest motives; but at the time he was bitterly attacked as a "humanity-monger" by the practical men who opposed him. Cobden, in a private letter, sneered at this "canting" and joined with Professor Senior and Miss Martineau in supplying the scientific weapons of offence and defence for such men as John Bright and Gladstone and Peel and Lord Brougham among the politicians.

A majority of economists, both in and out of Parliament, were against the factory acts. Indeed, nearly all the arguing that was done on economic grounds was against the acts.

In a paper which, curiously enough, is the Golden prize essay for 1891, Jeans observes: --

"Lord Shaftesbury and his opponents played a veritable game of cross questions. They attacked him, for instance, with the threatened ruin of English trade, and the pauperization of the working-class, and he would reply by pointing to the great sanitary or moral or religious benefits which must accrue." (15)

As the Earl of Shaftesbury himself said: "To practical prophecies of overthrow of trade, of ruin to the operatives themselves, I could only oppose 'humanity' and general principles." (16) Sir John Kussell is said to have been converted to support the acts, not by labored arguments, but by being induced to walk back and forth in his parlor for a time over a track similar to that which many of the child operatives had to travel for twelve or more hours a day.

It was sympathy for the operatives, not an appreciation of the good results to be got for English industry by the factory acts, that secured their passage. As the Encyclopaedia Britannica puts it, "they were passed in the name of the moral and physical health of the community." Yet Shaftesbury's speech of May, 1847, and Macaulay's speech on the ten-hour bill, gave evidence of what a strong case might have been made out for the acts on economic grounds; but these were Almost the only examples of such argumentation. (17)

Although Professor Fawcett, as late as 1878, opposed from his seat in Parliament that part of the consolidated factory acts intended to protect adult women operatives, there is now substantial agreement among economists that Macaulay's position was well taken. Factory legislation, instead of ruining British industry, reestablished its foundations.

Some of the parliamentary opponents of the early bills voted for the later ones, and, in publicly recanting, expressly said that they had been misled by the economists and "the gentlemen from Lancashire." The debt owing to the economists for the reform of the poor-laws, the philanthropists had paid.

The experience of England in these two matters very well illustrates the interaction of sense and sympathy in the direction of human affairs. The discussions in the houses of Parliament, between the so-called "humanity-mongers" and the students of the so-called "dismal science," have their counterpart in the opposing considerations which suggest themselves to every thinking man who tries to aid the poor. If our instincts were all healthy, or our intellects all perfect, we could rely upon either side of our nature without fear of blundering. But, as in the case of English legislation, first one party blundered and then the other, so each man, in threading his way along the devious paths of conduct, must sometimes put rational restraints upon his emotions, and as other times must be content to let "his instincts save him from his intelligence." This principle, which holds in national and personal affairs, holds also in the formulation of a true social philosophy. Such a philosophy must recognize that the instincts of men very commonly have their origin or their justification in race experience, and that they are sometimes a more trustworthy guide than reasoning which is conceivably inaccurate, or which may be based on information which is possibly incomplete.

If economics has had some influence on philanthropy, the philanthropic instincts of men are finally coming to have some influence in compelling the broadening of political economy. They dominate too much legislation and determine the expenditure of too much wealth to be left out of account. As we have seen, they are not only powerful, but at times indispensably helpful; and, even if it were possible to ignore them, it would be unwise to do so.

But for two or three decades that branch of social philosophy known, as political economy seemed bound, so far as England was concerned, to discredit itself by not recognizing this truth. Its teachings were too final and dogmatic to be influential or even true. Cromwell's exhortation to the theologians of his time might properly have been addressed to the English economists from 1850 to 1880: "In the bowels of the Lord, I beseech you, brethren, consider it possible that you may be mistaken!" Indeed, equivalent exhortations were addressed to them, but without effect. In the United States a few professors of political economy echoed or attacked Manchestrian economics, but for the most part they had no influence. This country was too young to bother with industrial science. Its resources seemed to be so inexhaustible that no thought was given to conserving them. Least of all was it imagined that we need give serious attention to the matter of poor-relief. It was assumed that we were quarantined against poverty and distress by our glorious Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Scarcely a generation ago a writer in the New York Nation, when reviewing a work on French charities, half apologized for treating such a subject, but suggested in extenuation that, if we should ever have to organize a system of charities, French experience might be a useful guide. Nevertheless, at that moment were already arising problems of destitution, unemployment, and family disintegration, which have kept pace with the movement of population toward cities and manufacturing centres, and which were in part the result of an undistributed foreign immigration. With the beginning of the twentieth century, America has realized the possibility in these congested localities of conditions as desperate as those with which some parts of Europe have long been familiar.

Thus, in the century following Malthus and Chalmers, philanthropy and economics have gradually been approaching each other, and are now welded into a friendly and indissoluble partnership. An increasing body of students, trained in a more generous political economy than that of Senior and Miss Martineau, are seeking technical discipline in schools of philanthropy in order to devote themselves to professional, administrative, and constructive work in charities. Dismal scientists and humanity-mongers have joined forces for the betterment of society; the economists, on the one hand, recognizing altruism as a fundamental motive of progress; the philanthropists, on the other, giving more and more weight to the economic bearings of all social reform. Simultaneously with increasing demands for systematic charity, a broader and more human political economy has been taking the place of that dismal laissez-faire which so vehemently opposed the reforms of English philanthropy. On this side of the Atlantic the renaissance in economics came even earlier than in England, and in many schools it has dealt more directly and thoroughly with the problems of philanthropy than is usual abroad. The Manchestrian economists made slight and for the most part merely negative contributions to the subject, but from the time of Marshall in England and Walker in the United States, every economist has given it a respectful and more or less extended treatment.

In all the larger American colleges courses in causes of poverty, charities, and penology are now given either by the professors of the economics department or by a separate staff in a distinct department under the title of sociology; and in a few, other courses of a more constructive character develop still further the economic aspects of altruism. As a recent economist expresses it: --

"The modern theory of economic life fits in not only with the facts of the business world, but with the demands of social reform. The economics of today has finally reached the stage where it seeks to retain the cold passivity of science and yet to reflect the warm glow of human interests and living ideals."

While philanthropy and economics, starting from opposite poles, have been approaching each other and have at last found a common meeting ground, both have at the same time been strongly influenced by the biological sciences. Setting aside the effect of the evolutionary hypothesis upon economic thought, its immediate application to philanthropy raised the question as to whether the ultimate influence of charity in the natural history of mankind was good or evil. (18) Spencer's dictum that the result of shielding people from the consequence of their folly is to fill the world with fools, was indeed no new alarm. Plato, more than two thousand years ago, warned his countrymen of the degradation in store for any nation which perpetuated the unfit by allowing its citizens to breed from enervated stock; and he sketched for them an imaginary republic in which no considerations of inheritance, of family ties, or of pity were permitted to stand in the way of the elimination of the weak and the perfection of the race. (19) But the evolutionists used the new scientific phraseology, declaring that philanthropy and science promoted the survival of the unfit, who reproduced themselves in an enfeebled progeny, and that this interference with the struggle for existence was pernicious. They maintained that civilization itself developed sympathy, which, in turn, devised methods for protecting the weak, and thus the law of progress was reversed. Moreover, it was said that philanthropy not only perpetuated the weak, but in its essence sacrificed the strong to the weak, as shown by the increase of institutions for the insane, the defective, and incapable, and the devotion of humane persons and vast sums of money to their care. (20)

(19) Cummings, Quar. Jour. of Economics, vol. xii., 1898.

(20) Ely, "Evolution of Industrial Society," p. 165.

At this period, from the biological point of view, there were only two ways of improving the human race: the one by selection, the other by heredity. If the selective processes were suspended from philanthropic motives, there was still opportunity to improve the race, independently of selection, by seeing to it that individuals acquired the characteristics that it was desirable for them to transmit. Just when it seemed to be settled that the only way to improve mankind was by training in a carefully adjusted environment, Professor Weismann appeared with his denial that there was any proof of the transmission of acquired characters. He showed that many of the resemblances of children to parents which had been attributed to heredity were merely the result of similar environment, contending that change of environment and special training affected only the individual, whose life-history could not be passed on to the offspring.

This view not only made valueless much that had been written on the bearing of heredity upon social life and environment, but to some it seemed to make the improvement of the race painfully slow, if not almost hopeless, since the only permanent gain must be made through the selective processes. Others, with a better understanding of the full import of the theory in its application to human life, pointed out that whatever environment might not do for the race it was concededly of the highest importance for the individual. Professor Warner, in the first edition of this book, written shortly after Weismann's conclusions had been published, said: --

"It should also be remembered that among the higher animals, and especially among human beings, the individual is more plastic than in the lower orders; his life-history, and especially the history of his very early life, has more influence upon his character. Therefore, while we must give attention to selection, we cannot conclude that certain families are degenerate and essentially unfit to survive until we have given their offspring the very best opportunities for right development. I would say, then, that to assume Weismann to be right -- acquired characteristics to be not transmitted -- is possibly the safest working hypothesis, because, on the one hand, it does not limit our efforts to improve environment, while, on the other hand, it gives us a sharp realization of the importance of selection, a factor which we are otherwise prone to forget or to undervalue. To whatever extent heredity may be ascertained to be a factor in determining character and the consequent career, substantially to that extent the problem of preventing the suffering that comes from destitution is a question of human selection."

A part of the confusion arising from the application of later biological theory came from the inaccurate use of the term "natural selection," as though nature were something apart from man to which he must submit and might not modify. In this sense, natural selection is not only a harsh but expensive way of improving the species. Among men, however, natural selection, in the sense in which that term would be applied to the killing off of young oak trees, is very much modified by two important factors: instinct and reason. The best example of the first is the parental instinct, which causes the parent to stand between the offspring and the remorseless operations of nonsentient nature. Instinctive selection is a step toward something better than natural selection, something more economical of time and energy and life; but it is still a blind and wasteful advance. The excessive development of the sexual instinct, which at one time is necessary to the survival and dominance of the race, may at another become a menace to its welfare. It must then be dominated by reason or by other instincts, or the race will disappear. The instinct of the fighter, once necessary to preserve him in the rude struggles of the time, may at another time leave him a savage in a society which hangs the too combative individual as a murderer. Reason, the second factor in natural selection as applied to human beings, is illustrated when a state enacts laws against murder, or endeavors to establish any other rule of justice than that of the strongest; when it drains a malarial swamp, or provides for sanitary inspection in order to lower the death-rate; whenever, in short, any action is taken for the set purpose of affecting the death-rate, or the birth-rate, or of promoting the public health. Mr. Ritchie has reminded us that if we are to let purely "natural" selection do its perfect work, we must abolish marriage laws and all laws relative to the inheritance of property.

Rational selection at first, and at its poorest, is only a shade better than instinctive selection. But it is manifest that, at its best and in its possibilities, it is the superior of the other two forms; and those races will eventually survive which practise it most constantly and most wisely. This indicates what is the simple truth, that human "natural selection," could we but understand the latter term in its broadest sense, includes all three, -- nonsentient, instinctive, rational, -- being made up of the total of selective forces operating upon the human species.

Benevolence has usually operated only on the plane of instinctive selection; but on the whole, even so, it has introduced some improvements into human selection, made that selection less wasteful, and reached results with less expenditure of energy and life. Its services to the species in keeping those who were "fit," from the standpoint of race improvement, from being crushed by temporary and local conditions, overbalance its tendency to keep the essentially "unfit" in existence.

The most obvious result of charity as a selective force has been to lengthen the lives of the individuals cared for. There are many who believe it to be in and of itself a uniformly desirable result. They hold that no spark of human life can be extinguished without greater indirect loss than the direct gain which comes in freedom from the necessity of supporting the individual. They would care with all tenderness for the most misshapen, physically and morally, until death could no longer be postponed. As the author has stood by the beds of consumptive or syphilitic children, he has wondered if it was a kindness to keep life in the pain-racked body. Cure was out of the question so far as medical science now knows, and one wonders why days of pain should be added to days of pain. The same questions recur as one passes through the incurable wards of an almshouse, especially as one studies the cases of the cancer patients. The answer of religion to such questions is easy, and it seems very sure that without religious incentive we should not have entertained our present views regarding the sanctity of human life.

But now that the feeling is developed, even science can explain in some sort how it is expedient that it should exist. We cannot extinguish or in any wise connive at the extinction of human life without injury to all the instincts and sensibilities that render it possible for us to live together with our fellows in civilized society. The decline of the death penalty as punishment for the most heinous crimes, the secrecy in which its rare enforcement is now enshrouded, and the substitution of the electric current for the axe and the rope testify to the recognition of this principle. Modern society can afford to incur any expense and trouble to preserve the humane instinct in those who represent its laws. Frequently physicians and matrons and superintendents of institutions become so callous to suffering, and so worn out by overstrain, that they almost connive at the extinction of human life. For instance, in the case of a child suffering from hydrocephalus and beyond hope of cure, only the most constant attention could keep him alive; the matron finally somewhat relaxed her vigilance in seeing that he was properly cared for, and indigestion carried him off. This failure to do all that is possible to combat disease is common in many institutions, usually without any consciousness of a willingness to facilitate death, but none the less with a latent feeling that possibly those that die are happier than those that live.

All such neglect of duty is a coming short of the highest ideal of philanthropy, no less than of religion. While physicians may sometimes be justified in chloroforming a monstrous birth, and while, far off, philosophers think they see the coming of a day when we may have legal suicides, and when we can take human life because we are pitiful, and not because we are selfish, (21) yet for the present it must be held that science justifies and philanthropy corroborates Christianity in holding that each spark of human life must be conserved in all tenderness and with all care. (22)

(22) On the powerful and pervasive influence of the altruism born of Christianity upon social and industrial development, see Kidd, "Social Evolution."

Eventually this policy compels us to search for causes of degeneration and suffering. Could we cheaply rid ourselves of incapables and close our hearts to the appeal of distress, we might never have the compulsion put upon us of seeking out the wiser plans, which may eventually give us a more uniformly healthy race. Extermination might be an easy cure for pauperism, but it would be a costly remedy biologically; and if we allow our instincts to compel us to forego the use of it, we may ultimately be driven to preventive measures. As we shall see in the subsequent chapters, in proportion as the burden of the dependent has increased and the standard of care risen, the search has spread from symptoms to causes, from causes to conditions of poverty, and culminated in a concerted demand for prevention rather than relief.

The influence of charity in diminishing the death-rate has probably had much to do with the increase in the proportion of insane and feeble-minded persons to the total population. The mere lengthening of the lives of lunatics by better care greatly increases their absolute and relative numbers. Badly administered charities, however, may have exactly the opposite result. An unclean hospital may result in the death of an undue number of the sick brought to it. In one maternity hospital the death-rate rose as high as two women for each five confinements. Previous to and during the sixties, European experience in maternity hospitals gave a mortality rate of about one death to twenty-nine confinements; in some large hospitals it was as high as one in seven. It is only recently that hospital service has become better than home service in this branch of medical practice. Undoubtedly the actual result of many foundling hospitals is to kill more infants than would meet death did such hospitals not exist -- the death-rate is fearfully high; sometimes ninety-seven per cent of the children fail to reach the age of three years. Many who support charities designed to save infant life might conclude, if they studied all the facts, that they were contributing to its destruction.

The influence of charity upon the birth-rate is much more obscure. Long before natural selection was discussed under that name, Chalmers called attention to the fact that the relief of the poor from public funds resulted in taking money from the thrifty and giving it to the thriftless. Under the unreformed English poor-law the additional allowance per child was so large as to make it pecuniarily profitable to have large families. As the allowance for illegitimate children was somewhat larger than for those born in wed-lock, a premium was put upon illegitimacy. The demonstration was then complete, that a population might be degraded by the charity-induced propagation of the unfit, and that the influence of charity upon the birth-rate is a factor to be reckoned with. A system of charity which might be admissible, could it be applied to an existing generation alone, is wholly inadmissible if it multiplies the number of dependents in succeeding generations. Both Mr. Dugdale and Mr. McCulloch found that the pauper families they investigated got permission to live from the lavish giving of public outdoor relief, supplemented by indiscriminate giving on the part of individuals.

In the worst-managed almshouses there is sometimes not adequate means of separating the sexes, and the breeding of paupers goes on upon the premises. Formal marriages between almshouse paupers have very frequently received the sanction of both church and state. A much commoner abuse, as we shall find when we come to study these institutions, -- one, in fact, from which few American almshouses are free, -- is the facility with which the dissolute and diseased can go there until sufficiently recuper-ated to be able to have children and then discharge themselves. The doors of the hospitals and almshouses swing freely both ways, and the result is a succession of children, especially from half-witted women. These persons would have been able to have no children or few if left entirely without help, and would have been allowed to have none at all had they been properly taken care of. It is coming to be seen that the feeble-minded (a much larger class than many suppose) must have custodial care through life.

While the infant death-rate is known to be increased through institutions that receive without question all children brought to them, it is more of a question, or at least one that is more difficult to answer definitely, whether or not their influence tends to increase the number of illegitimate and abandoned infants. Lax morals and open foundling hospitals usually are found together, but it is not so easy to demonstrate the causal influence of the institutions in pro-ducing laxness of morals, though that they have such an influence is usually believed. The extreme facility and secrecy with which a child could be disposed of to French foundling hospitals of the older type is alleged to have had this result. The author's own observation leads him to think that foundling hospitals of the kind usual in America, because of the high death-rate already mentioned, tend to exterminate rather than to multiply the progeny of unfit stock.

A distinct influence upon the quantity and quality of the population is had by those institutions that bring defectives together to be trained, and after training them for self-support, encourage them to marry and to intermarry. This is, of course, most noticeable with the deaf because of the nature of their defect. It does not by any means incapacitate them for self-support, while at the same time it makes the companionship of deaf with deaf especially congenial. The congregate system of education of the deaf has brought them together in a way calculated to promote extensive acquaintance, and sign language tends to make them a peculiar people. It thus comes about that the institutions for the education of the deaf become very definite factors in promoting the propagation of deaf-mutism through inheritance. The latest educational tendency, and one favored by Dr. Howe, is to abandon the sign language to a considerable extent, and to encourage as far as possible the education of the deaf in day schools. This tends to assimilate them with the ordinary population, and their defect is more likely to prove a bar to marriage than under the conditions of boarding-schools. In general it may be said that the managers of charitable institutions do not sufficiently discourage marriage among the dependent and defective classes. The duty of being childless is not one they try to impose upon dependents.

In 1893 Ritchie suggested as a possible beginning of the work of making the definition of a mésalliance scientific, that all persons receiving a marriage license should be required to present a medical certificate giving evidence of freedom from a hereditary tendency to insanity. (23) Since then several states have passed such laws. In 1899 Michigan forbade the marriage of insane and idiotic persons and persons afflicted with syphilis and gonorrhoea and not cured. The law of Connecticut, passed in 1902, forbids the marriage of epileptics and imbeciles under a penalty of three years' imprisonment, with a penalty for other persons aiding such a marriage, and forbids illegitimate intercourse with a defective woman under equally heavy penalties. Indiana also forbids the issuance of a license not only to imbeciles and insane, but also to indigents of five years' standing. (24)

(24) Ely, "Evolution of Industrial Society," p. 170 ff.; N. C. C., 1905, P. 694.

