PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND CRIME. 327 



ment with the material environment ; hence the average of crime 

 and vice is shown by the table to be relatively low. 



The Rev. F. H. Wines, statistician and philanthropist, who has 

 made questions of crime and criminals the study of a lifetime, was 

 selected by the authorities at Washington to compile the statistics 

 bearing on delinquents in the tenth census ; and after a careful 

 study of the mass of figures returned, but few of which appear 

 in the compendium, he makes this very remarkable statement con- 

 cerning the facts collected and enumerated : " If a comparison is 

 made between offenses against public morals and against public 

 peace, the smallest amount of disorder and the largest of immo- 

 rality, relatively, are found among the native whites, the most 

 disorder and least immorality among the negroes; and the for- 

 eigners occupy a middle ground between the two." (" American 

 Prisons in the Tenth Census," " Proceedings of the National Pris- 

 on Association for 1888," p. 268.) When it is realized that the 

 native whites represent the better educated portion of our popu- 

 lation, and the negroes the more illiterate, while the foreigners 

 are on an educational scale between the two, the significance of 

 the statement can neither be gainsaid nor belittled. 



We are, then, confronted by facts which reveal a condition 

 of decreasing illiteracy and increasing crime, of augmenting 

 wealth with more wide-spread destitution. While inventors and 

 engineers have united continents by steamship lines and cables, 

 States by telegraph and railway lines, and cities by bridges, 

 statesmen have vainly sought to unite the interests of employers 

 and employe's, of railway managers and shippers, of producers 

 and consumers ; and every legislative measure intended to har- 

 monize the interests of these conflicting elements has given rise to 

 greater irritation and more complicated evils. 



Since the record of material progress and mechanical construc- 

 tion has been one of unvarying certainty and triumph, while leg- 

 islation has so often led to failure in the investigation of this edu- 

 cational problem, will it not be well to reject the hap-hazard 

 devices of the legislator, and confine ourselves to the scientific 

 methods so successfully employed by the constructing engineer 

 and mechanical inventor ? Take, for illustration, the history of 

 Bessemer steel railway-bars. The introduction and use of these 

 bars for our railway -tracks so cheapened the cost of transporta- 

 tion that it made possible the development of the far Western 

 States and Territories, which find themselves enabled to profitably 

 market produce thousands of miles away. 



Twenty years ago, under a traffic which constituted but a 

 small fraction of the mileage which the same roads are perform- 

 ing to-day, iron rails became worn down and laminated with such 

 rapidity that the cost of track repairs was enormous, and it 



