find the children in question. So far the boys, except in line 24, are quite young and have not yet committed any open thefts, but their fate is foreshadowed if they are left to themselves. If the entire chart is examined so as to compare the brothers and sisters in the various families and in the different generations, it will be seen that in those families where the brothers have committed crime the sisters have been prostitutes; there is hardly an exception. On the other hand, very little crime occurs among the women. The explanation is perhaps to be found in the fact that the tendency of human beings is to obtain a living in the direction of least resistance; and, as this direction for women of this class is by prostitution, they enter that vocation. The brothers, being debarred from making a living in this manner, take to preying upon property. Thus the prostitute may be considered the analogue of the thief, both being the product of the same general conditions of parentage and training, the difference in the career being only an accident of sex. How essentially true is this position is shown by the fact that almost all prostitutes are thieves who are protected by their profession because their victims do not wish to make public their liaisons by bringing the offenders to justice. Thus the two boys in line 36, generation 6, are seen to be brothers of harlots; one to five years more will see them enter the ranks of the criminals, adding one more example to the law above expressed. So in line 24, generation 6, we have it again demonstrated-the boy a thief, his sister a harlot. Tracing back each of these lines, we find for line 24, mother a harlot, who kept a brothel, she dying seven years before he was committed; grandfather an unpunished thief, and a most expert sheep-stealer; grandmother a prostitute. In lines 35 and 36 we find mother a harlot, who kept a brothel, a receiver of stolen goods, and a contriver of crime; grandfather an unpunished and expert petty thief; grandmother a harlot. In line 37, mother a harlot, father a convicted felon; same grandfather and grandmother as the above. With all these children there seems to be no special wickedness of disposition. In most respects they do not compare unfavorably with the average of the children of the laboring class, except, perhaps, in respect to a tendency to licentious behavior, which is largely due to the example of their parents living in illicit and promiscuous relationships, and the tendency to tell lies, which, in the case of both the parents in the fifth generation, has become such a constitutional habit that they have become expert and reckless coiners of falsehood without purpose. The home-influence of these children has been deplorable. They have seen debauchery in all its forms from their cradle; they have been whipped to make them steal. One of them is a harlot, with a sister keeping a brothel, as her mother also did before her; another, aged 12, has had rape attempted upon her by her step-father, if that title can be used where there has been no legal marriage. The training of these children, ranging from 8 years to 17, will have to be very different from that which they are likely to get if they are to be reclaimed; but, as they have youth upon their side, much can be expected. This brings me to the consideration of the question of reform, of which there are three examples, two of them conspicuous ones in the fifth generation, lines 7, 25, and 26. The essential features of the lives of these three men have been the same. They were each the children of unpunished thieves, the father of the two last being an expert sheep-stealer; they committed many offenses, one of them beginning at 12 years of age and receiving an aggregate of fourteen years' imprisonment. They all committed crimes of contrivance; they all reformed before their thirty-third year, and two of the worst have since become successful in managing stone-flagging quarries of their own. It is believed that there is great significance in the fact that their reformation took place before the thirty-third year, for it is in accordance with the law of the development of mind accompanying the growth of the brain and nervous system. Explaining this fact in a brief and popular way, it may be laid down that in the growth of each individual that portion of the nervous system which brings the lungs, heart, stomach, &c., into sympathetic action with each other is first organized; then the spinal column, which chiefly brings the movements of the limbs and body under control; third, that portion of the brain which registers the impressions made upon the senses; and, fourth, the reason, the judgment, and the will, which give the adult the power to hold in check the passions which otherwise would produce crime if allowed full sway. Now, the judgment and the will are not fully organized till between the thirtieth and thirty-fifth year, and as this is the case it is easy to understand that a boy, who is a petty thief at 18 or 20, may outgrow his habits of theft as he grows older, simply because the natural tendency of the development of the brain organizes an experience which teaches that honesty is most advantageous. Before the age of full maturity is reached, say the thirty-third year, the growth of the mind is an agent spontaneously working for reformation; therefore any system of reformatory discipline and education which does not save a large proportion, at least 85 per cent., of its offenders under 20 years of age, is an administrative monstrosity, and should not be allowed to shield itself from the charge of culpable incompetence on the plea that crime is hereditary and therefore incurable. It must be distinctly accepted that the moral nature-which really means the holding of the emotions and passions under the dominion of the judgment by the exercise of will-is the last-developed of the elements of character, and, for this reason, is most modifiable by the nature of the environment. This being established, it is easy to understand the doctrine of the interchangeableness of careers in the same individual at different periods of life, as I have more fully elaborated in the report, and explains why numerous offenders become reformed, not in consequence of our prisons, but in spite of them. The most conspicuous and uniformly noticeable trait of the true criminal is that he seems to lack the element of continuity of effort. Steady, plodding work, which is the characteristic not only of honest and successful individuals, but also of all nations that have made a mark in history, is deficient in him, and needs to be organized as a constituent of his character; thus the pre-eminent necessity of a thorough industrial training for these children who have just been sent to the reformatory. Their tendency to sexual precociousness will be checked by labor, their physiological development will become more firm and healthy, and the habit of perseverance which is such a large factor in good conduct will be organized so as to become automatic in its action, and for this reason voluntary. The direction of least resistance then will be the path of honest industry, and with this conviction as an accepted rule of conduct and the practice of it as an organized habit, reformation is secured permanently. A fact which is noticeable, and one which seems to indicate the identity of harlotry and crime in the different sexes is that they both yield to the same general treatment, both requiring steady labor as the essential element of reform. In taking a final and general survey of the entire progeny of the group of sisters who were the mothers of this lineage, and contrasting the illegitimate branches, which show both greater vigor, absence of disease, and large preponderance of crime, with certain legitimate branches which are distinctively pauper, debauched, and specifically diseased, it is incontestable that the criminal branches are decidedly more amenable to reform than are their pauper half-brothers or cousins, who are plunged in a condition so abject that, at points along the line of entailment, it may be said to be irreclaimable. R. L. DUGDALE. |