Members of the medical profession frequently recommend castration as a punishment for certain offences, and as a method of treatment for "sexual perverts." Dr. Kerlin, in addressing the Association of Medical Officers of Institutions for the Feeble-minded, said; --

"While considering the help that advanced surgery is to give us, I will refer to a conviction that I have, that life-long salutary results to many of our boys and girls would be realized if before adolescence the procreative organs were removed. My experience extends to only a single case to confirm this conviction; but when I consider the great benefit that this young woman has received, the entire arrest of an epileptic tendency, as well as the removal of inordinate desires which made her an offence to the community; when I see the tranquil, well-ordered life she is leading, her usefulness and industry in the circle in which she moves, and know that surgery has been her salvation from vice and degradation, I am deeply thankful to the benevolent lady whose loyalty to science and comprehensive charity made this operation possible." "Whose state," he asks further on, "shall be the first to legalize oöphorectomy and orchitomia for the relief and cure of radical depravity?" (25)

Indiana appears to have been the first state to apply this. remedy. In 1901 a law was passed providing that upon the recommendation of certain physicians the operation necessary to sterilization should be performed upon criminals adjudged to be unfit to procreate. Dr. H. C. Sharp of the Indiana Reformatory reports that besides six prisoners operated upon under the authority of the law, two hundred and seventeen others were so treated at their own request. (26)

The proposal of a law in Pennsylvania providing for the asexualization of imbeciles and idiots who are dependent inmates of a state institution, brought out a vigorous protest from Alexander Johnson, an authority on the care of the feeble-minded. Mr. Johnson urges the sanctity of the individual human being and argues that, if sterilized, the most powerful incentive to their proper care would be removed. Segregation, he thinks, the better way: --

"It has far wider possibilities than the way of surgery since it may be applied, as that could not or at present would not be, to the many cases on the border line between imbecility and normality, for it is not necessarily final in any case. And it is precisely the borderline cases, as every institution man knows, for whom, if for any, surgery might be desirable. Besides segregation will still be necessary, no matter how much the knife may be used. It is only by the chloroform method that we may escape the burden of the care of these men and women children, the idiots and the imbeciles. So that method would be the next logical step." (27)

Whenever, as in the cases cited, it appears that these operations can be performed with benefit to the individual, public opinion will doubtless sanction them; and the result of such experimentation may ultimately be to extend their use very widely in the treatment of the diseased and criminal classes. To argue for the introduction of such methods on grounds of social selfishness will not be the best way to hasten their introduction.

Pending such experimentation, the sterilizing of the essentially unfit who may be dependents seems likely to be carried forward by the humaner methods of sequestration and of custodial care through life. The permanent isolation of the essentially unfit has commended itself to men as different as Ruskin and General Booth, and already the movement to establish these philanthropic monasteries and nunneries for the feeble-minded is becoming the substitute for natural selection. The prevention of the marriage of the unfit, the sterilization of criminals, and the custodial care of the imbecile are initial steps in prevention -- that the unfit may cease to be produced and to produce. As Cummings puts it: from him that hath not shall be taken away the power of degrading himself and society. Certain it is, that while charity may not cease to shield the children of misfortune, it must, to an ever increasing extent, reckon with the laws of heredity, and do what it can to check the spreading curse of race deterioration. The desire to prevent suffering must extend to the desire to prevent the suffering of unborn generations.

CHAPTER II.
CAUSES OF POVERTY.

The combined result of the rise of humanitarianism, the science of political economy, and the evolutionary theory, was a new interest in the causes of dependence. Neither philosophers nor charity workers were satisfied to accept any longer the misused dictum, "The poor ye have always with you," as an excuse for merely palliative measures in dealing with them, nor with the current explanations of their misery. The students of the social sciences who have sought to ascertain the causes of poverty have employed three tolerably distinct methods. First, there are those deductive or philosophical thinkers who, from the well-known facts of social organization, have sought to deduce the causes tending to poverty, as a systematic writer on pathology seeks to set forth the inherent characteristics of the bodily organism which tend to make disease likely or inevitable. Secondly, there are those who make an inductive study of concrete masses of pauperism, usually separating the mass into its individual units, seeking to ascertain in a large number of particular cases what causes have operated to bring about destitution. This work resembles that of the practising physician, endeavoring to ascertain the causes of sickness by a careful diagnosis of the cases under his care. Thirdly, there are those who study the classes not yet pauperized, to determine by induction what forces are tending to crowd individuals downward across the pauper line, as the health officer of a city might undertake, by an examination of the drainage system or an analysis of the water or food supply, to ascertain the causes of disease in a given locality.

Examples of the philosophical or deductive method are found in the writings of men like Malthus, or Karl Marx, or Henry George, who, while they describe actual conditions at great length, still make the philosophical reasoning which is the heart of their work antecedent to their facts. Their facts are given by way of illustration rather than of proof. Writers of this class are prone to think that they can find some single underlying cause of all the misery and destitution that exist. The three names just mentioned recall three explanations of poverty, each alleged to be universal, and the three mutually exclusive. Malthus was too wise a man to put forth his principle of population as an all-sufficient explanation of distress; but his followers have not been so wise. In the writings of certain economists it has been a fundamental thought that poverty exists mainly, if not entirely, because population tends to increase faster than food supply. All other causes are held to contribute to this, or to be derived from this. The pressure of population against the means of subsistence is held to guarantee that there shall always be a vast number of persons who can just manage to live miserably. A rise of wages will promote early marriages and rapid increase among laborers, until population is again checked by overcrowding and consequent misery and death. So wise a man as John Stuart Mill allowed his economic philosophy to be overshadowed by this idea.

Henry George ridiculed the Malthusian explanation of poverty, and offered an all-sufficient explanation of his own, which is, substantially, that poverty exists, on the one hand, because the landlord receives in rent so large a share of the annual product; on the other, because private property in land encourages the withholding of natural resources from use, the owners waiting to obtain an unearned increment. Since the owner of land receives wealth without labor to an increasing extent with the development of society, there must be an increasing number of those who labor but receive little or nothing.

Opposed to both these explanations of the existence of poverty is that of the socialists, who follow for the most part Karl Marx's analysis of capitalistic production. Reduced to a sentence by Dr. Aveling, this explanation of poverty may be stated by saying that labor is "paid for, but not paid." The consumer pays enough for the product to remunerate the laborer, but the capitalist retains all except what will barely suffice to keep the laborer alive.

No one who has studied carefully modern industrial society can doubt that each one of these causes may produce a very considerable amount of destitution. But no one of them, nor all three of them together, can be taken as an adequate explanation of the existence of poverty. Professor Seligman states their fundamental defects in the following paragraph: --

"Modern poverty is bound up with the facts of modem economic life, and modern economic life is a complex product. To select any characteristic feature of the present industrial system and to single it out as responsible for poverty is naive, but worthless. The Malthusian seizes upon redundant population, the communist upon private property, the socialist upon property in means of production, the single taxer upon property in land, the cooperator upon competition, the anarchist upon government, the anti-optionist upon speculation, the currency reformer upon metallic money, and so on. They all forget that widespread poverty has existed in the absence of each one of these alleged causes. Density of population, private property, competition, government, speculation, and money have each been absent at various stages of history without exempting society from the curse of poverty. Each stage has had a poverty of its own. The causes of poverty are as complex as the causes of civilization and the growth of wealth itself." (28)

The explanations of poverty offered by theology are equally unsatisfactory. Ministers frequently inform us that all poverty comes primarily from vice and immorality, -- "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." They quote David as saying, "I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." The temperance lecturer specializes upon the preacher's theory, and assures us that ninety-nine per cent of all poverty comes from the abuse of intoxicants. The propagandist of the White Cross League tells us that it is undoubtedly the abuse of the sexual nature that leads to most of the social degradation and consequent poverty of our times. These different students of social science, if such they may be called, all say that what men need to make them prosperous is moral reformation or spiritual regeneration.

To illustrate the complexity of the conditions of poverty more concretely: Suppose a second Robinson Crusoe on a desert island under exactly the same material conditions as the friend of our childhood; suppose he spent his time in distilling some kind of liquor, and subsequently getting drunk; suppose he allowed his mind to wander in dreamy and enervating revery upon debasing subjects; suppose that in consequence of these habits he neglected his work, did not plant his crops at the right time, and failed to catch fish when they were plentiful. Manifestly he would become poor and miserable, might become diseased from having insufficient food, and finally die in abject want. Poverty in such a suppositious case could not be traced to the fact that an employer had cheated the laborer of wages honestly earned, or to the fact that a landlord had robbed him by exacting rent, nor could it be traced to an excessive increase of population. Moreover, if Crusoe No. 2 had simply lacked judgment or skill, he might have become poor, although thoroughly pious and moral. If he had built a canoe that would not float, or a cave that crumbled in and injured him, or constructed a summer-house that he did not need, or had not the ingenuity to devise tools for his varied purposes, he might have failed to secure the necessaries of life, and have died in miserable destitution.

Now, if all these various causes are conceivably operative in the case of an isolated person, it is manifest that in actual industrial society as now organized, where the individual suffers not only from his own mistakes and defects, but also from the mistakes and defects of a large number of other people, the causes of destitution must be indefinitely numerous and complicated; and the man who says that he has found one all-embracing cause discredits himself as promptly as the physician who should announce that he had found a single universal and all-sufficient explanation of bodily disease.

The second method, the inductive study of concrete masses of dependents, or case-counting, as it may be called, grew naturally out of contact with relief work. Although it has been in use for twenty years in this country, it must be acknowledged that it has not yielded as comprehensive results as were first expected of it, yet within its somewhat narrow scope those results are surprisingly uniform and definite. When allowances are made for differences of nationality and age constitution in the population, for locality as between city and country, and for variations between incipient and chronic dependence, certain immediate causes recur in case schedules in proportions which can be almost predicted by the trained student and charity worker.

Its limitations as a method suggest themselves, if we reflect on the analogy of the physician standing by the sick-bed, and trying to learn the cause of the disease merely from an examination of the patient. He may learn the immediate or exciting cause or causes of sickness, but back of these are the remoter causes which can only be learned by other methods of investigation. The competent physician will look for these in the hereditary constitution of the patient, or in bad conditions of public sanitation or personal hygiene, or in exposure to contagion, or in the revelations of bacteriology, or in unhealthy climate or occupation. But however thorough, he will scarcely be able to go farther afield than this to ascertain those ultimate economic and social conditions which may account for the patient's lack of physical resistance to disease. This will become clear if we glance at the following analysis of the causes of poverty. It is not intended to be complete, but only to give in general outline a map of the field.

ANALYSIS OF THE CAUSES OF POVERTY.

Subjective

Characteristics
1. Undervitalization and indolence.
2. Lubricity.
3. Specific disease.
4. Lack of judgment.
6. Unhealthy appetite.

Habits producing and produced by the above.
1. Shiftlessness.
2. Self-abuse and sexual excess.
3. Abuse of stimulants and narcotics.
4. Unhealthy diet.
5. Disregard of family ties.

Objective
1. Inadequate natural resources.
2. Bad climatic conditions.
3. Defective sanitation, etc.
4. Evil associations and surroundings.
5. Defective legislation and defective judicial and punitive machinery.
6. Misdirected or inadequate education.
7. Bad Industrial conditions.
a)Variations in value of money.
b)Changes in trade
c) Excessive or ill-managed taxation.
d) Emergencies unprovided for.
e) Undue power of class over class.
f) Inadequate wages and irregular employment.
8. Unwise philanthropy

A statistical analysis of cases gives more light concerning the subjective causes of poverty than the objective causes, for in dealing with individuals their character is apt to be more studied than their environment. But even when environment is the primary cause of poverty, the immediate cause or coordinate result is often deterioration of character. As sickness is more obvious than bad sanitation, so is laziness than a malarial atmosphere, inefficiency than a defective educational system. One who attempts the analysis of cases is apt to be confused by the fact that under the operation of exactly similar general causes some families are destitute and some are not. One man is able to secure an adequate income under the most adverse circumstances -- unhealthy climate, bad housing, unjust taxation, or lack of opportunities for education. Another man, under exactly the same conditions, will become destitute, and the observer must put down as the final and determining cause some defect in physique or character. Untrained charity workers who come immediately in contact with the poor are very prone to take short-sighted views of the causes of poverty. On the other hand, those who study the question from a philosophical standpoint are apt to lay too much stress on a single factor of environment; while a third class, chiefly composed of philanthropists living among the poor, arraign the organization of society as tending to submerge below the poverty line those who have no power to defend themselves. The extreme opposition of the different views is well illustrated by certain recent writers. Mrs. Bosanquet declares, "A man's circumstances depend upon what he himself is," and quotes Professor William James's phrase, "we are spinning our own fates," to support her contention that the economic position of a class depends upon the moral qualities of the individuals. Thomas W. Mackay regards it as an act of "unpardonable scepticism "to assume that whole classes are inflicted, with an inherent incapacity for the honorable interdependence of a life of contract and exchange, and points to the increasing reward of labor and the increasing purchasing power of its reward.

With an emphasis no less powerful, Robert Hunter places the responsibility for dependence upon environment: --

"It is obvious to inquiring persons that society, as a result of its industries, its tenements, its policy of almost unrestricted immigration, and its system of education, ill-adapted in so many ways to the needs of the people, causes a large part of the poverty which exists among us. For instance, the aged, after years of honest and exacting toil, may find themselves at last thrown out of work, propertyless, and sometimes penniless. Dangerous trades cripple the bodies and undermine the health of large numbers of workmen, and almost unrestricted immigration helps to increase an already too intense competition for wages in the underpaid, unskilled trades, with the result that the whole mass is more or less in poverty all the time, and a certain percentage finds it necessary actually to apply periodically for charitable relief. The greed for profits on the part of the owners of tenement-house property has so interfered with the enactment and enforcement of laws establishing certain minimum sanitary standards that a considerable number of working people have their labor power diminished or destroyed by tuberculosis and other diseases. It would be impossible to question the responsibility of society for such common and widespread causes of poverty. After the economic independence has been destroyed, so-called charity undermines the character of the poor either by private alms or by public outdoor relief." (29)

Each of these types of observers has, indeed, seized upon a portion of the truth; the questions of character are very far from insignificant, but so long as it is impossible to measure accurately all the forces within and without the individual which tend to push him above or below the line of economic independence, it will be necessary to study the combined operation of character, circumstance, and environment in accounting for his failure.

The third and latest method of studying the causes of poverty is also statistical, but on a much broader basis than the classification of dependents. Beginning with the comprehensive work of Charles Booth in London, it has been applied to the city of York, England, by Rowntree; more recently to the anthracite coal regions of Pennsylvania by Peter Roberts, and to a district of New York City by Mrs. Louise Boland More. Its essential feature is the comparative study of a whole section of population in order to ascertain the proportion of the poor and the conditions of their life which tend to drive them into a position of dependence. To this class of studies belongs the report of 1903 of the United States Bureau of Labor on the Cost of Living and many other labor reports, the investigations of occupational morbidity and mortality, and nearly all the first-hand descriptions of the industrial strata of society.

It is evident that such a method has a breadth and perspective which give it superior value; but it, too, has its pitfalls and limitations. If pursued on a scale large enough to give a true picture of a representative section of the population, it is liable to lack the intimate personal knowledge of individuals without which all statistics may become misleading. If pursued on a small scale, intensively, by workers familiar with the people themselves, it may be distorted by local peculiarities and by the bias of the investigator. Returning once more to the analogy of medical practice: in the first case, the physician is in the position of a health officer gathering information for the determination of birth and death rates and for the prevention of epidemic diseases; in the second, he is a specialist in danger of diagnosing all ailments as partaking of the characteristics of his specialty.

As the case-counting method tends to emphasize unduly the subjective and immediate causes, so the pictorial method is apt to bring out the industrial and environmental causes; but all these methods, beginning with the inductive, have had a natural historical sequence. The early social philosophers sketched from afar some conspicuous feature of the field; the relief workers fixed their attention upon the miserable in need and their obvious characteristics; the latest comers are trying to present a complete picture of the whole territory. With the contribution of each observer, the details of the picture are becoming more accurate as well as complete; with the result that, on the one hand, the treatment of dependents is becoming more adequate and sympathetic, while, on the other, all philanthropists alike are uniting in a concerted attack upon those conditions of society which make dependence inevitable.

Turning from the discussion of the various methods of ascertaining the causes of poverty, we take up the consideration of the investigations conducted on the case-counting principle. The conclusions from these will vary widely according to the particular class of destitute persons under observation. Professor Henderson, after enumerating four general classes of dependents, -- dependent children, those receiving partial relief in their homes, those receiving institutional relief, and the abnormal and defective classes, -- remarks that a general average of the grand totals of the causes of poverty of these classes would not only be of no value, but would be positively misleading, as among these different classes a principal cause of poverty would vary widely, and in particular instances might not exist at all. The first precaution, therefore, in drawing conclusions from charity cases, as in every other kind of statistics, is to make sure that the classes compared are fairly comparable.

But when this difficulty is overcome, a greater one arises -- the difficulty of deciding what is the principal cause of dependence in particular cases. A man is drunk and breaks his leg; is the cause of his helplessness accident or drink? When this question was submitted to a group of charity organization workers, it was promptly answered by two of them; but their answers were different. A man is out of work because he is lazy and inefficient; one has to know him quite well before one can be sure that laziness is the cause. An experienced charity agent asked in conference how far back it was necessary to go to determine the principal cause in the following instances: --

"I have a widow and six children; her husband fell off a wagon when drunk and was killed; should I put down drunkenness as the cause? I have a case of a boy who received no proper training because his father was a drunkard; shall I put that poverty to drunkenness? I have a case of a family where four girls, one after the other, died of consumption, and I believe the cause to be that they had a drunken father who did not feed them, and who left them to live in improper conditions, but who died ten years ago. Shall I say that the cause in that case is drunkenness or sickness?" (30)

Among thousands of dependants it has been found that there are very few whose destitution resulted from a single cause. In order to represent the variety and relative proportions of the factors leading to pauperism, several ways of combining principal and subsidiary causes have been devised. Charles Booth, in his study of the pauperism of Stepney and St. Pancras, tabulated the contributory with the principal causes; and as indicating the results to be got from this method, his table is given on the opposite page.

In this table sickness, which operated as a principal cause in 26 per cent of all cases, was a contributory cause in 13 per cent more; drink, which accounted in the first place for the dependence of 12.6 per cent, aggravated the situation of 13 per cent more. In short, after a survey of the table, it can readily be believed that some, as Mr. Booth says, have been the football of all the causes in the list.

Professor Mayo-Smith tabulated 884 applicants of the New York Charity Organization Society for the year 1897 in a similar way, but with less striking results. At the suggestion of Professor Warner a quantitative method was adopted by Mrs. Coolidge in Table II. (31) The sum of the causes in each case was assumed to be 10. The principal cause might count for 5 or more units, while the contribu-tory causes might be 5 or less; as, for instance, case 48, principal cause sickness 5, contributory causes neglect by relatives 3, old age 2.

TABLE I.
PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF PAUPERISM AT STEPNEY.
(Adapted from Booth's "Pauperism and the Endowment of Old Age," p. 10)

TABLE II.
Causes of pauperism of 228 almshouse women by nativity. (32)

Although this method undoubtedly presented the proportion of each influence with somewhat greater accuracy, it was found to be too complicated for general use in the Charity Organization Societies.

A third source of error in charity statistics is the variation between the cause of distress as given by the applicant and the causes afterward registered by the relieving agents. This discrepancy is illustrated by the following tabulation of 800 cases in New York City.

TABLE III.
Alleged and true causes of poverty.
800 cases, C. O. S., New York, 1896-1897. (34)

The alleged cause is often merely a measure of the ability of the applicant to gauge the intelligence of the charity agent, but it is of some slight value in throwing light upon the character of the applicant.

