September 24, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



287 



future, which too often proves stronger than the 

 best purposes and fairest opportunities of social 

 rehabilitation. The under-world, with the police 

 and detective forces practically in its interest, 

 holds in rigorous bondage every unfortunate or 

 miscreant who has once ' served time.' There is 

 often tragic interest in the struggles of these in- 

 snared wretches to break away from the meshes 

 spun about them. But the maelstrom has no 

 bowels of mercy ; and the would-be fugitives are 

 flung back again and again into the devouring 

 whirlpool of crime and poverty, until the end is 

 reached on the dissecting-table or in Potter's 

 field. Men who insist on breaking with this 

 tyrannous fellowship are often driven to seek 

 refuge among the various institutions on the 

 islands in menial or half-menial service as helpers, 

 messengers, or orderlies, under the beggerly wages 

 of the department, as a better alternative than a 

 life at large, constantly imperilled by the threats 

 and allurements of evil association, 



A serious percentage of this waste is thrown at 

 our doors by emigration, " Less than forty-eight 

 per cent of the criminals convicted ui the police 

 courts of the city of New York in 1884 were 

 native born. Of the total number, 51,845, the 

 United States contributed 24,511 ; Ireland, 16,349 ; 

 Germany, 5,272; England, 1,801; Italy, 1,707; 

 other countries, 2,205 " {Annual report of Board 

 of police justices, New York, 1884). Thus, while 

 it is not properly om* own, we become charged 

 with its care and cost. Many of the old abuses 

 have given way before a more intelligent and dis- 

 criminating legislation ; and the penitentiaries, 

 workhouses, and almshouses of Europe no longer 

 engage in the systematic and wholesale deporta- 

 tion of their paupers and criminals to our shores. 

 But in the large volume of a growing and desir- 

 able immigration, the casualties and exhaustion 

 of ocean travel, epidemics, and misfortune, leave 

 many stranded and helpless in this great city. 



But the crowning, almost inclusive source of 

 public injury is unquestionably strong drink and 

 drunkenness. Yet the people pocket a hush or 

 conscience money of half a million or so yearly, 

 and then legalize or explicitly connive at the 

 establishment of more than ten thousand drinking- 

 places in the city. The moralist and social re- 

 former have for generations shouted in our ears 

 and spread before our eyes the terrible statistics 

 of this most inhumane and inhuman traffic. 

 Judges from the bench take up and repeat the re- 

 frain. Science and philanthropy, hand in hand, 

 demonstrate, expostulate, and threaten ; yet the 

 bribe-taking goes on, and the city, for its yearly 

 dole of half a million, lets loose this army of 

 incendiaries, more dreadful than conflagrations, 



more deadly than pestilence, more destructive 

 than the field of battle. It is no metaphor to 

 attribute this moribund, hopeless, repulsive, ex- 

 crescence population to the parentage of strong 

 drink ; for drink and debauchery are inseparable, 

 and poverty and crime and pestilence are their 

 progeny. If drink and lust furnish three-fourths 

 of the criminals, they are more lavish yet with 

 the almshouse, and they have a busy hand in fill- 

 ing the wards of the hospitals. Eliminate or 

 shorten witMn hygienic limits the traffic in strong 

 drink, and these institutions of waste would in a 

 decade shrivel and shrink weU-nigh out of sight. 



What can the moralist or scientist do by way of 

 resuscitation? Very little at best. The flotsam 

 and jetsam are mere shreds and fragments of 

 wasted lives. Such a ministry must begin at the 

 sources, — is necessarily prophylactic, nutritive, 

 educational. On these islands there are no flex- 

 ible twigs, only gnarled, blasted, bhghted trunks, 

 insensible to moral or social influences. 



The physician, priest, and turnkey share a com- 

 mon outlook of nearly baffled hopelessness ; and 

 almost the sole blossom — the sole fair and precious 

 jewel to be found in this world of refuse and deso- 

 lation — is the culture of a stronger, surer medical 

 science, and the training and education of minis- 

 trants for the sick-room and hospital wards. And 

 the sole ground of hope and amelioration lies in 

 the rigid enforcement of a more practical civH 

 service, and in the vigilant, gratuitous, and inex- 

 pensive supervision of the State board of charities, 

 whose stated and fearless probtngs into dark, un- 

 suspected corners, whose scientific insight and 

 humane devotion to their unwelcome mission, have 

 instituted or energized every project or reform for 

 betterment thus far attempted in our municipal 

 institutions. 



The hinderances in the work, and the conditions 

 unfavorable and even hostile to its best adminis- 

 tration, he in full sight of every thinking observer. 



First, we note the illogical and most umighteous 

 affiliation between crime and poverty, 'Chari- 

 ties ' and ' corrections,' forsooth, some diabolic 

 Malaprop surely linked these terms in unequal fel- 

 lowship. What have criminals to do with the sick 

 and poor, and why should conditions morally more 

 widely separated than the poles be literally hand- 

 cuffed in mutual ignominy ? The relation between 

 crime and poverty is no more essential than 

 between crime and wealth. It is not for a so- 

 called modern civilization to smirch and befoul a 

 condition in life in itself honorable, reputable, and 

 of a certain dignity, by involuntary association 

 with the tramp, harlot, thief, and assassin. There 

 is a charity called for at the hands of the munici- 

 pality which suffers unendurable shame and affront 



