TYPICAL CRIMINALS. 539 



Kind of Pavement. Life in years. 



Best g;ranite block on concrete 30 



Granite block laid on ^axiA 20 



Belgian trap -0 



Cobblestone 1 ^ 



Asphalt 15 



Best wood — rectangular block 10 



A^itritied brick 12 



Macadam 8 



Cedar block — round — on sand 5 



No class of municipal work comes so near to the daily life of 

 an urban population — both the business and the home life — as the 

 surface improvement of city streets, and no expenditure is too great 

 (provided the work is skillfully and honestly done) to make them 

 smooth, clean, sanitary, and beautiful. 



TYPICAL CRIMINALS. 



By SAMUEL G. SMITH, LL. D. 



IF the question of a criminal type, defined by certain marks of a 

 physical nature and emphasized by accompanying mental and 

 moral characteristics, were confined to the technical speculations 

 of a special craft of scientists, the public would have little interest 

 in the spread of the doctrines of Cesare Lombroso and his confreres 

 in this country. When it is believed, however, that certain men 

 and women are committed to prison or condemned to death not on 

 account of crimes in any ethical sense, but because of spontaneous 

 actions from vicious impulses beyond their control, the subject 

 affects the administration of law, the theory of punishment, and 

 the safety of society. 



Lombroso and the Italian school say that they have discovered 

 a type of man who is born a criminal, and who may be recognized 

 by a Mongolian face, abnormal features, ill-shaped ears, imsymmet- 

 rical skull, and various psychical peculiarities, which are the result 

 of bad organization. This doctrine is illustrated by descriptions 

 of criminals who have the abnormalities, and in the hands of skill- 

 ful writers the case is made very plausible. The theory is in har- 

 mony with so much popular modern thought, which loosely inter- 

 prets the doctrine of evolution by a crass materialism, that it has 

 infected American prison literature, while it has never misled those 

 men to whom practical experience has given the most right to have 

 an opinion on the subject. The sense of personal responsibility is 

 still the foundation of social order, and if in truth there is no 

 such thing, the world is awake at last from its dream of morality; 