After making all possible allowance for the personal equation of the applicant and the investigator, and for the limitations and inconclusiveness of figures alone, they have nevertheless a considerable value as representing the judgments of those who are studying dependence at first hand. When it has been found that a great number of investigators, at different times, in different places, have reached conclusions which, while varying in many and often inexplicable ways, are yet in agreement on certain points, it must be concluded that the figures to some extent reflect actual conditions. Without pressing these conclusions too far, and constantly remembering that statistics are only the formal skeleton of truth, we may proceed to discuss what results have been reached by the case-counting method in the study of dependence.

TABLE IV. (35)
Causes of Poverty in Buffalo.

Although the causes of pauperism had been enumerated and discussed in occasional reports of charitable societies, (36) the first systematic investigation and tabulation of results through a term of years appears to have been made by the Charity Organization Society of Buffalo, New York. The table (see p. 46) is interesting as showing that the more obvious causes, i.e. sickness, lack of employment, intemperance, and shiftlessness, stood in almost the same order and proportion in 1887 as they appear in the Charity Organization Society statistics of a later time. Devine, "Principles of Relief," pp. 278-293, Tenth Report, New York State Board of Charities, 1877.

The systematic registration of decisions in large numbers of cases brought out certain conclusions as to the general needs of applicants for relief. Table V. shows decisions averaged for a total of 42,031 cases between 1887 and 1900.

TABLE V.
Decisions in Cases of Applicants for Relief. (37)

The table shows that approximately one-third of all applicants needed work rather than relief, and nearly another third needed intermittent or temporary relief only, while almost one-fifth needed either "discipline" or no relief at all. Charles D. Kellogg of the New York Charity Organiza-tion Society, when submitting a report on 27,961 cases in 1887 (column 1) to the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, stated that the logical deduction from these facts was that two-thirds of the real or simulated destitution could be wiped out by a more perfect adjustment of the supply and demand for labor, and a more enlightened police administration. The table further indicates that charity organization societies were dealing largely then as now, not with chronic pauperism, but with those on the verge of dependence.

The question most commonly in the minds of the inexperienced students of this subject is whether dependence is a misfortune or a fault. In the first edition of this book Professor Warner compiled an elaborate table from English, German, and American sources, classifying the causes of poverty under two main heads as indicating misconduct or misfortune. A table condensed from the original, so as to show its essential features, is given on pp. 50, 51.

The unsatisfactoriness of the table arises in part from the fact that the groups of cases are not fairly comparable. The American cases were applicants for relief, the English were inmates of institutions for the chronic and aged poor, and the German comprised all cases of public relief. The trained charity worker would expect, therefore, that drink and matters of employment would rise high in American cases and fall among inmates of European institutions, and the expectation is to a certain extent fulfilled. The very low per cent for drink in Germany (1.3) is balanced partly by the high per cent for sickness (45.8), for Böhmert explains that intemperance was a predisposing cause in many cases where the immediate cause set down was lack of work, accident, imprisonment, sickness, or abandonment. The wide variation in the totals for misconduct and misfortune -- from 12 per cent to 42 per cent -- indicates the extreme differences of judgment among charity agents as to the responsibility of the individual for his own dependence.

This is only another phase of the difficulty of deciding between principal and contributory causes. For instance, back of sickness may be either misconduct or misfortune, the imprisonment of the breadwinner indicates misconduct on his part, but may be only misfortune on the part of his wife and children who apply for relief; similar confusion arises in cases of children abandoned and old persons neglected by relatives. Professor Warner stated that the table was compiled only "in deference to popular inquiry," and declared his own opinion that its value consisted chiefly "in showing how little it was worth." It has, however, a certain historical importance as showing the decline of a tendency which was once very strong among charity workers to try to apportion carefully the degree of moral blame of the individual applicant for relief.

Although the results of the table are wholly negative as regards the determination of misconduct or misfortune, when stripped of unessential details and insignificant variations, it shows clearly that in a large body of applicants for relief in American cities, certain immediate causes of poverty tend to recur in very nearly the same order and proportion for a term of years. Among such dependents from 25 to 35 per cent will ask for relief because of physical and mental incapacity, 20 to 30 per cent because of lack of or unsatisfactory employment, and 20 to 25 per cent because of defects of character. The fact that certain specific causes, especially drink, vary widely in the different cities does not invalidate this deduction. Intemperance, of all the list of causes, is the one most likely to be affected by the personal bias of the relief agent, and about which there is a wide difference of opinion as to whether it is a true cause -- in the sense of moral responsibility -- or merely a symptom. It exhibits more than any other cause the limitations of the case-counting method.

TABLE VI. (38) CAUSES OF POVERTY. --
Misconduct vs. Misfortune.

The fact that sickness, unemployment, and moral defect tend to recur in a definite order and proportion is more clearly shown in Table VII., in which 31,637 cases are arranged and averaged in the same way as in Table VI. and compared with Professor Warner's averages from 7225 cases of the same class.

We notice first that all causes definitely reflecting the character of the individual vary only between 23.3 and 25.1. The most important of these, drink, averages 14.6, going as low as 7.2 in Baltimore and as high as 21.7 in Boston. Nearly, but not quite so important, is shiftlessness and inefficiency; it ranges between the relatively narrow limits of 6.1 and 9.5. The lack of normal support has, too, a tolerably constant influence of 6.3 to 8.3.

The causes grouped under the heading "matters of employment" account for a third of the destitution dealt with by American societies. The percentage for Boston is lowest and for New York highest, but the results for New York show the effect of the five years, 1893-1898, following the panic, which are only partially covered by the figures for Boston and Baltimore.

Under incapacity, insanity and physical defect exert a minor but quite constant influence. The small though constant percentage attributable to old age is probably due to the fact that these societies are for the most part dealing with people who are still struggling against pauperism, or are at any rate still mixed with the ordinary population of the cities where they live.

So far as Table VI. and Table VII. show, the most constant causes of poverty, everywhere, at all times, and according to all investigators, are sickness and unemployment. The percentage of sickness falls to 17.6 in New York and reaches 26.0 in Boston -- the average is 22. This is one of the most significant results from these tables. It was not anticipated by the author when the collection of the statistics began; but it has been confirmed and reconfirmed, not only by Professor Lindsay's later table, but in so many other ways, that the conclusion seems inevitable that the figures must approximately set forth the facts. Personal acquaintance with the destitute classes has deepened the conviction that most of the causes of poverty result from or result in weakened physical and mental constitution, often merging into actual disease.

TABLE VII. -- Causes of Poverty: Charity Organization Society Records.

(40) Taken from Table VIII., Warner's "American Charities," 1st ed.

TABLE VIII.
13,252 Dependent Children in German Cities.
(Bohmert, pp. 115-116 and 127-128.)

Nearly all of the causes named might furthermore be grouped under the general heading "incapacity." Those indicating misconduct can be so classed if we are willing to include under the term infirmities of character as well as of body. The causes which indicate lack of normal support may also be said to show that the dependents are personally incapable of self-support, and that, through fault or misfortune on the part of their natural guardians, they have been left to themselves. The close relation between defects of character and the failure of support is illustrated by Bohmert's analysis of the causes of dependence in children.

The four causes grouped as "matters of employment" in Table VII. would seem at first to be of a different nature, and to indicate that capable persons may suffer from enforced idleness to the extent of becoming paupers. There are, of course, such instances; but those who have undertaken the work of finding employment for the unemployed, and who are intimately acquainted with the people about whom information is given in these tables, know that most of those out of employment are not capable in any complete sense of the term. They may be able-bodied, but they are not able-minded. They may lack one thing or another, but they almost always lack something; it may be skill, or strength, or judgment, or reliability, or even-temper. Often the incapacity seems to consist in nothing more than a lack of ingenuity, which prevents the person from fitting himself into the industries of the time. Give him a set task requiring little skill, and he will do it gladly. But such set tasks are very few in modern industry, and the result is that the individual is unemployed. If one wanted thoroughly efficient help, male or female, he would hardly expect to find it among the "out-of-works" with whom the charitable societies deal. Back of the cause "lack of work," ordinarily and in ordinary times, will be found some perversion of character, or some limitation of capacity.

The figures most nearly comparable with those of Bohmert and Booth are those of the New York almshouses in 1874-1875 and 1903-1904. In the earlier study the immediate causes of poverty are given; in that of 1903-1904, merely the classes of almshouse inmates, from which they may be, to some extent, inferred.

TABLE IX.
Paupers in Almshouses in New York in 1874-1875 and 1903-1904.

(42) From V. S. Census, 1904, "Paupers In Almshouses."

(43) Estimated on basis of percentage for whole North Atlantic Division.

(44) Comprises 10,793 enumerated in almshouses, Dec. 81,1903, plus 12,073 admitted in 1904.

Although these figures are not in all respects comparable, they show that the lack of normal support formerly accounted for 18 per cent of the inmates, but since the removal of children to other institutions, the percentage has fallen to 2.5. In 1874-1875 75.4 per cent of the inmates were defective or diseased -- one-third of them being insane, with the removal of the insane from almshouses to hospitals, the percentage of the incapacitated has fallen to 66.9. The table indicates further how widely the causes of dependence among inmates of institutions vary from those who are only applicants for relief.

Of 51,460 paupers admitted to almshouses in the United States in 1904, 67 per cent were "incapacitated." In such institutions "drink," as a direct cause of poverty, is of slight importance, although it may have been the original cause of much of the incapacity. Of those enumerated in almshouses in 1903 only 15.8 per cent were able-bodied, and of those admitted during 1904, 30 per cent; but a very large proportion of these were unquestionably shiftless, inefficient, and vagrant, unemployable rather than the unemployed.

As the first question popularly asked regarding the causes of poverty would probably be whether poverty indicates misconduct or misfortune, so the second would probably be: What are the indications as to the tendency of different nationalities or races to become poor? For the purpose of finding what answer could be obtained to this question, Table X. was prepared, giving the facts regarding 7225 American cases. Of the Americans, Germans, Colored, Irish, and English there were enough cases in each column to make the percentages tolerably trustworthy; while of the French, Polish, Spanish, Italian, Scandinavian, and other nationalities the numbers were too small to make the relative figures of much value.

As to "drink," we find a general average of 15.28 per cent. The Americans are slightly below, and the English slightly above, this average. The Irish have a larger percentage under this head than any other nationality, 23.62. The Germans are far below it, 7.83 per cent, and the Colored still farther, 6.23 per cent. This low percentage has been corroborated by the investigations of John Koren, whose conclusions are: that comparatively few negroes are habitual drunkards; that intemperance is only accountable for a small part of the negro's poverty; and that only in exceptional cases are drinking habits a barrier to steady employment. (45)

TABLE X. (46)

Causes of Poverty: 7225 American Cases, Classified by Causes of Poverty and Nationality.

In "shiftlessness and inefficiency" the Americans lead all other well-represented nationalities, having here a per-centage of 9.19, as against an average of 7.51. The Irish here fall much below the average, 5.78 per cent.

"Matters of employment" vary less in relative importance as between the different nationalities, and the same is true of "accident" and "physical defects." Under the very important heading of "sickness" we find one decided variation. The average for this cause is 22.27 per cent, and all the largely represented nationalities conform quite closely to this average with one exception: the cases of colored people show a percentage for sickness of 39.63, a rate that comes near to being the double of the average, and is the double of the percentage for this cause among the Irish.

Those who know the colored people only casually or by hearsay may be surprised to find the misconduct causes running so low among them, while sickness as a cause is of greater relative importance than in any other nationality. But to one who has worked in Baltimore or Washington it seems a natural result, and indeed a confirmation of the reliability of the statistics. The colored people are weak physically, become sick easily, and often die almost without visible resistance to disease. At the same time they have a dread of being assisted, especially when they think an institution will be recommended; and this, together with a certain apathy, will often induce them to endure great privations rather than ask for help. Besides this, there are many associations among them for mutual help, and the criminal and semi-criminal men have a brutal way of making their women support them. That the percentage for "lack of work," 17.42, is the lowest, and that for "insufficient employment" is the highest, under these two heads, per-haps reflects their hand-to-mouth way of working at odd jobs rather than taking steady work.

In order to find out whether the differences we have noted between the nationalities are constant for different places and according to different observers, the same figures were arranged by causes and cities for each nationality. On the whole, there were no variations that need destroy our confidence in the general average.

A classification in Table XI. of 4176 Boston and New York cases according to the number of persons in a family, and by nationality, confirms the indication of Table IV., that large families is a relatively unimportant cause of destitution.

Unmarried persons with no one dependent upon them are not included in this table. The largest single family is found among the colored people; but the largest proportion of relatively large families, those numbering from five to nine persons each, is found among the Italians and the Poles and Russians. The families of paupers or semi-paupers usually average smaller than those of the population as a whole, partly because the number among classes degenerate enough to be dependent is not as large as is ordinarily supposed, partly because of a high infant mortality, and partly because the families of these classes tend to disintegrate rapidly, children drifting away from parents, and aged parents in their turn being shaken off by adult children. (47) The "family," therefore, which applies for relief is often only the fragment of a family. That large families are not a principal cause of dependence is still further illustrated by the experience of the Associated Charities of Boston: (48)

(48) Twenty-third Annual Report, 1902, p. 62.

TABLE XI.
4176 Boston and New York Cases, Classified According to Number in the Family and Nationality.
1890-1892.

MARRIED COUPLES: BOTH MAN AND WOMAN BETWEEN 20 AND 40 YEARS OF AGE.

The society reported that in at least two out of three of these families distress was due to preventable causes, of which moral delinquency was the chief.

Table XII. gives a classification of applicants for relief by marital condition and nationality.

Of those applying to the charity organization societies more than half are married people living together, about one-half the remainder, or one-quarter of the whole, are widows, and nearly one-tenth are deserted wives. In recent years much attention has been given to family desertion, and it is believed that it is increasing. Several studies of such families have been made, notably one in 1905 by Lilian Brandt, in which the typical male deserter is described as "young, able-bodied, more or less dissipated, capable of earning good wages, but rarely in the mood for making the exertion, and above all, he is lacking in the quality which makes an obligation to others outweigh considerations of personal comfort or preference." As to the consequence of desertion in these 574 families, "259 received relief amount-ing to nearly $9000 and this was a mere fraction of the total; 90 of the families were broken up temporarily or permanently; 132 children were introduced to institution life or boarded out. Other children were deprived of a fair start in life." (49)

TABLE XII.
Cases by Marital Condition and Cities.
Charity Organization Society Reports. 5529 Cases.

The small percentage of single men in later years, as shown in Table XII., is due to the differentiation of charities, this class being treated by other agencies than the charity organization societies.

A matter which is not brought out by the tables thus far given, but which is well shown by the collateral investigations of the different agencies, is the large number of children either dragged into pauperism by the destitution of their parents or entirely abandoned by them. In the investigation of almshouse pauperism, of course, this is not brought out, as the children have been put in other institutions, and are beyond the view of the investigator. But where the cases are studied as they cross the pauper line, the large number of children is striking. Of 8638 persons dealt with by the New York Charity Organization Society in 1896-1900, 48 per cent were under fourteen; and in Boston from 1899-1905, of 5529 cases coming under the care of the Associated Charities, 46 per cent were under fourteen. On the whole, it may be concluded that, while the leading cause of confirmed pauperism, as investigated by Mr. Booth in England, is the weakness of old age, the leading cause of incipient pauperism, as investigated by the American Charity Organization Societies, is the weakness of childhood.

Taking this in connection with the large percentage of pauperism which is constantly and everywhere attributed to sickness and physical defect, we have a striking confirmation of the conclusion reached by Dugdale in his study of the Jukes. He says: --

"1. Pauperism is an indication of weakness of some kind, either youth, disease, old age, injury, or, for women, childbirth.

"2. Hereditary pauperism rests chiefly upon disease in some form, tends to terminate in extinction, and may be called the sociological aspect of physical degeneration."

We find, phrasing our conclusions in medical terms, that the commonest exciting cause of the poverty that approaches pauperism is incapacity, resulting in most chronic cases from sickness or other degenerate and degenerating conditions. Weakness of some sort is the most typical characteristic of the destitute classes. The predisposing causes of this degeneration and weakness are next to be sought for. A physician turns from diagnosing a case to inquire for pre-disposing causes, first in the habits and heredity of the individual, and secondly in the nature of his occupation, or other conditions of life. In Chapter III. we will consider some of the predisposing causes of degeneration which pertain to the individual, and in the succeeding chapter some of those which pertain to environment.

CHAPTER III.
SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION.

In the preceding chapter we have dealt with the principal causes of poverty and their relative proportions as ascertained by the case-counting method. In order to gather up the results of this method still more completely we shall now consider personal habits and characteristics, and the influence of stock and family through heredity; that is, the characteristics and habits of the individual himself which render him incapable or likely to become so, first, as to their nature, and, finally, as to their origin. For it is to bad habits that the ordinary observer attributes a large part of the misery of the world; and as immediate causes of degeneration, they undoubtedly have great influence. Intemperance, that is, the abuse of alcoholic drinks, has long been held to be a principal cause -- by many the cause -- of crime, pauperism, and poverty. The earlier American observers attributed from 50 to 75 per cent of misery to it, but these were estimates merely, not based on statistics. (51) During the last decade of the nineteenth century a number of careful statistical inquiries were made which reduced the factor of drink to surprisingly low percentages. In Table VI. (pp. 50, 51) the figures range from 20.5 per cent to 8 per cent -- an average for five cities of 11.8 per cent; in Professor Lindsay's table (p. 53) the average for New York, Boston, and Baltimore is 13.7 per cent. The figures of foreign tables go as low or lower. Bohmert's tables of 77 cities of Germany (1888) give drink as chief cause in only 1.3 per cent of 90,000 cases. Charles Booth concluded that 14 per cent of primary poverty, 13 per cent of secondary poverty, and 15 per cent of pauperism in workhouses was due to intemperance, Rowntree omits drink altogether as an immediate cause of primary poverty; but says that it is a predominant one of secondary poverty. "Without attempting for the present to account for the apparent decline of the percentages of drink as a cause of poverty, we may turn to a very thorough study of intemperance as related to crime, pauperism, and poverty made in 1896-1898 for the Committee of Fifty by John Koren. (52) The statistics for the section on the liquor problem in its relation to poverty were secured by 33 Charity Organization Societies representing the same number of cities in 18 states and the District of Columbia.

(52) Koren, "Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem," 1899. The Committee of Fifty is an organization of distinguished private persons, of varied religious and social views, who have supplied the money, engaged expert service, and published the results of a comprehensive research into the liquor question. See Bibliography for the four publications already issued.

The general conclusion of these figures was that of the 29,923 cases, 18.46 per cent owed their poverty to the personal use of liquor, 2.07 per cent to the intemperate habits of one or both parents, .45 per cent to the intemper-ate habits of natural or legal guardians, and 7.39 per cent to the intemperate habits of others, not parents or guardians. The general average percentage of poverty due directly or indirectly to drink was 25.06. Table XIII., rearranged from Koren, shows the direct and indirect effect of the use of liquor by race.

In respect to race, Table XIII. shows conclusively that drink, both as a direct and indirect cause of poverty, is more prevalent among the white than among the colored, almost in the proportion of two to one. The figures for the seven cities containing the largest number of colored applicants are even more favorable to the negro race; and the average (7.1) corresponds quite closely to that of Professor Warner (6.23) already noted.

TABLE XIII. (53) -- Aplicants for Relief as Affected Directly and Indirectly by Use of Liquor, by Color (C.O.S. Records).

