NATURAL SELECTION AND CRIME. 443 



other agencies are at work in destroying those least capable of 

 surviving. As among the animals below man, where many indi- 

 viduals best adapted to live perish with the thousands unfitted to 

 survive, so with man does this ruthless but beneficent law take in 

 its grasp many deserving ones, and these are the ones that all the 

 impulses of charity and love should animate us to save. 



In combating crime, then, the line of effort should be along 

 those paths indicated by Nature. It is a curious commentary on 

 man's intelligence that, while exercising the selective function on 

 his domestic stock by careful feeding, proper housing, and ju- 

 dicious crossing, and for his plants selecting the best seed, etc., 

 while ruthlessly destroying the noxious weeds, yet when he comes 

 to his own kind he fancies that different laws operate with him, 

 or, swayed by sentiment, looks for different methods to cope with 

 crime. He exterminates the noxious weed, kills his vicious dog, 

 puts under restraint the maniac until cured ; no definite terms of 

 banishment will do in these cases, yet he formulates laws in which 

 there is apportioned a definite number of days or years for definite 

 offenses against society ! 



Colossal organizations, with lavish appropriations, are in the 

 field for the purpose of suppressing crime and pauperism. Until 

 within a few years this great army has been officered by the 

 Church, and plans of campaign have been mapped by it. Slowly 

 the public intelligence is awakening to the fact that these meth- 

 ods have been ridiculously inadequate, as proof exists that crime 

 and pauperism are steadily increasing. The law of indefinite 

 terms of imprisonment for criminals committed for a third offense 

 has been the wisest prison law ever passed, for, by such a law, 

 criminals are the longer prevented from the chance of perpetuat- 

 ing their evil traits ; and yet in Massachusetts there are misguided 

 sentimentalists who oppose the enactment of this law. 



In this view of the subject the death-penalty so odious to 

 thousands may be abolished. The sentence of life-imprison- 

 ment may be passed instead, but this must be beyond the inter- 

 ference of any pardoning power. How far the prison-cell may be 

 made attractive, as apartments and corridors in lunatic asylums 

 are made to-day, depends upon the necessity of punitive methods. 

 If punishment, even to flogging, is deemed necessary, criminals 

 must not have offered them such allurements as should lead them 

 to violate the law for the sake of a recommital. 



The conditions favorable to crime having been apprehended in 

 the slums of the cities, the law of natural selection having been 

 shown to be as relentlessly at work with man as with the lower 

 animals, it would seem that the line of work is very clearly de- 

 fined. We are to aid the law of selective action with all our 

 might. Public outdoor relief is in most cities suppressed ; indis- 



