THE PROBLEM OF VICE AND CRIME 187 



expect otherwise would be to look for the 

 reversal of the law that what is sown will be 

 reaped. Ancestry determines tendency ; actual- 

 ity is usually a product of heritage and surround- 

 ing. When both are criminal, the probabilities 

 are overwhelming that the offspring will be 

 criminal. 



Before there can be progress toward the 

 removal of intemperance or crime, there must be 

 a careful study of the causes of these evils. 

 Diagnosis in social disease, as in physical, should 

 precede resort to remedies. Until recently, there 

 has been almost total neglect of what have been 

 abundantly shown to be important factors in the 

 problem of reform. " Lend a Hand " contains the 

 following : " Dr. Holmes has said, ' The patient 

 may almost always be saved, if the doctor is called 

 in time, but he should be called two or three 

 hundred years before the patient is born.' It is 

 not quite convenient for the new charity of to-day 

 to root out the seeds of the pauper disease found 

 in the seventeenth and the sixteenth centuries, 

 but it does the next best thing ; it seeks to cure 

 the pauperism of the twentieth and succeeding 

 centuries by shutting up the pauper-factories of 

 to-day." The history of society's dealing with the 

 classes mentioned in this paper is mournful read- 