It is generally accepted that intemperance is preeminently a masculine vice; and among these applicants for relief, only 12.5 per cent of women as against 22.7 per cent of men have become dependent through drink. It is, however, when we note the percentages of drink as an indirect cause that the misery of women on account of it becomes apparent. Of the female applicants, 17 per cent as compared with 3.8 per cent of the male applicants owed their condition to the intemperate habits of others. (55)

Table XIV. exhibits the intemperate habits of applicants for relief by nativity. The comparison of nationalities is somewhat unsatisfactory, owing to the small numbers represented. For instance, Poland, Italy, Russia, and Austria, which show the smallest percentages of poverty due to liquor, show also small total numbers. If, however, we take the other countries which are represented largely, we see that Ireland leads with 29 per cent and is followed by Canada and Scotland with 21 per cent and England with 18 per cent. The native-born, of whom a majority are of foreign parentage, divide the table in the middle with a percentage of 17, followed by Sweden 16 per cent and Germany 14 per cent. It is noticeable that the order of countries is only slightly altered in column 4 which represents the poverty indirectly due to intemperance.

In order to ascertain the relation of intemperance to pauperism Mr. Koren obtained statistics of 8420 inmates of fifty institutions (mostly almshouses) in ten states. As regards race, sex, and nationality, the results correspond very closely to those of the investigation of applicants for relief. The total number of negro paupers was only 285, and less than half as many colored as white paupers owed their condition to personal use of liquor and to the intemperate habits of others. The same nationalities appear in practically the same order as in Table XIV., but the percentages for pauperism due to personal use and intemperance of others are uniformly much higher. The general average percentage of pauperism due directly or indirectly to drink is 37 per cent, with 5.23 per cent of the total number of cases unaccounted for.

TABLE XIV. -- APPLICANTS FOR RELIEF AND INTEMPERANCE BY NATIVITY (C.O.S. RECORDS), REARRANGED FROM KOREN, pp. 76-80.

In 1895 the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics undertook an investigation of the connection between pauperism and drink in the state pauper institutions, the results of which are corroborated on a larger scale by the Committee of fifty, as shown below: --

PAUPERISM AND INTEMPERANCE.

The only comparable foreign statistics which are available are those of workhouse pauperism in England. (56) Charles Booth found 12.6 per cent of 634 inmates at Stepney, London, to have been pauperized by drink and 21.9 per cent of 736 inmates of St. Pancras. These percentages seem very small when compared with American experience, but Mr. Booth himself said that it was probable that research into the history of these people might disclose a greater connection between pauperism and the public house. (57)

(57) Booth, "Pauperism," etc., p. 11.

Table XV. shows the effect of intemperance in producing destitution and neglect of children. The data of 5136 cases were obtained from three groups of institutions: (1) societies for the prevention of cruelty to children or humane societies which deal with children of the most depraved; (2) state organizations of the National Children's Home Society, under whose treatment come a large number of illegitimate infants, (3) two state public schools which are, in fact, asylums for orphaned and dependent children.

Although the number of colored children represented in Table XV. is too small to be significant of itself, yet the smaller percentage of destitution due to drink is in harmony with statistics previously quoted. Comparing native-born with foreign-born children, there is a difference of 6 per cent in favor of the former; comparing children of native parentage with those of foreign parentage, the difference rises to 13 per cent. As in the case of women, the mere arithmetical fact that nearly one-half the destitution of 5000 children was due to the drinking habits of those hav-ing charge of them does not adequately represent the concomitant misery. Irrespective of transmitted tendencies to degeneration, the children of drunken parents fare badly because of neglect and privation. Whether the mother herself drinks, or is merely linked to a drunken husband, her life during the period of gestation is almost inevitably such as endangers the well-being of the child. The fact that when a large part of the family income goes for liquor, other branches of expenditure must be curtailed, is so obvious that it only needs to be mentioned. Moreover, the irrational and often brutal treatment received by children of the intemperate makes right development almost impossible for them. One fact brought out by the statistics of the Registrar General of England may be given as showing in an extreme instance the perils attending child life when parents drink: a much larger number of children are suffocated in bed on the nights of Saturday and holidays than on other nights of the week. This prompt extinguishing of infant life is hardly a greater misfortune than for the child to grow up with irrational guidance and the evil example of drunken parents.

TABLE XV.
INTEMPERANCE AND DESTITUTION OF CHIDREN (1896-1898).
Arranged from Koren's Tables, Chap. IV.

In addition to being ill nourished and often cruelly treated, such children grow up under the influence of a degenerating personality. Wilson says: --

"Typically the action induced in the brain -by alcohol- is of the nature of a progressive paralysis, beginning with the highest level and its most delicate functions, and spreading gradually downward through the lower. Moral qualities and the higher processes of intelligence are, therefore, first invaded." (58)

Children growing up under the influence of parents subject to such degeneration are not likely to develop the higher qualities at all, since the development of such qualities comes very largely from imitation. The utter lack of foresight, and the impossibility of postponing present gratification for the sake of future gain, is one of the pronounced characteristics of the drunkard, and is also common among the distinctly pauper class.

It has been repeatedly pointed out that the latest social development, especially in the United States, tends to separate the community into two classes, -- the total abstainers and the hard drinkers. The tenser nervous organization of the modern man is in a state of less stable equilibrium than that of his progenitors, who lived largely out of doors, used their muscles in heavy work, ate large quantities of coarse food, and drank large quantities of mildly alcoholic liquor. In America, climatic conditions intensify the tendency indicated. A dry atmosphere and extremes of heat and cold produce nervous diseases unknown to European medical practice, or, at least, known here in advance of their appearance in Europe. (59) It is a matter of common observation that the children of European immigrants usually drink either less or more than their parents, and those who drink resort to the stronger liquors.

The results of the inquiries into the interrelations of poverty, pauperism, and intemperance, made under the auspices of the Committee of Fifty and presented in a most condensed form in the preceding pages, are seen to occupy a middle ground between the extreme views entertained by the older writers and those of Booth and Warner. It is not difficult, indeed, to account for the wide variations of opinion. -- The older opinion was held at a time -- when there was little knowledge of the social and economic causes of poverty -- when it was accepted as inevitable rather than inquired into. Drunkenness was of all causes the most obvious and the most unpleasant, and being intermingled with the others, was therefore liable to be used as an explanation of all the rest.

On the other hand, Charles Booth and Amos G. Warner, representing two different types of scientific observers, were profoundly impressed with the deeper causes of misery and with the necessity of getting at the facts behind such obvious causes as drunkenness. They were inclined consequently to give intemperance no more than its numerical value in apportioning the causes of poverty. Mr. Booth, having set down as statistically true his percentages of 12.6 and 21.9 for drink as a cause of workhouse pauperism, apparently felt that it did not represent the whole truth and thereupon wrote that striking paragraph which has been quoted ever since as the true expression of the effect of drink upon the poor: --

"Of drink in all its combinations, adding to every trouble, undermining every effort after good, destroying the home, and cursing the young lives of the children, the stories tell enough. It does not stand as apparent chief cause in as many cases as sickness and old age; but if it were not for drink, sickness and old age could be better met." (60)

The general average of 15.98 per cent, in Table VI., indicating quantitatively the proportion of intemperance among applicants for relief, was taken from Charity Organization Society records, made with the purpose of showing all the causes and for the use of charity workers, and the indirect effect of drink was not included. Of the five Charity Organization Societies which furnished Professor Warner with data on the causes of poverty in 1890-1892 four also supplied Mr. Koren with data on the relation of drink to poverty in 1896-1898. The difference in the figures of these societies taken in the one case incidentally to another object, and in the other with the utmost care -- sometimes by a specially trained person -- for the sole purpose of ascertaining the proportion of intemperance among applicants for relief, is considerable, amounting in three cities to a total excess of 9 per cent, in Koren's tables. This fact alone would account for the difference of 3 per cent between "Warner's general average of 15.2 and Koren's of 18 per cent for drink as a direct cause.

DRINK AS A CAUSE OF POVERTY.
Charity Organization Society Records.

Whatever the reasons for these differences of statistics, the experience of many American charity workers seems to corroborate Mr. Koren's results, especially as to the indirect influence of drinking habits in producing need. The frequent use of such phrases as "a great curse and the cause of great misery," "intemperance is a conspicuous factor," etc., in the reports of charity workers whose phraseology is otherwise restrained, indicates a strong conviction. Professor Devine sums up forcibly the attitude of those who are in daily contact with distress, when he says: --

"It is a conservative estimate that one-fourth of all cases of desti-tution with which private agencies have to deal are fairly attributable to intemperance. This estimate includes only the cases in which there is an obvious connection between the use of alcohol and the dependent condition in which the family is found. The question as to how much should be added to cover the cases in which there is only a partial or indirect responsibility is a matter for conjecture, and estimates on this point are likely to differ according to the standpoint of the one who makes them. It is a matter for conjecture also, and estimates differ here again, as to what other evil consequences, aside from poverty and destitution, are due to drink. That there is an endless train of evils aside from the burden of pauperism and dependence which it entails, cannot be gainsaid. Insanity, suicide, and death in other forms result from the use of alcohol, in many instances in which no question of relief arises. Cruelty, neglect, and unhappiness result directly from the use of alcohol in families which are by no means near the verge of dependence. Crimes are committed under its stimulus, and demoralizing associations are formed or strengthened under conditions in which the use of alcohol is an important element, and it makes easier the path to vice and the indulgence of every debasing appetite. Certain diseases, such as tuberculosis and pneumonia, are far more likely to attack those who are subject to alcoholism, and it greatly impedes the recovery of those who are attacked. These consequences are not exhausted in the lives of the intemperate themselves, but are bequeathed to posterity in various forms of degeneracy, spiritual and physical." (61)

In this paragraph Professor Devine was writing, not of confirmed inebriety, but of the effect of intemperance upon those who, being on the poverty line, came intermittently to the Charity Organization Societies for relief. The effects of drink are most plainly traced in the classes not yet pauperized. It is among artisans and those capable of earning good wages that the most money is spent for beer and whiskey, and the most vitality burnt out by it. Rowntree and Sherwell estimate that among the English working-classes, six shillings per week represents the average expenditure for drink, of families whose income ranges between twenty-one and thirty shillings. (62) The American negroes, though relatively temperate laborers, are kept poor, or at least poorer than they would otherwise be, by occasional extravagance in this direction. A colored man of very large experience estimates that poor "renters" in the South, corresponding to laborers in the North, spend an average of fifty cents a week (buying ten drinks) or about $25 a year for whiskey, that is, "One bale of five-cent cotton, raised by very hard labor on three acres of land, goes to whiskey. Ten bales of cotton being an average yield from a one-mule farm of thirty acres in Lowndes County, the renter tithes his income to the liquor seller." (63)

(63) Koren, "Economic Aspects," etc., p. 163; see also More, "Wage-earners Budgets," p. 140.

In enumerating the effects of intemperance it must not be overlooked that it is at once an effect and a cause, a symptom and a source of degeneration. In a majority of cases where the drinking habit has become uncontrollable, it is a symptom of deeper disorganization. Dr. Brantwaite, His Majesty's Inspector under the Inebriates Act, in charge of all inebriates under legal detention in England, states his conviction in the following paragraph: --

"The more I see of habitual drunkards, the more I am convinced that the real condition we have to study, the trouble we have to fight and the source of all the mischief, is inherent defect in mental mechanism, generally congenital, sometimes acquired. Alcohol, far from being the chief cause of habitual inebriety, is merely the medium which brings into prominence certain defects which might otherwise have remained hidden, but for its exposing or developing influence. In the abstinence of alcohol the same persons, instead of meriting the term inebriate, would have proved unreliable in other ways. They would have been called ne'er-do-wells, profligates, persons of lax morality, excitability, or abnormally passionate individuals, persons of melancholic tendencies or eccentric. I do not believe that any drunkard of all the 8000 or more I have known has voluntarily and of intention made himself so; on the contrary, I am convinced that all who possess a sufficiently developed mental equilibrium to appreciate the seriousness of their condition have urgently and honestly desired to live a sober life, and have fought to this end and failed in a struggle against weakness, the strength of which a normal man is quite incapable of realizing." (64)

In corroboration of this opinion, Dr. Brantwaite presents the accompanying table of 2277 inebriates committed to special care, previous to 1907: --

TABLE XVI.
INEBRIATES UNDER LEGAL DETENTION: ADMITTED TO REFORMATORIES.
Classification according to Mental State. (65)

He concludes that in at least 62 per cent of these cases mental defect or disease was the cause of their inebriety; that a majority of insane inebriates became alcoholic as a result of their tendency to insanity, not insane as a result of alcoholism; that in the case of defective inebriates, there is commonly present the same physical abnormalities as are found among the feeble-minded, only in a less degree, and that their drunkenness is the direct result of mental defect for which they are not virtually -- though legally -- responsible. In these cases, Dr. Brantwaite enumerates three characteristic mental symptoms: an impaired moral sense, imperfect control over impulse, and defective power of judgment -- the first being the one most likely to have existed previous to drunken habits. He continues: --

"The early history of all cases where this symptom is marked has justified a probability of congenital origin. Odd and peculiar from birth, these persons have always seemed incapable of acting like other people. There is often a history during childhood of fits, chorea, or other neuroses; as children they have proved uneducable, and as adults unemployable from incapacity to learn the details of a wage-earning occupation. They appear to be unable to tell the truth and cannot be made to see any reason why they should do so. They are filthy in habits, and require supervision, even force to insure a moderate amount of cleanliness when under detention. They do not care in the least for the opinion of others in matters relating to conduct, nor can they be induced to see any reason why dictation from others should be obeyed." (66)

The number of habitual drunkards is, however, comparatively small, and destitution occasioned by them, though serious enough, is not the real menace to society. On the other hand it must be acknowledged that by far the larger proportion of those who drink do not fall into distress. It is only when it accompanies idleness, incompetence, sickness, neglect of family obligations, that the effects of casual and social drinking become obviously destructive. When we know why the average man drinks, "we shall be on the road to thorough temperance reform. Does the laboring man spend his margin in drink because of exhaustion in his trade, or because he has nowhere to go except to the saloon, or because it is the only cheap and pleasurable mental stimulus open to him? Mr. Booth mentions that the bicycle has been a preventive of drinking among clerks in London. To sum up: intemperance, as a cause of dependence, is symptomatic; on the one hand of defect and deterioration of personal character, on the other of those wasting, monstrous, and oppressive social conditions which produce abnormal appetites and antisocial conduct.

In the tables of the causes of poverty, the column next to the one giving the percentages for intemperance includes under "other moral defects" the very small number of cases in which poverty has been traced directly to "immorality." This term is here used to stand for sexual licentiousness, or other perversion of the sexual instinct. But the small number of cases of poverty directly attributable to this factor in no wise reflects its importance. Careful observers believe it to be a more constant and fundamental cause of degeneration than intemperance. It certainly produces degeneration of a more or less pronounced type in a much larger number of persons. It persists almost to the end in the most degenerate stock, while at the same time it is operative among the healthier classes. A reference to the accounts quoted later on, describing the habits of the Rooneys, the Jukes, and the Ishmaels, will show that in these distinctly pauper families sexual vice plays a part in degradation more important than intemperance.

The medical profession has given us even less of scientific exposition of the degeneration which results from perversion of the sexual instincts than of that which comes from the abuse of stimulants and narcotics. The changes which must undoubtedly take place in the structure of the nervous and circulatory systems, as a consequence of self-abuse or sexual excess, have not been sufficiently studied. Venereal disease has been treated at length, but the effect upon the physical and mental man of vice as vice has been neglected. The great bulk of literature existing upon the subject is simply the output of advertising quacks.

No boy among boys, or man among men, can have failed to have evidence thrust upon him showing that a very great amount of vitality is burnt out by the fires of lust. Among the rougher classes of day laborers upon railroads, in quarries, and even upon the farms, the whole undercurrent of thought, so far as conversation gives evidence of it, is thoroughly base and degrading. In many cases inefficiency certainly results from the constant preoccupation of the mind with sensual imaginings. At the present day, a given amount of such preoccupation will diminish a man's industrial efficiency more than ever before, because of the increasing importance of the mental element in all work. If a man has brute strength, he can shovel dirt quite passably, even though his thoughts are elsewhere. But most of the occupations of the present require alertness and sustained attention. Railroad day laborers, and others of a similar class, are very commonly kept from rising in the industrial scale by their sensuality, and it is this and the resulting degeneration that finally converts many of them into lazy vagabonds. The inherent uncleanness of their minds prevents them from rising above the rank of day laborers, and finally incapacitates them even for that position. It may also be suggested that the modern man has a stronger imagination than the man of a few hundred years ago, and that sensuality destroys him the more rapidly. A highly developed nervous system makes him a more powerful man, if it is properly used, but it enables him to destroy himself more promptly if that be his tendency.

In addition to the direct effect of the perversion of the sexual instincts must be reckoned the ravages of venereal disease. Among the degraded class it is accounted a mark of manliness to have had syphilis until exposure to it is no longer dangerous, from 25 to 30 per cent of the Juke family were tainted with it. It is this disease cooperating with drunkenness that finally brings the prostitute and her consort through the hospital to the almshouse. There are probably few almshouses in the country where some of the inmates are not paupers in part because of its effects upon them; it is not easy to visit a foundling hospital of any size, or a children's hospital, where this disease is not especially excluded, without finding children in bitter and hopeless misery because of congenital syphilis. The doctors administer remedies which give temporary relief, but the doctors themselves often express a belief that the best thing that can be hoped for such children is an early death.

The following statements made by high scientific authority and published for the information of teachers by the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis sufficiently describe the extent and the effects of venereal disease in this country: --

"Syphilis is estimated by different authorities as affecting from 6 to 18 per cent of the whole population. It is usually very slowly developed, and the final stages may appear as late as fifty or sixty years after infection. It is a curable disease if properly treated for the necessary length of time. That the later lesions are so common is because adequate treatment is often not received, which is of the greatest consequence, since syphilis is the one disease inherited in full virulence. 'Gonorrhoea is one of the most widespread and devious of transmissible diseases and more than any other a cause of chronic ill-health and permanent disability' (Osler). This disease, too, is curable if treatment is begun early and persisted in long enough and with sufficient skill. Beyond a certain stage in both sexes there is no cure, although to some cases the possibility of transmission ceases."

"The larger proportion of pelvic troubles among women and of surgery of the pelvic organs is due to gonorrhoea; probably one-half of childless marriages and of 'one-child families' are due to this cause. It is certain that a large proportion of abortions and miscarriages are due to syphilis; also a considerable percentage of early mortality, inferior mentality, degeneracy, and insanity. We have more than 10,000 totally blind from gonorrhoea; this does not include those partially blind from gonorrhoea and syphilis." (67)

The social evil and the diseases resulting from it have been recognized as corrupting and degenerative forces in society for many centuries, but in modern times there has grown up what has been called "a conspiracy of silence" on the part of the press, the clergy, public educators, and even of physicians concerning them. In spite of the fact that these diseases are as virulent and more widespread than smallpox, or leprosy, and that their ultimate victims are innocent women and children, no measures are taken to prevent their inception or their dissemination.

In the fall of 1900, the city of New York was startled by discoveries of the extent and flagrancy of offences against morality and decency in certain districts. At a citizens' meeting a Committee of Fifteen was appointed to institute an inquiry, publish the facts, promote legislation, and suggest measures for lessening the allurements and incentives to vice and crime. Their report took the form of an extensive study of the history of the regulation of vice by Professor Alvin S. Johnson, concluding with an outline of a policy for the control of the social evil in New York. (68) At about the same time the New York Tenement House Commissioners published in their report an account of prostitution as a tenement-house evil. (69) The coincidence of these revelations, with an unusual awakening of interest in venereal diseases among the medical profession both in Europe and America, resulted in the formation of the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis in 1905. (70) For the first time, in this country, this subject is being studied and discussed by laymen as well as physicians of the highest standing without hesitation and without concealment.

