180 
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters. 
education and because we have an unusual number of ignorant foreigners 
coming to our shores. But this is sufficiently answered by looking at Ger¬ 
many, with its homogeneous population and compulsory education and 
compulsory religious, as well as secular education, at that. In Germany, 
crime and pauperism and insanity are increasing as they are with us. 
Criminals, paupers and insane, all average a little below the rest of the 
community in education. There are, of course, exceptions. In the case 
of the insane and of criminals we can all of us point to conspicuous excep¬ 
tions. I know a few cases of educated paupers, but very few, because 
their relations or friends care for them and do not let them go to the poor- 
house. Inspecting a poorhouse a while ago I found in one of the rooms a 
book which had been given as a prize for scholarship in a famous New 
England academy. The owner had been district attorney of the county, 
and was now in the poorhouse through liquor. All efforts to reform him 
had proved in vain. But the fact remains that the average of the defec¬ 
tive classes is of a lower intellectual grade than the average of the com¬ 
munity. Their smaller knowledge and less natural ability makes them 
break down into insanity more easily and easier drift into crime or 
pauperism. 
The best statistics of criminals have been kept for over half a century by 
the Eastern Pennsylvania penitentiary. The results of these statistics 
seem to show that idleness rather than ignorance is the mother of crime. 
An investigation, which I made a few years ago by personal inquiries 
from poorhouse to poorhouse in Wisconsin satisfied me that about one- 
tliird of the paupers are made so by idleness, one-third by liquor and one- 
third by all other causes combined. In my judgment the idleness which 
makes truants from school and therefore poor scholars, leads to crime or 
pauperism in many cases, and in those cases it is not ignorance which is 
the cause of crime, but idleness which is the cause of both ignorance and 
crime. 
The question of social standing is not of as great importance in this 
democratic country as in Europe. Paupers of course do not come from the 
wealthy or the middle classes. Many of the laboring classes do drop into 
pauperism through misfortune or vice. But many of the paupers are not 
even of the laboring class, but come from the outcasts of society. The 
same is the case with the criminals. They do not come very largely from 
the wealthy or middle classes. Some of them come from the laboring 
classes, but they are very largely from the outcasts of society. To some 
extent this holds good with insanity, but only to a small degree. The in¬ 
sane are found in all classes in considerable numbers, but the laboring class 
furnishes more than its share of insane, and the outcasts an immense pro¬ 
portion to their total number. Criminals and paupers frequently become 
insane, I should say, ten times as many as from the same number of aver¬ 
age humanity. 
The advantages and disadvantages of city life have often been talked of. 
