286 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VIII., No. 190 



send out graduates, ripe in the vilest lore of evil, 

 contracted while under the costly care and train- 

 ing of the state. 



Superintendent Kellogg of The charity organi- 

 zation society, in an address before the American 

 association of social science, 1886, states : — 



"In 1883 every twelfth commitment by the 

 courts of New York was either of a girl under 

 twenty, or of a boy under fourteen years of age : 

 of the former there were 3,054, and of the latter, 

 2,118, a total of 4,172. At the same time there 

 were thousands of children drawn from the poor, 

 permanently lodged in the public correctional in- 

 stitutions and the fifteen or twenty reformatories 

 of the city. Those youth who have fallen into 

 police custody are probably lost for any good pur- 

 pose to the community ; and that loss, it will be 

 seen, is greater pecuniarily and numerically than 

 that caused by preventable death. As a social 

 disease, their presence in the community is inju- 

 rious beyond computation, since an infiltration 

 goes on from them through gradually enlarging 

 areas of society. Nor is their depravity like the ca- 

 lamity that comes with a blow, and then all is over. 

 Having reached adolescence, they go on from year 

 to year, dependent, predatory, contaminating." 



We have taken too superficial an estimate of 

 the tramp population in its relation to social waste 

 and disorder. 



The following statistics were taken from the 

 Annual report of the Board of police justices of 

 the city of New York, for 1884: "6,275 persons 

 were arrested, or appeared in the police courts of 

 New York City, in 1884, against whom a charge 

 of vagrancy was preferred ; and of this number, 

 5,892 were convicted upon competent testimony 

 or upon their own confession." 



Comparison with former years. 



" The number of persons arrested upon the charge 

 of disorderly conduct in 1884 was 28,696. Of these, 

 there were convicted and fined, or held to bail 

 for good behavior, 20,311." 



Comparison with former years. 



" The registration bureau of The charity organ- 

 ization society of New York City records a list of 

 71,332 different families, or a total population of 

 285,000 individuals, involved in mendicancy or 

 dependence " {Report of Charity organization so- 

 ciety, 1886). 



This waste shows a deadly apathy, a dying-out of 

 purpose, a fatal estrangement from home, family, 

 and society, for which there has, as yet, been 

 found neither remedy nor cure. This tramp clas& 

 grows, and grows dangerous and desperate too, 

 and is chargeable with an increasing number of 

 outrages, assaults, and crimes against both prop- 

 erty and person. The island, the almshouse, and 

 workhouses do not reach or touch their cases, for 

 they gather physical endurance and resources 

 from fresh campaignings across country, until 

 rounded up again by winter weather in the gi-eat 

 cities. Even the dead weight of this class, like 

 sheer moral inertia, rests like an incubus upon the 

 community ; a species of leprosy, in short, that 

 spreads while it kUls, surely if slowly. This dis- 

 couraged, cowed, broken-down class is likely to 

 increase, under a civilization which develops mil- 

 lionnaires and monopolies out of the feebleness 

 and misfortunes of the masses. Strange illustra- 

 tions of this soulless work of disintegration may 

 be found any and every day in hospital, peniten- 

 tiary, almshouse, insane-asylum, or morgue. 



But well-to-do labor, legitimate, hopeful indus- 

 try, insensibly contribute their quota in the mul- 

 titudes, who, too heavily handicapped in the 

 struggles, in the irresistible spirit of emulation 

 and haste for riches that stimulates and fires on all 

 sides, succumb to some form of mania or insanity. 

 The inmates of these insane-asylums are largely 

 overworked, over-anxious lives, thrown out of 

 gearing often by a very slight obstruction, — lives 

 too far collapsed to resist an appetite or passion 

 which might hardly ruffle the equipoise of a ro- 

 bust nature. 



The heredity of evil is an element of incalculable 

 significance, the fearful rolling-up or rolling-down 

 from generation to generation, through all the 

 ages, of the weakness, vice, and moral darkness 

 of the past. The increase is more than com- 

 pounded. It spreads and penetrates in every 

 direction without spending or diluting its death- 

 dealing vigor. Evil is gregarious, it is prolific. 

 It grows into a society of its own, well named 

 the half or under world. It stamps its offspring 

 indelibly. It not only inbreeds to deadlier pur- 

 pose : it grows by what it captures, defiles, and 

 anneals in some vital, hopeless way to itself. No 

 man or woman who is ' sent up ' to these colonies 

 ever returns to the city scot-free. There is a lien, 

 visible or hidden, upon his or her present or 