(69) De Forest and Veiller, vol. ii., pp. 15-25, 1903.

(70) "Transactions," etc., vol. i., 1906.

Professor Johnson shows that vice, so far from being a constant and invariable element in social life, has varied widely at different periods in response to social, economic, and religious changes, and has a direct relation to war, commercial disturbances, congestion of population, and employment. He infers that since the causes of vice do not operate with uniform force, it is probable that even if vice cannot be eradicated, it can nevertheless be controlled and therefore limited. Modern prostitution is shaped by the industrial and social conditions of city life -- the masculine factor made up of the army of unmarried workers, the feminine factor, of girls and women who have made "a quasi-voluntary choice of prostitution as a means of livelihood." The conditions which develop masculine vice are complex and intimately connected with the cityward movement of population. The country boy, already informed by the vulgar talk of older men, goes to the city; his income for some years will be too small to marry upon; his interests are usually self-centred; the cheap amusements open to him are generally more or less suggestive and he is influenced continually by the prevalent theory that the sex instinct must be satisfied for the sake of health. At the same time the principal check upon conduct -- the opinion of one's neighbors -- is lacking, while the allurements of vice are constantly present.

As for the feminine element, there is a small, probably very small, number who are sexual perverts; but Professor Johnson declares that the victim of force or fraud, or of adverse social and economic conditions, soon reaches a point where she cannot be distinguished from the congenital pervert. By far the larger number of prostitutes were originally not different from normal women; one type is thus described: --

"There is a large class of women who may be said to have been trained for prostitution from earliest childhood. Foundlings and orphans and the offspring of the miserably poor, they grow up in wretched tenements, contaminated by constant familiarity with vice in its lowest forms. Without training, mental or moral, they remain ignorant and disagreeable, slovenly and uncouth, good for nothing in the social and economic organism. When half matured, they fall the willing victims of their male associates and inevitably drift into prostitution." (71)

Another section consists of those whose wages are often not enough for a living, much less to afford any pleasure. These are the "occasional prostitutes" which are said to outnumber the permanent class in Berlin. A third class, more common in American cities, consists of those attracted by the appearance of luxury and ease of the life of a mistress and disinclined to the low-paid and monotonous labor which alone they can perform. These two latter sections without resources or industrial competence are inordinately desirous of marriage, and are, therefore, the more easily induced to become mistresses, or seduced under promise of marriage. It is most significant that not less than one-fourth of the prostitutes in New York City have been domestic servants -- a class of workers who have no normal home life or pleasures of their own and who must go upon the street to be courted. (72)

In the discussion of remedial measures it is customary to enumerate only three ways of dealing with the social evil-absolute freedom, entire prohibition, and reglementation. The first is not to be tolerated in modern society, the second has never been successfully enforced, even supposing that people could be made virtuous by law; and thus there is apparently left only the system of regulation which generally prevails in Europe. There is, in fact, a fourth measure termed the "moral control" of vice which partakes of the essence of both prohibition and regulation. The object of reglementation is to check disease, and its essential features are the periodical examination of the prostitute and treatment in lock hospitals for venereal diseases. (73) Aside from the legal difficulties which would arise in this country if the prostitute would not voluntarily submit to examination and treatment, there is the far greater one of suppressing clandestine prostitution. In those cities of Europe where reglementation is most effectively organized, the clandestine and the unregistered women far outnumber those under the control of the Morals police. Moreover, the public prostitute is not the only or even the chief source of contagion. It is generally conceded that the clandestine prostitute is the more dangerous from a sanitary standpoint, and Dr. Prince A. Morrow says of the masculine factor: --

"The health officer of a port might as well attempt to prevent the importation of infectious disease from a plague infected vessel by quarantining the infected women while permitting the infected men to go free." (74)

Nor does European experience show that reglementation has been to any considerable extent effective in its primary aim of checking disease. Professor Johnson, quoting the most trustworthy authorities, finally concludes that they claim for it "merely a modicum of good, or look upon it as a stock upon which really useful control may be grafted." (75)

Without pursuing further the results of foreign experiments, it is enough to say that reglementation is wholly impracticable for the reason that an American community would be hostile to it. The Anglo-Saxon attitude is illustrated in the English Contagious Diseases Acts in 1866-1877 and the experiment in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1870-1874, which were both overthrown by the extreme opposition of public opinion. Even if practicable and desirable, reglementation involves the arrest of any woman on suspicion, a degree of arbitrary police power, an interference with personal liberty, and a fundamental injustice, which would not be tolerated in this country.

Under the title of "Moral Control," the Committee of Fifteen, and the leaders in the movement for Prophylaxis, have agreed upon certain preventive and ameliorative measures, based upon the elements of agreement in all parties, and making moral rather than sanitary considerations of paramount importance. The Committee of Fifteen recommends: (1) Strenuous efforts to prevent in the tene-ment houses the overcrowding which they believe to be the prolific source of sexual immorality; (2) the provision of purer and more elevating forms of amusement to supplant the attractions which stimulate sensuality; (3) the improvement of the material conditions of the wage-earning class, especially of young wage-earning women; and finally they regard a better system of moral education as an imperative necessity. They point out that in the whole of Greater New York there were in 1902 only twenty-six hospital beds available for women suffering from venereal diseases and recommend an increase of such facilities on grounds of public health. They recommend further that minors who are notoriously debauched be confined in asylums and reformatories; and above all, they recommend a change in the attitude of the law, which at present regards prostitution as a crime. On this point the Committee declares: --

"If we are ever to escape from the present impossible conditions, it seems imperative to draw the distinction sharply between sin and crime.. . .A sin is not less odious because it is not treated as a crime. Sins may even be incomparably more heinous than offences which the law visits with punishment. Nevertheless, some of the most grievous sins are not subjected to legal penalties, simply because it is recognized that such penalties cannot be enforced, and a law on the statute book that cannot be enforced is a whip in the hands of the blackmailer. Corruption in the police force can never be extirpated until this prolific source of it is stopped." (76)

The acceptance of these recommendations as a programme of action involves driving prostitution wholly from tenement houses and the homes of the poor; repressing all obtrusive manifestations of prostitution as a public nuisance; and the creation of a special and select body of Morals Police, analogous to sanitary police, to exercise the duties of repression and surveillance. It does not contemplate the suppression of scattered houses of ill-fame because the Committee believe this to be at present impracticable.

Professor Johnson suggests the prohibition of women in saloons and in dance-halls, wherever immorality becomes conspicuous; that citizens or parents should be able to bring complaint against tenants suspected of harboring vice; the extension of public education, especially to fit young girls for more efficient lines of industry; and, for the protection of the family, a requirement of a health certificate for both parties, before a marriage license may be issued. Dr. Prince A. Morrow not only concurs in all these proposals, but goes farther. He would penalize the transmission of venereal disease on the same grounds that fornication and spitting in public places are forbidden. He points out that venereal diseases, unlike smallpox, for instance, are transmitted by a voluntary act; and he concludes that whether communicated through culpable ignorance, or criminal imprudence, their transmission should be punishable. Dr. Morrow thinks the entering wedge of social control would be the compulsory notification of these diseases by physicians as of other contagious diseases (without the name of the patient) and enforced isolation. But he chiefly emphasizes, as do all other recent American writers, the necessity for the dissemination of knowledge and education in self control, among the young. Since the majority of prostitutes fall before the age of eighteen, and a majority of infected men are infected before twenty-one, the responsibility of parents, and of society, is infinitely greater than that of these ignorant and immature individuals. The far-off remedy lies in the social ostracism of the libertine, and the decline of the double standard for men and women.

After drink-crave and sensuality, we might enumerate a large number of characteristics or habits which result from and result in a tendency to degenerate. On the side of appetites would be the craving for opium, and for various kinds of unwholesome food. On the side of defects, would be all those sufficiently pronounced to have been enumerated in the table of causes, and in addition the mental incapacity to judge wisely in the ordinary business affairs of life. This last is one of the most vexatious causes of poverty with which the ordinary friendly visitor for a charity organization society has to deal. It sometimes manifests itself in the form of extravagance, but oftener in pure blundering, which does not even bring the satisfaction of temporary indulgence. "Against stupidity the gods themselves are powerless." A proverbial saying, which has a very direct bearing on the subject, asserts that "Poor folks have poor ways." This cause is widely operative; yet writers upon social pathology seldom give it distinct treatment, apparently thinking that it is an individual and not a social phenomenon. The social results of it, however, are not to be ignored. The development of modern industries puts upon the judgment of individuals an ever increasing burden. The breaking down of the barriers of custom, the rapid changes in the methods of industry, the increasing amount of purchasing to be done to obtain family supplies, the increased need of wise bargaining in the selling of ser-vices, the extension of the borrowing habit both for good and evil: these and a hundred other features of modern industry tend to add to sobriety and industry as prerequisites of industrial success, a further requisite -- that of good judgment, and a judgment that acts not only surely but promptly. From the proprietary farmer all the way down to the disease-burdened man who decides whether or not he will go to a hospital, mistaken judgments are constantly pushing people toward and across the pauper line. One of the commonest mistakes is an utter failure to appreciate in advance the burden of a debt at compound interest. The chattel mortgage shark, the pawnbroker, and the "instalment plan" houses thrive because of this failure. (77)

Allied to craving on the one hand and to lack of judgment on the other are gambling and speculation, of which Mr. Booth says that they are irrepressible and only to be stopped by changing human nature. In the San Francisco almshouse were found several working women whose savings had all gone in speculation in mining stocks, and among the men a considerably larger number. Betting on the races, buying lottery tickets, and gambling may not appear in the tabulated causes of poverty, but like drink they consume a large portion of the margin which would serve to lift the family out of poverty.

Shiftlessness and inefficiency, the last of the personal characteristics to which special reference need be made, is due to a variety of defects: it may be lack of judgment, stupidity, lack of ambition; in not a few cases to lack of proper training. Often it seems to be the manifestation of undervitalization simply, which in turn may go back to bad heredity, sickness, malnutrition, or bad habits. Whatever its origin, it manifests itself in general incompetence, in lack of the New England faculty of getting along, in want of persistence, in a chronic "ill-luck." A Boston district agent well describes these general incompetents: --

"They are not intelligent enough or strong enough or skilful enough or energetic enough to do work that employers can afford to pay a living wage for or to manage their own income in such a fashion as to make both ends meet; the men and women who are unable to do the simplest thing efficiently, who are unable to spend a single dollar wisely; the men and women who go 'slatting' through life, who are always thinking they can do what they cannot do, or who do not half try to do the things they are set to do -- these are society's burden." (78)

As we have already pointed out in discussing unemployment, the tendency of intermittent and irregular work is to produce a progressive deterioration. The weightiest charge which many vagabonds might bring against the modern industrial organization is that they have become what they are through the effect of involuntary idleness; for idleness, voluntary or involuntary, tends to produce a degeneration, physical, mental, and moral, which perpetuates the condition that begets it. Besides intermittent labor, none of the causes of inefficiency, not even sickness, says Professor Devine, is so important as defective education -- the entire lack of training for some and the wrong kind of training for others. (79)

Thus far we have not needed to inquire whether the evil propensities and bad habits which result in degeneration have come through free choice on the part of the individual, or have been the result of foreordination in the theological or the scientific sense of the term. We have been concerned simply with their interactions and their effects. Ignoring all discussion as to the freedom of the will in any absolute sense of the term, it is our present business to trace causes just as far as they are found to be traceable. As an insurance company is justified in refusing to take a risk upon the life of a man who comes of a sickly family, or is engaged in some peculiarly dangerous occupation, so the student of social science is justified in concluding that certain influences of heredity and environment have an effect upon the character of the individual that is often manifest, and that is frequently to some extent measurable.

From the time of birth, or even from the time of conception, the characteristics of race and of sex are fixed; and these are not without influence on the industrial history of the individual, as our tables show. Beyond this, every man has his own individuality -- the combination of physical and mental peculiarities which make him a different individual from every other. Since, by the law of sex, he has twice as many ancestors as his father or mother had, he could inherit anything which either of them had received. His share from both will form a sort of mosaic, composed of their species and race characters added together and divided by two, plus an approximate half of the personal peculiarities of each.

Dr. David Starr Jordan, in a chapter entitled "The Heredity of Richard Roe," has concisely and admirably stated what is known of heredity, and we shall quote from him certain paragraphs which have a direct bearing on the question of the relative influence of heredity and environment in the production of social degeneration. (80)

"So in the chromatin of his two parent cells Richard Roe finds his Potentialities, his capacities, and his limitations. But latent in these are other capacities and other limitations handed down from earlier generations. Each grandfather and grandmother has some claim on Richard Roe, and, behind these, dead hands from older graves are still beckoning in his direction. . . . The bluer the blood, that is, the more closely alike these ancestors are, the greater will be the common factor, ... in perfect thorough-breeding the individual should have no peculiarities at all.. . .Weakness or badness is more often thoroughbred than strength or virtue. The bluest of blood may run in the veins of the pauper as well as in those of the aristocrat.. . .Too narrow a line of descent tends to intensify weakness. Vigor and originality come from the mingling of variant elements.. . ."

"Again, at the time of Richard Roe's birth, the formula of his father was slowly changed under the reaction toward activity or toward idleness, resulting from his efforts and his environment. Changes constantly arise from the experiences of life, the stress of environment . . . the growth through voluntary effort, the depression from involuntary work or idleness, the degeneration caused by stimulants or vice . . . and each may have left its mark on him. Through these influences every man is changed from what he was or what he might have been to what he is."

"It seems to be true that any great physical weakness on the part of Richard Roe's parents would tend to lower his constitutional vigor, whatever the origin of such weakness might be. If so, such weakness might appear as a large deficiency in his power of using his equipment. His vital momentum would be small. It may be, too, that any high degree of training, as in music or mathematics, might determine in the offspring the line of least resistance for the movement of his faculties...."

"There are many phenomena of transmitted qualities that cannot be charged to heredity. Just as a sound mind demands a sound body, so does a sound child demand a sound mother. Bad nutrition before as well as after birth may neutralize the most valuable inheritance within the germ-cell. Even the father may transmit weakness in development as a handicap to hereditary strength. The many physical vicissitudes between conception and birth may determine the rate of early growth or the impetus of early development. In a sense the first impulse of life comes from such sources outside the germ-cell and therefore outside of heredity. . . . The plan of Richard Roe's life as prepared at birth admits of many deviations. . . . Experiences of life will tend to reduce or destroy some of these elements. Some of them will be systematically fostered or checked by those who determine Richard Roe's education. . . . The Ego, or self, in the life of Richard Roe, is the sum of his inheritance bound together by the resultant of the consequences of the thoughts and deeds which have been performed by him and perhaps by others also. . . . The greater heredity is the heredity made by ourselves. . . . With all this, we may be sure that the stream of Richard Roe's life will not rise much above its fountain. He will have no powers far beyond those potential in his ancestors. But who can tell what powers are latent in these? It takes peculiar conditions to bring any group of qualities into general notice. The men who are famous in spite of an unknown ancestry are not necessarily different from this ancestry. . . Real greatness is as often the expression of the wisdom of the mother as of anything the father may have been or done."

For the purpose of studying hereditary tendencies toward degeneration the points to be especially noted are, then, what Richard Roe receives from his parents of racial and personal qualities, plus the degree of vital momentum determined by the nutrition and conditions of his mother during the period of gestation; and after birth, the environment which his parents and society provide for him. The tendency of children to suffer from certain varieties of bodily and mental weakness the same as or analogous to those of their family stock has long been recognized. Beyond this, occult characteristics, tending to inefficiency and therefore to pauperism, are believed to be transmitted, although their exact nature either in parent or child has not been described.

The transmission of hereditary tendencies to degeneration can most easily be traced where some palpable defect is both the result and evidence of degeneration. In his book on "The Marriages of the Deaf in America," Edward Allen Fay has collected with thoroughness and caution the available facts which show the transmissible character of deafness; and has corroborated the essential conclusions of Professor Alexander Graham Bell. Table XVII. gives the facts collected by him.

TABLE XVII. -- MARRIAGES OF THE DEAF.

Mr. Fay concludes that the married deaf have married deaf rather than hearing partners, chiefly from the sympathy engendered by their condition and only secondarily because of opportunities for acquaintance afforded by the schools for the deaf. On the whole, the marriages of these persons are slightly less productive than ordinary marriages, but their offspring are much more liable to be deaf than those of ordinary marriages in the proportion of 8.6 to .01 per cent.

The table shows that congenitally deaf persons, whether they are married to one another, to adventitiously deaf, or to hearing partners, are far more liable to have deaf offspring than adventitiously deaf persons, the percentage of deaf children of the one ranging from 6 to 25 per cent, in the other from 2.3 to 4.3 per cent. Deaf persons having deaf relatives, however they are married, and hearing persons having deaf relatives and married to deaf partners, are very liable to have deaf offspring. The marriages of the deaf most liable to result in deaf offspring are those in which the partners are related by consanguinity. The extremes of liability are found in the two classes last named in the table, i.e. both partners adventitiously deaf without deaf relatives having .3 per cent deaf children, while the consanguineous partners had 30 per cent deaf children. (81)

Dr. Strahan regards congenital deafness as a sign of general decay, which, if deepened by intermarriage, must extinguish the family; (82) and he names as transmissible by inheritance -- and as at once results, evidences, and causes of degeneration -- a list of diseases such as insanity, imbecility, epilepsy, drunkenness, deaf-mutism, blindness, cancer, scrofula, tuberculosis, gout, rheumatism, and instinctive criminality. While his facts do not support all of his contentions, they show the interdependence of many of these diseases. The evidence of other medical men as to the transmissibility of certain neurotic tendencies is unanimous. Dr. Samuel G. Howe, in 1848, collected information showing not only the hereditary tendency to idiocy in certain families, but also the interchangeability of this and other forms of degeneration.

TABLE XVIII.
Idiocy in Massachusetts.
Condensed from Howe's Report, 1848.

Table XIX., condensed from Dr. Barr's recent work, shows these same facts more conclusively.

TABLE XIX. -- CAUSES OF FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS. (83)

This table shows that from 40 to 65 per cent of all feeble-mindedness is due to hereditary neuroses, from 8 to 14 per cent to abnormal conditions of the mother during gestation -- a total of 55 to 71 per cent due to prenatal influences. Dr. Barr explains that the divergence in the English and American cases between the percentage attributed to hereditary causes and abnormal condition of the mother is more apparent than real. On this point he says: --

"Poverty, hard work, not infrequent intemperance, and many anxieties added to the sufferings of the period (of gestation) might so press upon the mother as for the time to reduce her to a state of quasi-imbecility. If to this she should have brought to her office of motherhood exhausted vitality, such a condition would provide fruitful soil for such a development of neuroses latent in the mother, as to constitute in her offspring almost a direct inheritance of defect."

Dr. Barr regards tuberculosis as a preeminent cause of defect, in that it lessens all the physical forces and tends to cooperate with any latent neuroses, thus conducing to a condition of "poverty of being" more to be dreaded than the inheritance of actual disease. He finally sums up his view as follows: (84)

"The transmission of imbecility is at once the most insidious and the most aggressive of the degenerative forces, attacking alike the physical, mental, and moral nature, enfeebling the judgment and the will, while exaggerating the sexual impulses and the perpetuation of an evil growth; a growth too often parasitic, ready to unite with any neuroses it may encounter, and from its very sluggishness and inertia refusing to be shaken off, lying latent it may be, but sure to reappear, as Haller recounts, through a century to the fourth and fifth generation."

