THE STAMPING OUT OF CRIME. 527 



THE STAMPING OUT OF CRIME. 



By Dr. NATHAN OPPENHEIM. 



IT is only a short time since civilized nations abolished slavery, 

 and already we look back with wonder at onr own and other 

 countries, and are barely able to realize that the world could have 

 borne such an unspeakable institution that it could have steadily 

 progressed while weighted with the breaking load of such a bur- 

 den. Nevertheless, for thousands of years, and even at times of 

 exquisite culture, men thought that slavery was inevitable, or 

 even necessary, or at any rate that it could never be done away 

 with. Now there is an equal steadfastness of opinion in the 

 opposite direction. We regard with horror the social condition 

 which justified bondage ; we are astounded that we could have 

 lived in such an atmosphere. 



There are other similar examples in the history of civilization. 

 Until the present century drunkenness was almost universal, and 

 the gentleman who did not drink himself under the table was 

 thought at best to be a poor sort of man. Our present attitude in 

 the matter is just as great a revolution as our change in regard to 

 slavery. Likewise is there an equally great difference so far as 

 the interests of society are concerned. Again, until the middle of 

 this century there was a constant succession of wars among the 

 principal nations ; but within a few years conditions have so 

 changed that the man who dared to precipitate a war would be 

 utterly overwhelmed with universal abhorrence. 



If we look into the future, we may see as great a change, 

 which is beginning to assert itself in regard to the necessity of 

 crime. Indeed, the above analogies are well carried out, from the 

 fact that so many people at present think crime is inevitable 

 that because society has always sweated under this burden it fol- 

 lows that the burden must ever be carried. On the contrary, be- 

 cause society has always been oppressed with crime there is good 

 reason to suppose that changed conditions must alter the present 

 facts, and that we may look for a season when crime as a constant 

 and unvarying social element will have ceased to exist ; when it 

 will show itself in minor and individual cases, as drunkenness is 

 beginning to do, as plagues and epidemics are beginning to do. 



One of the best indications for hope is the growing effort to 

 study crime accurately ; not merely to regard it as an excuse for 

 confining lawbreakers in self-infecting herds, where they may 

 undisturbed pollute one another, but, on the other hand, to seek 

 for the causes of crime, to ascertain all its concomitant condi- 

 tions, to recognize and classify the criminal in sociological, psy- 

 chological ways in the ways of anatomy and physiology. The 



