$ 9 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in a large degree they are engendered by public tastes, habits, and 

 demoralizations. It is in our prisons we can best learn the corrupting 

 influences about us which lead the weak as well as the wicked astray, 

 ay, and sometimes make the strong man fall into disgrace and misery. 

 In these moral hospitals the thoughtful man, the philanthropist, and 

 the statesman, will look for the causes of social danger and demoraliza- 

 tion. When we begin at the prison and work up, we find opening be- 

 fore us all the sources of crime, all the problems of social order and 

 disorder, all the great questions with which statesmanship, in dealing 

 with the interests and welfare of a people, must cope when it seeks to 

 lift up high standards of virtue and patriotism. In the most highly- 

 civilized countries the subjects of pauperism and crime secure the most 

 attention and thought. They turn men's minds from selfish to unself- 

 ish fields of labor. Those who enter those fields will find in them 

 marks of toil and care by the best human intellects. The grandest 

 minds have worked at their intricate problems. The ambition of the 

 first Napoleon sought to gain immortality in his code of laws as well 

 as in victories on the fields of battle. Much has been done in many of 

 our States to improve prison discipline. Something has been done 

 toward reforming prisoners, but the largest view of the subject, which 

 looks to the moral health of society, and the baleful influences at work 

 in its organization, have not received the attention they deserve. When 

 prisons are visited by men of mind, when prisoners are looked upon 

 with kindly eyes by those who can study their characters and learn 

 from them the virtues, vice, and wickedness which mark our race; 

 when, tracing back the courses of their lives, they shall find the secret 

 sources of their errors and their crimes then we shall have not only 

 our laws justly enforced and reformed, wrong-doers punished, but, 

 more and better than these, we shall gain a public virtue and intelli- 

 gence which will secure the safety and happiness of our homes and the 

 glory and stability of the republic. Then wealth gained by unworthy 

 means will no longer be respected. No one can recall the events of 

 the past few years, particularly those of the great commercial centres, 

 without feeling there is an ebb-tide in American morals. Not a little 

 of the glitter of our social and business life is a shining putrescence. 

 Fungus men have shot up into financial prominence to whom a pervad- 

 ing deadening moral malaria is the very breath of life. They could 

 not exist without this any more than certain poisonous plants can 

 flourish without decaying vegetation. While I have tried to present 

 in clear terms the claims of this Association upon the public sympathy 

 and support, it must be understood that we claim for it only the merit 

 of being a useful auxiliary to moral and religious teachings. If those 

 who take part in its work should fall short of it3 broader and higher 

 objects of a national character, they will at least get this great gain : 

 they will learn to think more humbly of themselves, more kindly of their 

 fellow-men, and to see more clearly the beauties of Christian charity. 