Dr. Ireland thinks that idiocy is of all mental derangements the most frequently propagated by descent, and agrees with Dr. Barr that the tubercular diathesis is the influence most likely to conduce to it. He points out that the hereditary predisposition alone is, in most cases, insufficient to be the cause of idiocy without the assistance of other influences, and that these influences act with unusual force upon individuals of a neurotic tendency, and they probably determine whether the resultant disease is to be insanity, epilepsy, or deafness, or some other nervous disorder. (85) Again, we learn that the causes of congenital deafness and of epilepsy are much the same as those of idiocy. If we turn to the authorities on epilepsy, we find them reiterating heredity as the chief cause in from one-fourth to one-half of all cases; and as we have already seen, Dr. Brantwaite adds inebriety to the list of these interdependent neuroses. (86) .

(86) p. 80 ante

Mr. F. H. Wines, in discussing a class of unbalanced people on the border line of degeneracy, declares that there is a clear connection between crime, pauperism, insanity, and vice of all sorts, and that all persons of these classes have one characteristic in common: incapacity to govern themselves -- to hold their appetites, instincts, and passions in firm check under the guidance of sound judgment. These unbalanced people are unfit for social life, they cannot make the necessary adjustments, and often make themselves intolerable to others. He finally concludes: "Self-indulgence, egotistic self-gratification, is the root of bitterness from which springs every social ill. It is the mother of degeneracy." (87) Yet the facts just cited would seem to show that it is quite as much the offspring of degeneracy.

When we turn from the palpably defective to measure as accurately as may be the influence of heredity in determining the success or failure of apparently normal individuals, the difficulties are much increased. Homer Folks has remarked that the only experiments which would allow us to test fully the influence of heredity in determining the character of individuals must be made in the cases of infants whose parentage is known and who have been adopted into good homes. (88) The child who is born in an almshouse and grows up there is almost always a pauper, and would probably be so regardless of its heredity, though in such cases the latter agency usually reenforces the influence of environment. The child that grows up in an infant asylum or orphans' home has at most an imperfect opportunity for right development, and the original possibilities of its nature are but faintly reflected by its career. With a child boarded out in a private family, or given to foster parents while still an infant, the conditions of life are better, and more might be inferred if we could compare its characteristics with those of its parents. But usually the facts regarding the parents are matters of inference rather than knowledge, and foster parents are inclined to fix as deep a gulf of ignorance as possible between the child and its progenitors.

Galton has cited the case of D'Alembert, who was a foundling, and put out to nurse as a pauper baby to the wife of a poor glazier: --

"The child's indomitable tendency to the higher studies could not be repressed by his foster-mother's ridicule and dissuasion, nor by the taunts of his schoolfellows, nor by the discouragements of his schoolmaster, who was incapable of appreciating him, nor even by the reiterated, deep disappointment of finding that his ideas, which he knew to be original, were not novel, but long previously discovered by others. Of course we should expect a boy of his kind to undergo ten or more years of apparently hopeless strife, but we should equally expect him to succeed at last; and D'Alembert did succeed in attaining the first rank of celebrity by the time he was twenty-four." (89)

But Galton has not many examples of this sort to fortify his belief: --

"If the eminent men of any period had been changelings when babies, a very fair proportion of those who survived, and retained their health up to fifty years of age, would, notwithstanding their altered circumstances, have equally risen to eminence." (90)

Mr. Ritchie, in commenting on this opinion, suggests that while it might be true that restless, energetic natures, like D'Alembert or Lord Brougham, would make their way up in spite of all obstacles, it may be doubted if such would be the case with a nature like that of Charles Darwin. He suggests that under many circumstances the struggle for existence may be so severe that strength is exhausted, even in the man of ability. (91)

Since there are no data concerning infants of known descent to warrant any final conclusions as to the force of heredity in pushing the individual away from pauperism or toward it, two other methods of observation, less conclusive but more practicable, have been resorted to. The first is to study the family relations of a large number of conspicuously successful or unsuccessful persons, and learn as far as possible what influence heredity has had in bringing about success or failure. The second method is to study the careers of all the children of a family whose members are in general conspicuous for success or failure, in order to see whether or not the manifest tendency can be accounted for by the influence of environment. This second method is, for the most part, only a way of checking the results obtained by the first. As examples of the first we may summarize, (a) the investigations of Galton regarding relationships of the English judges, and of Woods into the heredity of royalty; (b) Booth's summary of the "Stories of Stepney Pauperism"; (c) the investigation of the almshouse population of New York. As illustrating the results to be got by the second method, some account is given of the study of the Jukes of New York and the Ishmaels of Indiana.

Mr. Galton undertook a study of the English judges between the accession of Charles II and the year 1864. He found that a very large number of these men were related one to another, and an analysis of the facts showed that a very eminent man was more likely to have eminent relations than one who had attained a less degree of success. Out of the two hundred and eighty-six judges, more than one in every nine had been either father, son, or brother to another judge, and the other high legal relationships had been even more numerous. "There cannot remain a doubt," he declares, "but that the peculiar type of ability that is necessary to a judge is often transmitted by descent."

Of the persistence of capacity in certain families he says: --

"The names of North and Montagu, among the judges, introduce us to a remarkable breed of eminent men, set forth at length in the genealogical tree of the Montagus, and again that of the Sydneys (see the chapter on "Literary Men"), to whose natural history -- if the expression be permitted -- a few pages may be profitably assigned. There is hardly a name in those pedigrees which is not more than ordinarily eminent; many are illustrious. They are closely tied together in their kinship, and they extend through ten generations. The main roots of this diffused ability lie in the families of Sydney and Montagu, and, in a lesser degree, in that of North."

F. A. Woods, in a recent study of "Mental and Moral Heredity in Royalty," while avoiding some of Galton's scientific errors, has corroborated his general conclusions. Professor Woods has taken individuals merely by blood relationship and included every one about whom anything could be found. His estimates of their mental and moral qualities are based on the adjectives used in describing them by historians and biographers, and are expressed in a series of grades from one to ten, i.e. low to high, for intellect and morals separately. The accompanying table shows briefly his most important results: --

TABLE XX.
Correlation of Mental and Moral Qualities in 608 Royal Persons. (92)

The persons whose grade for virtue was as low, for instance, as 3, averaged 5.43 for intellect, but in proportion as the grades for virtue rose, the grades for intellect averaged higher.

Woods concludes not merely from these figures but from the history of these persons which he carefully investigated that: (1) there is a very distinct correlation in royalty between mental and moral qualities; (2) analyzing all grades, the higher grades for virtues possess a higher average of intellectual grading, and this rise is almost perfectly uniform for both male and female groups taken separately; (3) among royalty, where large families are always desired, maximum fertility, on the whole, runs hand in hand with general superiority, when tested by the number of children who reached the age of twenty-one years, (4) the rich are not more vicious than the poor, and as to morality, royalty does not make a bad showing.

While thus corroborating Galton's general conclusions, Woods goes much farther when he says: --

"The greater survival of the morally superior and the correlation between mental and moral qualities . . . would always tend toward raising their average, if all be considered as a unit and if all branches of descent be traced out; though great and exceptional geniuses might be less frequently expected.. . .In the inheritance of mental and moral excellence we see ground for a belief in the necessary progress of mankind."

In contrast to these instances of conspicuously successful families the following details of the degenerate Rooney family are reprinted from Charles Booth's "Stories of Stepney Pauperism": --

"Martin Booney, aged 86, now in Bromley Workhouse, married Eliza King, and this family has been prolific in paupers.

"First there is Mary Rooney, the wife of Martin's brother James, who was deserted by him in 1867, and has had relief in various forms since, including residence in the sick asylum for several years. She also applied on behalf of her married daughter, Mrs. Wilson, and her son Michael appears on the books; but with this branch we do not go at present beyond the second generation.

"The old man Martin, who is now blind, applied for admission in 1878. His wife was then in hospital, having broken her leg when intoxicated. He had been a dock laborer, and had received £21 from the company on breaking a leg in 1857. He was admitted to Poplar Workhouse. A month later his wife, who is twenty-four years his junior, came out of hospital, and was also admitted. The relieving officer makes a note that he does not know a more drunken, disreputable family than this one. He has seen the woman 'beastly drunk' at all times of the day. From this time the old man remains in the house; but the woman goes out several times, and when out, was more than once seen in the streets in a drunken condition. She works sometimes at the lead-works, sleeping occasionally with her sons, at other times in various places -- water-closets, on stairs, etc. When her son Patrick was sent to prison for two months, she went into the house. In 1888 she absconded, but in March, 1889, applied for readmission; she had fallen down and cut her face on the Saturday night before.

"This couple had three children, Patrick, James, and Bridget. Patrick, born in 1853, by trade a stevedore, is now in Poplar Workhouse. He was living with his mother in 1886, and she made application for medical attendance for him. He was suffering from rheumatism. He became worse, and was sent to the sick asylum; was discharged, and again admitted a month or two later. Next year he was sent to Bromley Workhouse. He bears a bad character, and was in prison two months in 1888, and had one month in 1889 for attempting to steal some ropes. On coming out of prison he again applied for admission to the workhouse, and was sent to Poplar. He had a bad leg. He got work on the day he was discharged from the sick asylum, injured his leg, and was readmitted to workhouse. He served fourteen or fifteen years in the Royal Marines, and was discharged in 1885 for striking a petty officer. He was for this sentenced to six months' imprisonment by court-martial.

"James, the second son, is a laborer, not married. He used to live with a woman named O'Reill, but left her, or she him, and is at present living with another woman.

"Bridget, the eldest, born in 1847, married John Murdock, a brick-layer's laborer, eight years older than herself, and there are four children, all boys. Murdock deserted his wife several times, and has been sent to prison for it. She in turn left him in 1877, and has been living with another man since. After this he was in Bromley House with the children. The two eldest were emigrated to Canada in 1880. The man's sister married Richard Bardsley, whose mother, a widow, is living at Bromley, and whose brother and brother's wife both had relief there." (93)

Another degenerate group is described in the study of the inmates of the almshouses of New York, made by representatives of the State Board of Charities in the early seventies. At that time many insane and many children and many of the defective classes were still in the local almshouses. In the rural communities it was found possible to get information as to the relationships of these persons with tolerable fulness, while in the cities little could be learned bearing upon the subject. Although the classes under investigation are those in which the ties of relationship are peculiarly loose and untraceable, yet it was found possible to collect very conclusive facts as to the influence of heredity in perpetuating pauperism. Of the 12,614 persons examined, it was ascertained that 397, or nearly 3.15 per cent, were the offspring of pauper fathers; 1361, or 10.79 per cent, of pauper mothers. The dependence dated back to the third generation in 55 cases on the paternal, and 92 cases on the maternal side. 1122 had (living or dead) pauper brothers; 951, pauper sisters; 143, pauper uncles; and 133, pauper aunts.

The total number of families was 10,161. The total number of persons in these families, including three generations (living and dead) who were known to have been dependent upon public charity, was 14,901. The total number of the insane in the same families (living and dead), 4968; the total number of idiots in the same families (living and dead), 844; and the total number of inebriates in the same families (living and dead), 8863. The number of heads of families in the poorhouses at the time of inquiry, consisting of both parents, was 2746; these were said to have in all 7040 living children. The condition of these children were stated to be as follows: in poorhouses, 1010; in asylums, 149; in hospitals, 2; in refuges, 29; in prisons and penitentiaries, 9; bound out, 346; self-supporting, 4586; condition unascertained, 909. Thus about 22 per cent of the children of poorhouse parents were found to be of the dependent or delinquent classes. Taking only those whose condition was ascertained, the percentage of those who were a charge upon the public rises to a little more than 25. It should also be noted that a considerable number of those self-dependent at the time would probably with advancing years become public charges; and while some of those in a condition of dependency would perhaps eventually become self-supporting, they would hardly become so as a permanent thing. It is doubtful if half these children would get through life without some taint of dependency.

Two investigations have been made in this country into the histories of individuals descended from distinctly pauper families. (94)

The first, conducted by Mr. E. L. Dugdale, concerning the family of the Jukes, doubtless included many of the same persons or their progenitors as those found in the New York almshouses in 1875. (95) The Juke family has been traced back to a man whom Dugdale calls Max, a descendant of the early Dutch settlers, born between the years 1720 and 1740. He is described as a hunter and fisher, a hard drinker, jolly and companionable, averse to steady toil, working hard by spurts and idling by turns, becoming blind in his old age, and entailing his blindness upon his children and grandchildren. Two of his sons married two of the Juke sisters, of whom there were six in all. The progeny of five of them have been traced with more or less exactness through five generations. The number of descendants registered includes 540 individuals who were related by blood to the Jukes, and 169 connected with the family by marriage or cohabitation; in all 709 persons of all ages, alive and dead. The aggregate of this lineage reaches, says Mr. Dugdale, probably 1200 persons, but the dispersions that have occurred at different times have prevented the following up and enumeration of many of the lateral branches. They grew up in the rural districts of New York, and outdoor life probably aided the degenerate stock to resist the tendencies to extinction. The family, as indicated by the statement of its origin, may be considered distinctly American.

From the statistical summary of the facts collated by Mr. Dugdale, it appears that, whether we consider pauperism, or crime, or harlotry, or prostitution, this family produced a number of dependents and delinquents out of all proportion to the numbers of individuals it contributed to the population. For instance, taking only the cases of ascertained dependence in the Juke family, it is shown that pauperism was nearly seven times as common in this family as in the population of the state at large. Under the head of X, Mr. Dugdale classes all families not related to the Jukes who married into the family; taking people of the Juke blood simply, pauperism was 7.37 times as common among them as in the population as a whole; taking X blood only, that is, those families that married into the Juke family, pauperism was only 4.89 times as common as in the total population. Of the adult women of Juke blood 52.40 per cent are found to have been harlots, while only 41.76 per cent of the women of the X blood were found to be such. Turning to the matter of crime, there are within the family itself some distinctly criminal and some distinctly pauper strains. Intermarriage between people of the Juke blood, that is, breeding within the family, intensified the tendency to pauperism, while marriage with non-related stocks usually resulted in a larger proportion of criminals among the descendants. This is probably to be accounted for by the greater constitutional vigor that resulted from marriage with non-related groups. Since pauperism rests upon weakness of some sort, the tendency to degeneration is intensified by in-and-in breeding.

Leaving the basis of ascertained fact, Mr. Dugdale tried to calculate the cost to society of the entire family of the Jukes, assuming that they number about twelve hundred persons of characters similar to the careers of those he had ascertained. He estimated that in seventy-five years the family cost the community over a million and a quarter of dollars, without reckoning the cash paid for whiskey, or taking into account the entailment of pauperism, crime, and disease of the survivors in succeeding generations.

The second investigation of a group of pauper relatives by Oscar C. McCulloch, of Indianapolis, was suggested by Mr. Dugdale's study of the Jukes, and modelled in some sort after that study, but it has not the scientific accuracy or completeness of its model. The following passage from "The Tribe of Ishmael" (96) characterizes the family sufficiently for our purpose: --

"Members of this extensive group have had a pauper record in Indianapolis since 1840. They have been in the almshouse, the House of Refuge, the Woman's Reformatory, the penitentiaries, and have received continuous aid from the township. The Ishmaels are intermarried with 250 other families of similar habits and tendencies. In the family history are murders, a large number of illegitimacies, and out of the 1092 individuals whose cases have been investigated, 121 are known to have been prostitutes. The members of the family are generally diseased. The children often die young. They live by petty stealing, begging, ash-gathering. In summer they 'gypsy,' or travel in wagons east or west. We hear of them in Illinois about Decatur, and in Ohio about Columbus. In the fall they return. They have been known to live in hollow trees on the river-bottoms, or in empty houses. Strangely enough they are not intemperate. The individuals already traced are over 5000, interwoven by descent and marriage. They underrun society like devil-grass."

Of this pauper family, Mr. McCulloch said he had seen three generations of beggars among them; each child tended to revert to the same life when taken away, and he knew of only one who had escaped and become an honorable man.

If the results of these five studies -- two of conspicuously successful, and three of conspicuously degenerate groups -- should be accepted at their apparent face value, the conclusion would be inevitable that heredity is the determining factor in any career; and yet a critical examination of them will show a number of sources of error. The first of these is the loose and confusing use of the term "heredity." Heredity, as commonly used, means that which the individual has at birth; but this equipment, according to the scientist, is from two sources: ancestral, that is, that which he receives from the uniting germ-cells of his parents, and second, that contributed by his mother during the period of gestation. In the table on p. 99 it appears that from 8 to 14 per cent of all feeble-mindedness is the result of the inadequacy of the mother, and it is not denied that a large part of this is due to poverty and unhappiness of her environment. Although a transmitted quality, it may be due to environment rather than heredity.

In such studies the fact is often ignored that the child inherits, in most cases, an environment that tends to perpetuate his innate qualities. Mr. Booth, in his study of Stepney pauperism, could not separate "pauper heredity and association." The children of the Rooneys, the Jukes, and the Ishmaels, unless removed at birth from family associations, had no chance whatever of escaping a degenerate career. Contrariwise, the royal babies had not only the best physical care, but every opportunity for education, and -- most important of all -- they were disciplined and guarded by superior people.

Again, confessedly, in most of these studies, no account is taken of the members of the family of whom nothing was known. Mr. Dugdale ascertained something of the history of 709 individuals, but in estimating the cost of this family to the state of New York he "assumed" that 500 more, of whom he knew nothing, were equally degenerate. It is an assump-tion equally tenable that the reason they could not be found was because they had escaped from their wretched environment and had been absorbed in the decent but inconspicuous average. In the study of New York almshouse inmates, 10,000 families were represented, and 14,000 persons were known to have been dependent in three generations, but the sum total of persons in these families in the first generation alone could not be less than 50,000 persons. In one generation, therefore, the unknown element is more than twice the number of the known. But perhaps the most fundamental error underlying the deductions commonly made from such studies is that heredity and environment are independent forces, each impelling the individual in a different direction. Of the contradictory notions about the relation of society to the individual, arising from this erroneous conception, Professor Charles H. Cooley says; --

"A man's nature is like a seed, and his circumstances like the soil and climate in which the seed germinates and grows; the co-working of the two is indispensable to every vital process whatever, and they are so different in their functions that they cannot without inaccuracy be said to be in opposition. It would be absurd to ask whether the seed or the soil predominates in the formation of the tree.. . . Rather we may say that a child -- to improve a little on the first comparison -- is like a vine whose nature is to grow, but to grow not in any pre-determined direction, as east or west, up or down, but along whatever support it finds within reach. We have emulation by nature, but the direction in which emulation will lead us depends entirely upon the ideals suggested to us by our social experience. The well-nurtured boy emulates his own father and George Washington, but the child of a criminal, for precisely similar reasons, emulates his father and Blinkey Morgan or some other illustrious rascal. It is not necessary to suppose any organic difference between the two. . . .

"The point is, that a social career is not the sum and resultant of two forces similar in kind but more or less opposite in direction; it comes by the intimate union and cooperation of forces unlike in kind and hence not comparable in direction or magnitude. So soon as a child is born, the nature he brings with him begins to unite with the world into which he comes to form an indivisible product; that is to say, a character and a career. The union of nature and nurture is not one of addition or mixture but of growth, whereby the elements are altogether transformed into a new organic whole. One's nature acts selectively upon the environment, assimilating materials proper to itself; while at the same time the environment moulds the nature, and habits are formed which make the individual independent, in some degree, of changes in either.

