302 



THE ABNORMAL MAN. 



Dishonest 

 Children from 

 Honest Parents, 



Business Decep- 

 tion Produces 

 Criminals. 



The Offspring 

 of Thieves. 



had been engaged in raising money tor mission- 

 ary purposes, receiving a per cent for their serv- 

 ices. They had lived penuriously and devoted 

 all their energies to making money. Their ab- 

 normally selfish child was a very fair reproduc- 

 tion of their lives. I have met many similar cases 

 where the effects of the family life were plainly 

 visible in the offspring. Any reader who will 

 take the pains to study the prenatal conditions of 

 a number of children* and compare these with their 

 dispositions will be able to observe similar results. 



If honest parents by concentrating their forces 

 largely in the line of money making may so 

 accentuate this propensity as to endow their off- 

 spring with a tendency to steal, what must be the 

 result where this condition exists together with 

 dishonesty? Misrepresentation in the name of 

 business has become well nigh universal. Decep- 

 tion is practiced in almost every branch of trade ! 

 Habitual deception on the part of business men 

 must influence their offspring. 



A very interesting and significant fact, well 

 known to detectives and the police, is that the 

 kind of deception or theft practiced by parents is 

 usually practiced by their offspring. In many 

 instances this is due to postnatal training, but not 

 in all. Even when children born of dishonest 

 parents are placed in good families in early in- 

 fancy they frequently develop the characteristics 

 of their parents. Shoplifters beget shoplifters; 

 burglars beget burglars; petty thieves, petty 

 thieves; and counterfeiters, counterfeiters. 



A good illustration of this is seen in the John- 

 son family of counterfeiters. The grandfather 



