September 24, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



285 



tracted from the normal uses and fiinctions of 

 thrift-production both in social and civil life, both 

 of which are thus far impoverished and debilitated 

 because of this shrinkage and loss in vitality. 

 Here the sociologist is baffled ; for no statistical 

 tabulation, however minute and exact, adequately 

 or even approximately represents the substance of 

 the problem. 



I do not review the physical elements of this 

 problem to arraign the authorities, or to challenge 

 the costliness of the attempt to meet and dis- 

 charge an absolute duty : it is simply the exaction 

 of Nemesis, — the price of ignorance, unthrift, 

 sensuality, and crime, which the people must pay 

 in one shape or another. The questions left for 

 consideration are the sources of social waste, and 

 the practical hinderances in the way of their 

 municipal relief and correction. 



The sources mostly lie far back out of sight, and 

 in unexpected places. Among these is the press- 

 ure of labor, especially women's labor ; and the 

 tens of thousands of young girls literally impris- 

 oned over-hours at the sewing-machine, behind 

 the counters of stifling shops, in cigar-factories 

 and at tenement-house tobacco-work, in factories 

 innumerable, where the fever of competition feeds 

 on the blood and brain of girls and children, with 

 the inevitable poisoned air, insufficient nutrition, 

 and exhaustive toil, constitute one of the most 

 perilous sources of supply for the vicious and 

 criminal classes. Hunger, desperation, unendur- 

 able tension of nerve and muscle, are all the time 

 goading thousands toward mercenary profligacy. 

 These conditions are not only unfriendly to virtue 

 and chastity : they create and intensify those 

 critical conditions that breed shame and dishonor. 

 Virtuous, easy-going ladies and gentlemen must 

 get their haberdashery at bargain prices, even at 

 the yearly immolation of hecatombs of girl and 

 women workers who are literally starved into the 

 ranks of the falling and fallen. Among all the 

 thousands who drift into the island population, 

 there are found few exceptions to this experience. 

 Poverty, lust, and drink, — these three, — and 

 their progeny, profligacy and crime, cover nine- 

 tenths of the social and moral history of these com- 

 ing and going islanders. The disreputable dance- 

 halls and concert dives and bagnios, and vile 

 places of resort of one kind and another, all con- 

 nect with this range of hopeless, suffering world 

 of women-workers. 



When capital and commerce grow humane, 

 and become as considerate of human hearts and 

 lives as they are of machinery, vehicles, horses, 

 and other useful appliances of industry and honest 

 increase, then, and not sooner, will this diabolic 

 waste of womanhood be checked and stayed. 



Note again the viperous nests of friendless and 

 orphaned boys and lads who herd in out-of-the-way 

 covers in or about the city, without homes, teach- 

 ing, or training ; the progeny of criminals, or 

 paupers, or drunkards ; getting keenness and ani- 

 mal ferocity out of their hardships, and a training, 

 of its kind, for the full-grown thief, burglar, and 

 murderer. 



Mr. Delamater of the New York police depart- 

 ment, after careful estimate, states " that sev- 

 enty-five per cent of our convicts are city born 

 and bred," and adds, "that, of the 2,576 inmates 

 of the three state prisons of New York on Sept. 30, 

 1884, 1,645, or 63.8 per cent, were from Kings and 

 New York counties." 



The secretary of the National prison association 

 writes more con jecturally but more emphatically : 

 " I looked over . , . my list of cases which I have 

 investigated personally, and find that more than 

 four-fifths of the wrong-doers were either born in 

 cities, or had become residents of cities when very 

 young. ... If you had asked ' as between large 

 towns and city, and country bred children,' I should 

 have been obliged to add almost the other fifth." 



"The celebrated French reformatory, Mettrai, 

 has since its foundation admitted 3,580 youth- 

 ful inmates : 707 of these were the children 

 of convicts ; 534, ' natural ' children ; 221, found- 

 lings ; 504, children of a second marriage ; 808, 

 those whose parents live in concubinage ; and 

 1,542, children without either father or mother " 

 {Une visite a Mettray, Paris, 1868). 



" According to Dr. Bittinger (Transactions of 

 the national congress, p. 279), of the 7,963 inmates 

 of the reformatories of the United States in 1870, 

 fifty-five per cent were orphans or half-orphans." 



M. de Marsaugy, a clever French author, in 

 writing of the causes of juvenile crime in France, 

 says that " a fifth of those who have been the ob- 

 jects of judicial pursuit are composed of orphans, 

 the half have no father, a quarter no mother, and, 

 as for those who have a family, nearly all are 

 dragged by it into evil " (Moralisation de Venfance 

 coupable, p. 13). 



The precocity of the criminal classes is notorious 

 and portentous. It sets back year by year, until 

 the courts have long since passed the teens, and 

 children imder twelve are seen in the prisoner's 

 dock with growing frequency, for serious mis- 

 demeanors and crimes. The police confess the 

 practical difficulty, not so much of exterminating, 

 as of repressing, these nests of juvenile outcasts, 

 who prove more formidable, even, than bands of 

 adult outlaws. Something is done towards de- 

 pleting this tlireatening element, under the action 

 of the Children's aid society and the various half- 

 penal reformatories. But these latter too often 