"It may seem that one does, after all, select the objects of his imitation and emulation, and that in this way the individual nature determines its own destiny as moral or criminal. But this is only true with many limitations and conditions. Some of us are much freer than others and some periods of life afford more freedom than other periods; but no man at any time has anything like unrestricted freedom in the choice of the influences that control his life. A real freedom cannot exist until the individual is born into a world where there is opportunity for the development of his highest faculties through access to all the necessary influences. There are many children now growing up who are no more free to choose a moral career than an American baby is free to speak the Chinese language." (97)

It must be concluded that the attempt to attribute the social career of an individual chiefly to heredity on the one hand or to circumstances on the other, and to apportion to each an approximate per cent of influence, is a matter of scientific interest rather than practical value at the present time to those engaged in social reforms. That there are children so instinctively degenerate that neither instruction nor discipline can restore them to normality, is certainly true; but their number is relatively very small. It is even more certain that a large part of the degeneration which is dealt with by philanthropy could have been mitigated, if not wholly prevented, by a good environment. Professor Woods, in the endeavor to explain the overweening influence of heredity in the case of royalty, suggests that it may be that environment is most powerful in the lowest orders of nature, and that heredity becomes more and more influential in the higher orders. Whatever may be thought of this hypothesis it is undoubtedly true that the standard of fitness for those who are to survive and the environment which is to intensify or nullify their heredity tendencies are both within the control of a civilized society, and consequently, subject to change and improvement.

CHAPTER IV.
SOME CHARACTERISTIC SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION.

In order to give any complete view of the social and industrial influences which tend to push the individual below the poverty line, it would be necessary to review nearly the whole of political economy, descriptive and theoretical; but we shall concern ourselves at present only with some of the more conspicuous external conditions which produce incapacity and degeneration in the individual. We must therefore pass by without consideration all the poverty-begetting causes that reside in the fluctuation of the purchasing power of money, although many concrete examples could be given of families pushed from the propertied class even across the pauper line by this influence. Neither can we concern ourselves with those changes in industry which have displaced large numbers of individuals, although presumably benefiting the community as a whole, and even laborers as a class. Neither can we take up the undue power of class over class, although it results in conditions which tend to degeneration in the individual, and may push him below the line of self-dependence; but our view for the most part must be limited to the direct influence of occupation and uncertain employment upon health, character, and capacity.

The economic saving which could be made by the conservation of human strength, the prolongation of life, and the prevention of disease, has recently been demonstrated statistically by Frederick Hoffmann. He estimates that the average annual net gain to society of each male wage-earner employed in manufacturing and mechanical industries is three hundred dollars; and has collated the approximate value of workmen of different grades of efficiency for the years from 15 to 65. Table XXI. condensed from this calculation will serve to illustrate the principle.

TABLE XXI.
The economic value of industrial labor and life. (98)

From this theoretical estimate it is possible to calculate the economic loss due to premature death or impaired efficiency as the result of illness. If the wage-earner should die at the age of 35, the net loss to society would be, according to his wage-earning capacity, $6590, or $10,395, or $17,425. In addition to this there is the strain on the family resources for medical and funeral expenses, and if the family is driven to apply for charity, there is the cost of relief. Rowntree ascertained that 15 per cent of the primary poverty in York was due to the death, or disability of the wage-earner; at least 25 per cent of the applicants for relief in cities in the United States are widows, and in 20 per cent of all cases treated by the New York Charity Organization Society in 1905, a part of the relief given was to improve the physical condition of the family. The total economic loss and expense entailed upon society by the death or disability of an adult wage-earner is from ten to twenty thousand dollars. Even a man of sixty is potentially worth one thousand dollars to society in economic gain, not to speak of his greater value to his family.

A relatively small but permanent condition of industry in modern times, which tends to produce a residual class, is the rising standard of efficiency. An increasing amount of heavy work formerly done by men is now done by machinery. Although there may be ultimately an increase in the number of laborers employed in industries in which this takes place, yet not all the workmen once employed in them can find a place. Professor Seligman says: --

"The immediate result is often a temporary over-supply in the particular trade and the discharge of workmen who for the time being, and until they finally drift to new openings, swell the ranks of the unemployed. One of the most serious problems of the modern industrial system is how to mitigate the evils of this transition period." (99)

Another phase of a rising standard of efficiency which excludes the least competent, especially the foreign immigrants in America, is the swifter pace demanded of workmen. In any group of laborers, as in draught horses, the gait has been adjusted to the hours of labor required and the expenditure of energy demanded.

In proportion as machine processes supersede the heavier manual processes, and as the hours of labor are shortened, the pace is quickened -- men must think faster in order to tend machinery, as a rule, than to perform manual labor. Among a body of laborers accustomed in their own country to manual labor, there will always be a certain number who cannot speed themselves up to the intensity required in America. Mere strength and sinew, if not accompanied by the adaptability of a high nervous organization, may, therefore, be at a discount in the modern labor market.. (100)

Along with these tendencies has come the formation of trades unions. The development of modern industry has forced higher organization; and just as Franklin said to the thirteen colonies, so now the conditions of industry say to the laborer, "join or die." Those who in consequence of conditions or character cannot organize, and who for the most part belong to the ranks of low-skilled labor, find it constantly more and more difficult to maintain themselves. Although at the start they may have possessed a degree of efficiency that formerly would have won them place and living, they are now unable to get work, and through involuntary idleness their incapacity is intensified and perpetuated.

The most palpable means by which occupation lessens the capacity of the individual is accident. The industry in which this is most conspicuous is transportation, and no country in the world offers more illustrations of such injury to railroad employees than the United States, as will be seen by reference to Table XXII.

The figures vary from year to year. For example, Denmark's railways killed no passengers in 1903-1904, but did kill one for 1904-1905. Tasmania killed none in 1903 and Victoria only one to twenty million journeys.

TABLE XXII.
Railway accidents, (101) 1902-1904.

Mr. Parsons comments as follows upon these figures: --

"It appears from these figures that railroad travel is safest in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria-Hungary, and Australia, that it is more dangerous in Great Britain than in any of the above-named countries, and that in the United States it is most dangerous of all; about six times as dangerous as in Germany, seventeen times as dangerous as in Belgium, three times as dangerous as in France, and four times as dangerous as in Great Britain. In the United States the control by the law is not effective, and we see. . .the tendency to look first, last, and all the time at the cost and to avoid the expenditure necessary to abolish grade crossings, etc., if they think it will be cheaper to pay damages."

Many of these accidents occur because the railway companies do not wish to go to the expense of newer equipment, such as block signals and automatic couplers; and others because of excessively long hours of labor, reaching, in emergencies, even to twenty or thirty hours of continuous duty. Not the least serious aspect of these injuries is the fact that railway employees are comparatively young men, at the age of highest economic value to their families and to the state.

One of the largest Life Insurance Companies in the United States estimates the fatal accident rate, as a whole, from 80 to 85 to every 100,000 of the population. The percentage of fatal to total accidents varies from 2.1 in factory labor to 40.2 per cent in accidents from boiler explosions. Assuming that 25 are injured to one killed on the average, there is the result that not less than 1,600,000 persons are killed or injured annually in this country. And this does not take into account minor accidents. It seems to be the experience of accident insurance companies that the ratio of fatal to non-fatal accidents claims are as one to one hundred. (102)

Many of these cases were probably provided for by benefit associations maintained by the men or by the relief work of the companies; but such relief is always partial and temporary, and of course makes no atonement to the industry of the country as a whole for the amount of personal capacity destroyed. It would not usually be easy to trace pauperism in a given case to an accident on a railroad, although the author has himself been called to deal with some cases of destitution resulting directly from such accidents; but frequently pauperism does not result until years afterwards, when a widowed mother has broken down in the attempt to support her family, or when some aged or incapable relative has been turned adrift from the incapacity of the family to maintain him longer.

In 1907 Francis H. McLean made a report of a detailed investigation of 736 cases of industrial accident leading to dependency, which had come to the notice of charitable societies. The nature of these disabilities is shown in the following list: (103) --

It is of special significance that about one-half of these accidents occurred to men under 40, belonging to the unskilled trades, whose wages were less than $15 per week. Of the total number 421, or 57 per cent, were permanently disabled: Amputation of fingers and toes, 7; amputation of legs, feet, hands, or arms, 20; brain injured, 10; partially crippled, 8; paralyzed, 5; blinded, 53, permanently injured by lead poisoning, 2; spine injured, 2, internal injuries, 3; loss of hearing, 1; deaf and dumb, 1, hernia resulting in partial loss of wage-earning ability, at least 250; insane, 21; killed, 45. What the inevitable cost of public and private relief for these persons and their families would be, it is impossible to estimate, but there had been spent already an average of $50 per person in 92 cases, 111 had received hospital care for periods of one month to one year, 53 blind and 20 insane persons must be supported, and there were varying amounts of medical expenditure for all the remainder. But this is not all; there was a marked deterioration in a considerable number of families, resulting from these injuries, shown in chronic dependency, intemperance not before present, lowering of standards of living, widow's health broken, family disrupted, habits of begging developed, savings used, furniture pawned, and families evicted.

Accidents in mining, though very common, have not been statistically tabulated as thoroughly as railway injuries. The occurrence of four mining disasters within a period of less than three weeks, in December, 1907, in which alone 650 persons were killed, will illustrate the economic loss in wage-earning capacity and the consequent burden of dependence. In one town of 3000 inhabitants the monthly wage cut off amounted to $17,500; 130 resident families and probably 120 families in the old country were left without means of support.

It is acknowledged that a large part of the injuries incident to such occupations as transportation, mining, and factory labor are preventable, and if there were as much direct profit in life-protecting devices as there is in inventions for economy of production, the number of such catastrophes would rapidly decline. With the aspects of prevention and compensation we are not at the moment concerned, but there is already promise of remedy in legislation making employers liable in industrial insurance and in propositions for workingmen's compensation, the cost of which will be added to the expense of production and finally borne by the consumer.

There is a destruction of personal capacity and a strong tendency to degeneration in a large number of occupations because of the disease-begetting conditions that surround the work. Much more has been done in England and European countries in searching out the source of diseases that have their origin in occupation than in this country. From the time Ramazzini published his memorable work, "De Morbis Artificum Diatriba," in the latter part of the seventeenth century, to Dr. Arlidge's "Diseases of Occupations," published in 1892, and the weighty volume on "Dangerous Trades" by Thomas Oliver and his collaborators in 1902, there has been a series of careful studies of the disease-engendering conditions of the trades and professions.

In this country, however, only a few of the labor bureaus have investigated this feature of the conditions of labor. Among the first to do so carefully was the New Jersey Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the results appear in its Annual Reports for 1889, 1890, and 1891. The effect of occupations upon the health and duration of the trade life of workmen was traced in three industries -- pottery, hat-making, and glass-blowing. As specimens of the facts brought to light by the investigation of these trades may be cited that of pot-makers, who prepare the pots in which the raw material for glass is melted. These pots are made of fine clay, which requires a great deal of care in its preparation, involving grinding, pulverizing the dry clay, its mixture, and tempering. At that time little attention was paid to the improvement of the machinery in use and the buildings in which these processes were conducted, so as to keep the workmen from inhaling the dust. As a consequence, from ten to fifteen years was about the length of time a man could work at the trade continuously in health. The report of the same Bureau in 1905 shows a most encouraging decline of the worst conditions in this dangerous trade. While there are a few establishments in which "lead colic," "potter's asthma," and tuberculosis, the characteristic diseases of this occupation, are still produced by antiquated methods of manufacture, and by excessive dust, in the majority of them the trade is now fairly healthful. It is particularly significant that in proportion as the trade has become less deadly, intemperance has declined among the employees.

In recent years the Massachusetts State Board of Health has made a careful investigation of conditions affecting health or safety of employees (104) in a large number of occupations. The textile industries, in which Massachusetts stands first in point of production, employ more women and minors than men and are generally regarded as unhealthful because of irritating dust which tends to produce disease of the lungs. In the mill towns it appears, however, that the death-rates of mill operatives are not abnormally high, nor do the general death-rates of these towns compare unfavorably with those of towns engaged in other lines of industry. Of the 93 manufacturing establishments investigated, 19 carry on their manufacture under nearly ideal conditions, and 23 under conditions designated as good; moderately bad conditions prevail in 35, and distinctly bad in 16; in all of the two latter classes, the report declares, marked improvement is possible without unreasonable expenditure. The unwholesome conditions in these establishments consist of poor light, impure air, non-regulation of artificial moisture (i.e. excess of moisture and undue heat or no artificial moisture and excessive heat), more or less dust (some "infectious" dust), lack of cleanliness, and poor ventilation. In this report, as in almost every other on the same subject, mention is made of the reckless indifference of the employees themselves to ordinary hygienic precautions, even when prescribed as rules of the factory. This apathy of workmen and the neglect of employers have made it necessary for the state to interfere and fix the plane of competition below which employers are not allowed to go nor workmen to permit themselves to be employed. The Massachusetts Board of Health proposes that when there is any question as to the interpretation of the law requiring factories to be well lighted, clean, and sanitary, the inspectors shall use as a standard the conditions existing in those factories carrying on a similar business, in similar buildings, where the health, safety, and welfare of the working people are most completely protected.

The influence of occupation upon health may be studied by means of mortality statistics, especially those of occupational mortality and morbidity. It is generally recognized that there is a higher death-rate among laboring classes than among the well-to-do, but a careful search among statistics collected by American bureaus of labor and for the Federal census shows that we have no vital statistics that are a safe guide in considering occupational mortality. This results from the fact that a person frequently changes his occupation before death. Thus, if we were to take the average age of students at death, it would be very low; but this would not prove that it was unhealthful to be a student, but only that nearly all students are comparatively young -- those that die included. The average age at death of judges must manifestly be greater than that of lawyers, irrespective of the healthfulness of the two occupations. The average age at death of almshouse paupers would be very high. In the case of female operatives the low average is no doubt partly due to the fact that many women leave the mills after the cares of a family come to them, and if they die in extreme old age as the mothers of families, their early service in the mills is forgotten; whereas, if they had died young, while in the mills, their cases would have helped to keep down the average age at death of female operatives.

English statisticians have been giving much attention to this subject for a generation. Dr. Farr gives the data for the following table as to the number surviving at certain age-periods in certain occupations.

According to this calculation, which is based upon very wide inductions, the most unhealthful business is that of an innkeeper, or, as we would say, saloon-keeper. This illustrates again the interaction of personal and occupational causes of degeneration. Next to this comes the business of the butcher, and so on up, the most healthful occupation being that of a farmer.

TABLE XXIII. (105)
Number living at stated ages out of 1000 living at age 25.

Another table (see p. 127) based on English experience gives a much wider range of occupations, taking the rate of clergymen as 100 for a basis of comparison.

TABLE XXIV.
COMPARATIVE MORTALITY IN CERTAIN OCCUPATIONS. (106)

It will be seen that the mortality in different industries varies widely: if the mortality of clergymen, for instance, be taken as one hundred, that of men engaged in earthen-ware manufacture is three times as great and of inn and hotel servants almost four times as great. Dr. Ogle grouped the causes of high mortality under the following general heads: --

1. Working in a cramped or constrained attitude, as silk-weavers. 2. Exposure to the action of poisonous or irritating substances, such as phosphorus, mercury, lead, or infected hair or wool, as dippers of lucifer matches, hatters, file-makers. 3. Excessive work, mental or physical, especially such as involves sudden strains, as among fishermen. 4. Working in confined or foul air, as tailors, printers. 5. The effect of alcoholic drinks, as innkeepers, spirit dealers. 6. Liability of fatal accidents, as miners. 7. Inhalation of dust, increasing the mortality from phthisis and diseases of the lungs, the effect varying greatly, according to amount and character of dust, most injurious is metallic dust, as in cutlery, and dust of stone, as in pottery-making.

A recent study made by Dr. John Tatham illustrates the excessively dangerous character of dusty occupations.

As compared with the mortality figures for twenty-three occupations, that of the farmer stands the lowest, assuming the mortality of agriculturists to be one hundred, the ratio of mortality of all the other occupations is shown. As compared with farmers, the mortality in the first seven occupations -- pottery-makers, cutlers, file-makers, glass-makers, copper-workers, gunsmiths, and iron and steel manufacturers -- is from three to four and a half times as great, and twelve others more than twice as great. The high rate from certain diseases is shown in columns 3 and 4.

The effect of inhaling foul air and of a constrained position is shown in Table XXVI. in the high mortality figures of certain occupations as compared with agriculture.

TABLE XXV. (107) CERTAIN DUSTY OCCUPATIONS.
Comparative Mortality from Specified Causes.

But the entire story regarding the degenerative influences brought to bear upon the weaker classes of the community is not brought out by the study of occupational mortality, but of class mortality. In occupational mortality we deal only with the diseases and deaths of adults, whereas in class mortality we deal also with the diseases and deaths of minors and of incapable members of the families. Ansell shows that out of 100,000 children born in the upper classes, nearly 10,000 more will reach the age of fifteen than in the population at large. (108) For our purpose perhaps the most convenient class-mortality statistics are those prepared by Dr. Grimsllaw, Registrar-General of Ireland, giving the experience in Dublin for the four years 1883 to 1886. (109) The death rates per 1000 for children under five years of age were found to be, in the professional class, 20.52; middle, 58.25; artisan class, 69.05; general service and pauper class, 108.73. The death-rates were such as to give a specially high percentage of persons under fifteen in the second and third classes, and the death-rate of children under five years of age is so excessive in the last-named class that the percentage of persons under fifteen was there not up to the average. Thus pressure is brought to bear upon the poor, and especially upon the artisan class, in a fourfold way. First, the number under fifteen years of age, and therefore of non-producers, is relatively high; second, the expense of a disproportionately large number of deaths is imposed upon the poor; third, the amount of sickness is disproportionately large; and, fourth, the number of births is larger than in the upper classes. The effect these influences will have upon a population of 1000 in each class appears in Table XXVII. (110)

(109) British Medical Journal, vol. ii., 1887, p. 241.

(110) British Medical Journal, vol. ii., 1887, p. 241.

TABLE XXVI. (111)
Certain unhealthful occupations.
Comparative Mortality from Several Causes.

TABLE XXVII. Burdens and burden-bearing power of 1000 persons in various classes, population of Dublin (1883-1886).

By "effective health," as used in the table, is meant the health of persons fifteen years of age or over; that is, of persons capable of doing something for their own support, and possibly for the care of relatives. It seems that in Class I. there will be one year of sickness to 24.5 of effective health; in Class II. one to 12.6; in Class III. one to 14; and in Class IV. one to 8.8. Thus we have some explanation of how the high death-rate among the unfortunate classes operates to impose burdens that crush them.

It has already been pointed out how constant and conspicuous a factor sickness is in bringing persons to apply for relief and compelling them to become inmates of institutions. (112) The incidence of this burden upon those least able to bear it is again illustrated in a table derived from material supplied by Korosi, the eminent statistician of Budapesth.

TABLE XXVIII.
Mortality and morbidity in five occupations. (113)

This table shows that if we start at the age of 25 with 1000 persons of each class, there will be living at the end of 35 years: of the merchants, 587; of the tailors, 421; of the shoemakers, 376; of the servants, 290; and of the day laborers, only 253. During this time the total number of years of life lived by the merchants was 28,501.23, and by the day laborers only 22,317. But worse than this, of the years of life falling to the lot of the day laborer, 1493 will be years of sickness; while of the years of life lived by the merchants, only 824 will be years of sickness. Or to state the same thing in another way, the merchant will have 33 1/2 years in which to provide for one of sickness, while the day laborer will have only 13.9 years of health in which to provide for one of sickness.

