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The question of education is often stated as if education favored insanity and opposed crime and pauperism. As a fact, I do not think that education has so great an influence either way as many may seem to think. We were told half a century ago that it was cheaper to build school-houses than jails and poor-houses. We have dotted the country over with school-houses, and we find that jails and poor-houses are just as necessary as ever. But some one may say that this is because there is no effective compulsory education, and because we have an unusual number of ignorant foreigners coming to our shores. But this is sufficiently answered by looking at Germany with its homogeneous population and compulsory education, and compulsory religious, as well as secular, education at that. In Germany crime and pauperism and insanity are increasing, as they are with us. Criminals, paupers, and insane all average a little below the rest of the community in education. Their smaller knowledge and less natural ability make them break down into insanity more easily, and also more easily drift into crime or pauperism. The best statistics of criminals have been kept for over half a century by the Eastern Pennsylvania Penitentiary. The result of these statistics seems to show that idleness, rather than ignorance, is the mother of crime. An investigation which I made a few years ago by personal inquiries from poor-house to poor-house in Wisconsin satisfied me that about one-third of the paupers are made so by idleness, one-third by liquor, and one-third by all other causes combined. In my judgment the idleness which makes truants from school, and therefore poor scholars, leads to crime or pauperism in many cases, and in those cases it is not ignorance which is the cause of crime, but idleness, which is the cause of both ignorance and crime.

The question of social standing is not of as great importance in this democratic country as in Europe. Paupers, of course, do not come from the wealthy or the middle classes. Many of the laboring classes do drop into pauperism through misfortune or vice. But many of the paupers are not even of the laboring class, but come from the outcasts of society. The same is the case with the criminals. They do not come chiefly from the wealthy or middle classes. But they are very largely from the very outcasts of society. The insane are found in all classes in considerable numbers.

But the laboring class furnishes more than its share of insane, and the outcasts an immense proportion to their number. Criminals and paupers and tramps frequently become insane, -- I should say ten times as many as from the same number of average humanity.

The advantages and disadvantages of city life have often been talked of. Many people suppose that the excitement and strain of city life conduces to insanity. Others say that the loneliness of country life has the same effect. An English physician has taken the pains to tabulate the statistics of insanity for the city of London for forty years, and for several purely agricultural counties in the south of England with about the same population for the same period, and finds that there is no difference between city and country in the amount of insanity. But for crime, all statistics show clearly that crime is concentrated in the cities, which are the refuge of the criminal classes and the nurseries of young criminals in the neglected street children. Pauperism is greater in the city than in the country, though this may arise from the corrupt municipal governments encouraging pauperism to win votes.

The effects of climate have not been much considered. But I believe it will be found that warm climates do not have so great a proportion of insanity as cold climates. It is certain that in Europe, Greece has a much less proportion of insanity than Norway. In this country there is much less insanity in the South than in the North in proportion to population. A part of this is due to the negroes in the South having a small proportion of insanity, and the foreigners in the North having a large proportion. But it is possible that climate has also something to do with it. I cannot discover that climate has anything to do with crime. Pauperism is increased in cold climates by the greater difficulty of getting a bare subsistence.

Much has been said about the rapid increase of the defective classes, especially of the insane. Statistics show this both in Europe and America. But statistics of the mere numbers of insane at any given time are very deceptive. The greater humanity with which the insane are treated now than a hundred or even twenty-five years ago has preserved their lives and thereby caused an accumulation of the insane. This greatly increases the numbers who are alive at any given time, but does not show that any more persons become insane in any one year than ever. Careful statistics have been kept in England with reference to the latter point, and it is found that there was an increase in the proportion of commitments to the total population up to a recent time, but that it now seems to have reached its highest point and become stationary. It is believed that the increase in the commitments was caused partly by the discovery and placing in institutions of cases that would otherwise have been hidden at home, and partly by calling things insanity which formerly would have been called by some other name; such as senile, dementia, epilepsy, eccentricity, or primary dementia. I believe that these statistics show that insanity is not now increasing faster in England than the population.