3 2 4 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



should serve as a salutary warning to those who expect to find in 

 mental stimulation an equivalent for moral growth and culture : 



Compiled from Compendium of Tenth Census, and other official sources. 



The table unmistakably shows a greater per capita of wealth 

 where the fewest illiterates are enumerated, but it no less clearly 

 shows that this augmentation of riches has been accompanied by 

 increased insanity and crime and more wide-spread vice. 



But we need not confine ourselves to the general statistics of 

 the United States, for the records of New York present similar 

 conditions, which can be analyzed more in detail. The " Annual 

 Report of the Superintendent of the New York State Prisons, 

 1886," records that the prisons of Auburn and Sing Sing contained 

 2,610 convicts; of these, 1,801 are credited with a common-school 

 education, 373 are classed as being able to read and write, 19 are 

 returned as collegiates, 10 as having received classical and 78 

 academic educations, 97 as being able to read only, and 238 as 

 having no education. Is it not contrary to our most confident 

 predictions and undoubted expectations that the common schools 

 should furnish eighty-three per cent and the colleges and acade- 

 mies over four per cent of the inmates of Auburn and Sing Sing ? # 



When it is remembered that the detected illiterate generally 

 finds his way to prison, while the highly educated or well-to-do 

 are frequently saved by friends, who compound the felony to 

 escape exposure and consequent family disgrace ; that many are 

 saved from conviction by the ability of counsel whose services 

 are far beyond the means of the illiterate poor, while still many 

 others escape into voluntary exile to avoid imprisonment, it will 

 be seen that even the figures given inadequately portray the ex- 

 tent of crime which, in strict justice, is properly chargeable to the 

 educated classes. Of the prisoners of Auburn and Sing Sing it 



* Includes all States having a percentage of illiteracy above seventeen per cent, the av- 

 erage for the entire country. 



f Computed from tables in Compendium of the Tenth Census. 



% Retail licenses issued by United States in 1887, taken from Report of Internal Rev- 

 enue Commissioner. Population for 1887 from "World Almanac," 1888. 



* The report for Clinton Prison simply classified the prisoners received during the year, 

 and it could not be included with Auburn and Sing Sing, which classify all inmates. 