More recent figures are afforded by Watson who has carefully investigated the experience of the Manchester Unity Independent Order of Odd Fellows, which is representative of English workingmen generally.

It is seen that after fifty years of age, sickness becomes a very serious economic factor, rising rapidly in the next fifteen years from two to ten weeks per annum. Moreover, it must be remembered that these are probably somewhat superior workmen and that the experience of friendly societies underestimates the amount of prevailing sickness.

TABLE XXIX.
Mortality and sickness rates. (114)
Manchester Unity Independent Order of Odd Fellows (Watson, 1893-1897).

Of all the forms of illness to which the laboring classes are liable, tuberculosis is the most devastating. In Hamburg, Germany, the people who pay taxes on an income under 1000 marks have a death-rate from tuberculosis almost four times as great as that of the people with an income over 3500 marks. In Glasgow casual laborers have double the average city death-rate from this disease and between the ages of 45 and 55 their rate is twelve times that of the professional class. In the last census year there were in the United States 110,000 deaths from consumption, and statisticians believe that there are not less than 330,000 living persons affected with the disease. Between the ages of 15 and 30, one-third, and between 30 and 45, one-fourth, of all deaths of American males is from this cause. The close relation between this disease and the different classes of occupations is illustrated in a table collated from English experience.

TABLE XXX.
Mortality from consumption.
In Certain Groups of Occupations, English Experience (1890-1892). (115)

Here the unhealthful trades and common labor show a death-rate more than twice that of the agricultural class on the one hand and the professional class on the other, and this in those years of life when wage-earners are of most value not only to their families but to society. The further loss entailed by the long and costly sickness which precedes death may be demonstrated by the experience of a single trade. President G. W. Perkins of the International Cigar-makers Union reported that 51 per cent of all deaths in that trade in 1888 were due to tuberculosis; and although the per cent of deaths had fallen in 1905 to one-half, a total amount of $73,000 was paid in that year in sick and death benefits on account of consumption. (116) Yet cigar-making is by no means the most unhealthy of trades. Referring again to Table XXV. on p. 129, we see that the worst of the dust-producing occupations -- pottery and earthenware manufacture, cutlery and file-making, glass-blowing, copper-working -- have a mortality from tuberculosis alone, two to four times that of farm-workers; and from respiratory diseases, two to six times as great.

Yet excessive dustiness is only one of many causes of tuberculosis. It is primarily a disease of under-vitalization, due to underfeeding, overwork, congestion, and bad sanitary conditions. Dr. Hull and Dr. Hedger, in an investigation of certain poor districts of Chicago, named as conditions of employment tending to spread and increase consumption: low wages, high rents, and consequent crowding; excessive fatigue from long and irregular hours of work, and unsanitary conditions of the place of employment, such as deficient daylight and sunlight, foul air, and poor food. (117)

TABLE XXXI. CHILD LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES (1900). (118)

Having studied the effect of certain unhealthful conditions of labor in producing disease among adults, we turn to the consideration of the employment of children. Child-labor was one of the first causes of degeneration attacked by the English philanthropists of the nineteenth century, and at the beginning of the twentieth century in the United States it continues to be a conspicuous point of attack for social workers. Until very recently the discussion of the question has been based on inadequate information as to the facts, but in 1907, Bulletin 69 of the United States Census Bureau presented the essentials for a clear understanding of the extent and location of the evil. Table XXXI. shows the number of children, i.e. persons over ten and under sixteen years of age, engaged in gainful occupations in the United States in 1900.

It is apparent that by far the most important occupation for children is that of agricultural laborers. Of the 1,750,178 children at work, 60.2 per cent were on the farm, four-fifths of them assisting their parents. Since farm work for children is not generally regarded as injurious to health or morals and does not necessarily interfere with school attendance, attention should be fixed upon the occupations of the 688,207 children employed in other occupations. The distribution of this group by age and sex is shown in Table XXXII.

TABLE XXXII.
Breadwinners 10 to 15 years of age, exclusive to those employed in agricultural pursuits, in continental United States (1900). (119)

The evils of child-labor depend partly upon the age and sex of the child employed and partly upon the character of the occupation. About 45 per cent of these children were 15 years of age, and a majority of them boys; for such as these labor is not necessarily objectionable, except as it cuts them off from all but the most elementary education. If the occupation were an apprenticeship at a trade under healthful conditions, it might be equivalent in value to a year of formal school training at this period of life; but under the conditions of modern industry this is seldom the case.

There remain at least 377,381 children under 14, of whom 153,707 are girls, whose employment outside the home may be regarded as almost inevitably injurious. To these should be added the 124,779 girls between 15 and 16 to whom wage-earning employment is likely to be far more dangerous than to boys of the same age. Of the total number of girls at work, 42 per cent were servants and waitresses. The degree of injury from such employment depends upon a variety of conditions, but is on the whole probably less than that to which textile operatives (16.8 per cent) and textile-workers (10.7 per cent) are exposed. The boys under 16 are chiefly engaged as laborers, messengers, errand and office boys (9.2 per cent), textile-mill operatives (8.6 per cent), miners and quarrymen (5.9 per cent), and metal-workers (5.2 per cent).

In order to ascertain more in detail the family relationships and social conditions, 23,657 child breadwinners between 10 and 14 engaged as cotton-mill operatives, messenger boys, coal-mine workers, dressmakers, etc., tobacco and silk mill operatives, and glass-workers were classified by the census bureau. The results show that these children belonged as a class to large families of six to eight persons, that as a whole they were far more illiterate than non-working children, and that two-thirds of them belonged to families in which there were two, three, and even more older breadwinners. The variations range from 188 families with no older breadwinner, in which the child was apparently the sole dependence, to 264 families having no dependent members, in which all the older members were wage-earners, and in which the labor of children ought to be entirely unnecessary.

Beyond these figures there are no authoritative American studies as there are in England, France, and Germany, showing the physical deterioration in those who are early put to work at tasks which are too heavy for them or which, by their nature, prevent normal development. Mr. Frederick Hoffmann, the statistician, has contended that there is a tendency in the discussion of child labor, as in all social agitation, to overlook the necessity for a basis of facts and to exaggerate exceptional instances of abuse. On this ground he argues that no legislation on radical lines should be made until it has been ascertained whether children employed at different trades are really physically injured, stunted in their growth, or hindered in their development. (120)

Dr. Felix Adler, on the other hand, declares that it is a "sheer humiliation" to have to prove by argument that a child of ten or twelve years is stunted and crippled by laboring ten hours a day. (121) It would seem that the facts of English experience during the whole of the nineteenth century should be sufficient to prove the contention of reformers that child labor is an inevitable cause of degeneration. As early as 1796 the Manchester Board of Health embodied among their resolutions the following statement of facts: --

"The large factories are generally injurious to the constitution of those employed in them, from the close confinement which is enjoined, from the debilitating effects of hot or impure air, and from the want of the active exercises which nature points out as essential in childhood and youth to invigorate the system, and to fit our species for the employments and duties of manhood. The untimely labor of the night and the protracted labor of the day, with respect to children, not only tend to diminish future expectations as to the sum of life and industry, by impairing the strength and destroying the vital stamina of the rising generation, but it too often gives encouragement to idleness, extravagance, and profligacy in the parents, who, contrary to the order of nature, subsist by the oppression of their offspring." (122)

English philanthropists continued to prophesy the penalty that must follow belated and imperfect legislation for the protection of factory children. At the end of a century, the physical degeneration of the English population was revealed by the enlistments for the Boer War and the masses of degenerate unemployables. (123)

In the United States, there has been recently accumulating a quantity of descriptive literature on this subject. Dr. Daniel, from personal observation, thus describes the evils of certain tenement sweat-shops: --

"The finishers are made up of the old and the young, the sick and the well. As soon as a little child can be of the least possible help, it must add to the family income by taking a share in the family toil. A child three years old can straighten out tobacco leaves or stick the rims which form the stamens of artificial flowers through the petals. He can put the covers on paper boxes at four years. He can do some of the pasting of paper boxes, although as a rule this requires a child of six to eight years. But from four to six years he can sew on buttons and pull basting threads. A girl from eight to twelve can finish trousers as well as her mother. After she is twelve, if of good size, she can earn more money in a factory. The boys do practically the same work as the girls, except that they leave the home work earlier, and enter street work, as pedlers, bootblacks, and newsboys. I have seen but two children under three years of age working in tenements, one a boy two and one-half years old, who assisted the mother, and four other children under twelve years, in making artificial flowers. The other, an extraordinary case of a child of one and one-half years, who assisted at a kind of passementerie.

"The sick, as long as they can hold their heads up, must work to pay for the cost of their living. As soon as they are convalescent, they must begin again. A child from three to ten or twelve years adds by its labor from fifty cents to $1.50 per week to the family income. The hours of the child are as long as its strength endures or the work remains. A child three years old can work continuously from one and one-half to two hours at a time; a child ten years old can work twelve hours. Obviously under such conditions the child is deprived of the two greatest rights which the parents and the state are bound to give each child: health and an education.

"The particular dangers to the child's health are such as can be induced by the confinement in the house, in an atmosphere always foul. The bad light under which the child works causes a continual eye-strain, from the effects of which the child will suffer all its life. The brain of the child under eight years of age is not developed sufficiently to bear fixed attention. Hence it must be continually forced to fix its attention to the work, and in doing this an irreparable damage is done to the developing brain. A child forced to earn its bread has neither the time nor the opportunity to obtain an education." (124)

Mr. Owen B. Lovejoy cites as the results of different kinds of premature employment: (125) --

"The wrecking of the nervous system in young girls who spend the years of adolescence bent over sewing machines run at lightning speed; the bronchial and pulmonary affections of the child of the coal-breakers; the languor and backwardness of the little street-trader; the failing vision of the tenement-house worker, and the diseases of the feet and spine which have been recently so strikingly traced by Dr. Freiburg to the unnatural exactions of factory labor upon boys and girls."

In some industries the chief danger to children lies in accident. A report on anthracite mines in Pennsylvania showed that one-half of the slate-pickers in the breakers were under sixteen years of age; yet 75 per cent of the accidents were to boys under sixteen years of age. (126) Mr. Lovejoy further points out that the subnormal wages of these children not only tends to lower the standard of living, but fosters the idleness of older boys, floods the market with unskilled laborers who had neither time nor opportunity to learn a trade in their youth, and thus precipitates labor conflicts.

The interdependence of child labor and illiteracy is illustrated by Mrs. Florence Kelley, (127) who shows that arranging all the states in four groups according to the numbers of their illiterate children, five leading manufacturing states, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, and New Jersey, all stand near the bottom, and have more than 20,000 illiterate children; while the great cotton manufacturing states of the South stand at the very bottom. Massachusetts alone, of the great manufacturing states, lies in group two at the middle of the list.

Miss Jane Addams, from observation of tramps in lodging-houses, concludes: --

"This inordinate desire to get away from work seems to be con-nected with the fact that the men have started to work very early, before they had the physique to stand up to it, or the mental vigor with which to overcome its difficulties, or the moral stamina which makes a man stick to his work whether he likes it or not. ... It is no figment of the imagination to say that the human system breaks down . . . and that general debility and many diseases may be traced to premature labor." (128)

Miss Addams shows that the employment of children in factory labor often pauperizes the parents. (129) The immigrant peasantry from Europe and the poor white farmers in the South have been accustomed to farm work from their childhood, and they see no difference between it and factory labor to which they consign their children. The children adapt themselves to the new conditions more easily than the parents, so the parents drop out, with the result that the parents become more and more dependent on the children's earnings. The parasitic character of sweating industries and of child labor has been pointed out by many modern writers. Sidney Webb, in discussing the labor of children who live at home and work for less than the cost of subsistence and nurture, and of adult women working at wages insufficient to keep them in full efficiency, who are, in fact, partially maintained by another class, says: --

"An industry, to be economically self-supporting, must maintain its full establishment of workers, unimpaired in numbers and vigor, with a sufficient number of children to fill vacancies caused by death or superannuation. If the employers in a particular trade are able to take such advantage of the necessities of their work people as to hire them for wages actually insufficient to provide enough food, clothing, and shelter to maintain them in average health; if they are able to work them for hours so long as to deprive them of adequate rest and recreation; and if they can subject them to conditions so dangerous and unsanitary as positively to shorten their lives, that trade is clearly obtaining a supply of labor force which it does not pay for. Such parasitic trades are not drawing any money subsidy from the incomes of other classes, but in thus deteriorating the physique, intelligence, and character of their operatives they are drawing on the capital stock of the nation." (130)

In reply to the objections of many modern manufacturers that a particular industry will be ruined if children cannot be employed, we may point to the prosperity of the cotton industry in England and such industries as glass-making in the United States, which appear to thrive in proportion as child labor has been dispensed with. (131) But if some check to certain industries were involved in the strict limitation of child labor, it must be questioned whether the service to society is not after all worth the cost. If a particular industry does not justify the employment of adults at a living wage under decent conditions, the community would suffer little from the loss of it, as compared with the destruction of character and physique involved in parasitic labor. The time is certainly not far off when we shall demand and enforce by effective legislation, that every industry shall bear the full cost of legitimate production. We cannot afford, says McKelway, to put colts to the plough.

A study of the labor of adult women has disclosed a similar tendency to deterioration of health and capacity as the result of inadequate wage, long, irregular hours of labor, and exposure to physical and social hardships. But since space is lacking to consider all the social tendencies toward degeneration, we must turn to a phase of employment affecting most injuriously wage-earners of both sexes and all ages in a great number of industries. Intermittent, irregular labor may arise from seasonal variations, or from the spasmodic nature of modern industry, or from the inclination of employing companies, as in the bituminous coal regions and the meat-packing industries, to keep a large number of men partially employed rather than a small number occupied all the time. Of the same nature is the unemployment from industrial crises, which leave behind a legacy of individual degeneration and personal unthrift.

TABLE XXXIII.
Applicants for relief and industrial displacement (1895-1896).

In a study of industrial displacement made by Francis H. McLean from the records of the New York Charity Organization Society, the different classes are shown as in Table XXXIII. From further information it appears that 40 per cent of these men were only irregularly employed even when they last had employment. (132)

But if it be thought that such statistics as these overstate the proportions of uncertain employment, we have only to rehearse the facts of seasonal unemployment in New York City in 1905 to see how serious the situation is even in prosperous years. Mr. Frank J. Warne writes as follows: --

"The seasonal nature of unemployment is indicated in the fact that of the 365,000 members of trade unions reporting to the New York State Bureau of Labor in 1905, as many as 32,000, or 8.7 per cent, were idle in the January-March period, while for July-September only 7500, or but 2 per cent, were out of work. The report of the State Bureau of Labor shows that for the four years since 1901 as many as 20 to 25 per cent of the membership of the labor unions have been idle in January. The year 1905 was an exceptionally favorable one for employment at this season (March), and yet among brick-layers and masons 43 per cent were idle, carpenters and joiners more than 20 per cent, and painters and decorators more than 29 per cent. Out of more than 400,000 working men and women reporting from all trades throughout the state in 1907, more than 77,000, or 19 per cent, were not at work at the end of March of that year, while more than 65,000 did not work at all during the first three months of the year." (133)

But it is with the effect of these conditions that we are at present concerned. Dr. Tatham shows that the mortality of unoccupied males is two and a half times as great as that of occupied males. Mr. Percy Alden declares that the relation between inefficiency and unemployment is as close as that of drink and poverty, and quotes a large employer of labor as saying: --

"Between five and six per cent of my skilled men are out of work just now. During the long spell of idleness any one of these men invariably deteriorates. In some cases the deterioration is very marked. The man becomes less proficient and less capable,. . . nothing has a worse effect upon the caliber of such men than a spell of idleness." (134)

The warden of Kings County Jail, New York, said: --

"Over fifty per cent of the commitments to this institution are for vagrancy -- the crime (?) of being out of work and homeless. I am convinced from seeing the efficient work of some of these men while here, that they never would be here, could they have secured employment outside. By our treatment of the unemployed we are making criminals of men who have hitherto been honest, self-sustaining members of the community."

Idleness during a short period, for hard-working people, would be no inevitable injury if their leisure could be turned to account in recreation and culture; but in the situation of the poor it means first of all discouragement and that fear of want which Robert Hunter has said is the essence of poverty. The man must spend his time tramping in search of work, or idling in streets, saloons, and lodging-houses, for the tenement offers no inducements for home-staying. As resources dwindle, he will be less and less well nourished and clothed, and when at last he is able to resume work, he is physically and mentally debilitated. If the process be repeated season after season, each is likely to find him progressively less competent and ambitious.

Nor will the deterioration affect him alone. If he have a family, the wife must take any kind of casual labor that may be available, however exhausting it may be and regardless of her own physical fitness, while at the same time the whole family will have less food, fuel, and clothing. This extra labor and great thrift on the wife's part may tide over the period of the husband's out-of-work for one season, or two, or three even; but sooner or later, sickness or some other common vicissitude is liable to drain the last resources and deprive the household of its independence. Mrs. Bosanquet says that it takes a very high order of intellect to be self-supporting on an intermittent income; to what extent irregular employment and its accompaniment, intermittent income, operate in enervating the working-class, can be fully known only by those who live among them and see dependents in the process of making. (135)

In the foregoing outline of a few conspicuous social causes of degeneration, the element of personal habits and character has been omitted. It is obvious that individuals of strong physique or judgment may escape the diseases incident to their trades, while others who are careless or intemperate will succumb to them. It has often been observed that the victims of tuberculosis are lacking in judgment and as a class more deficient in the practice of personal hygiene than well persons. In other words, disease, accident, unemployment -- all the environmental causes of deterioration and incapacity -- seem to have an affinity for the relatively unfit. Yet every worker is enmeshed in a network of fateful conditions for which he is not responsible and from which he could not escape were he of ever so immaculate character and habits, of tireless industry, or even of a considerable degree of capacity.

We found that disease produces poverty, and we now find that poverty produces disease; that poverty comes from degeneration and incapacity, and now that degeneration and incapacity come from poverty. Yet it is not without benefit to trace the whole dismal round of this vicious circle, for it well illustrates the interaction of social forces. A produces B, and B reacts to increase A. In biblical phrase, "The destruction of the poor is their poverty." The "unfit" aid in accomplishing their own extermination. But in tracing the long circle the number of those forces which are distinctly preventable constantly grows, and includes not only the diseases of occupations, but also many of those pertaining to the manner of living, concerning which nothing has yet been said.

CHAPTER XI.
THE INSANE.

The amount of pauperism apparent in a community bears a direct relation to the poor laws and their administration; but insanity, because it requires immediate attention and institutional restraint, is not greatly affected in amount by the absence or provision of proper care. In the United States there were, in 1903, 150,151 insane persons in public and private asylums, 11,807 in almshouses, and an unknown number in private families. In 1880 there were enumerated 51,017 outside of hospitals as compared with 40,942 in them, and in 1890 only 32,457 outside, as compared with 94,028 in them. (136) In the census of 1903-1904 no attempt was made to enumerate those outside of institutions, but it is believed to be not less than in 1890. The number of hospitals increased from 162 in 1890 (of which 119 were public and 43 private) to 328 in 1900 (of which 226 were public and 102 private). This increase may signify an increasing ratio of insane in the population or merely an enlightened public demand for proper hospital care of the mentally sick.

Table LXIV. (pp. 318-319) shows the number and ratio of insane in hospitals in 1880, 1890, and 1903 for each of the United States.

Of the 49 States and Territories, only 8 show decreased ratios in 1903 as compared with 1890; and if the number outside of hospitals had been enumerated in 1903, there would probably have been increased ratios for every State.

Table LXIV.
Insane in Hospitals (1880-1903) (137)