CHAPTER VII

CAUSE OF CRIME

If the punishment of so-called crimes tended in any way to prevent violent acts, this tendency would be manifest in some conclusive way. Whether brotherhood love and non-resistance would lessen crime may be a matter of debate, but that punishment does not lessen it, seems to be as well established as any fact that cannot be absolutely proved. The death penalty was for years drastically enforced for the crime of smuggling, but its enforcement in no way tended to prevent the practice which flourished in spite of executions without number,—the common consciousness would not accept this punishment as just and finally rulers were forced to modify the punishment in self-defence. The punishment of death for larceny did not prevent the crime. Nearly every religion has made its way in the face of the severest penal statutes. Its converts have all been criminals and they have accepted and taught their faith at the risk of life. Every organization of working men has grown up in violation of human laws, and the jails, prisons and scaffolds have been busily engaged in suppressing this species of crime; but in spite of the fact that judges still imprison and execute for this crime, these associations are now almost as firmly established as any institution of the world. All new political ideas, democracy, socialism, nihilism have met the same fact and have made their way regardless of scaffolds and jails. Even in the common crimes, like burglary and larceny, prisons have had no effect. From the dawn of civilization an endless procession of weak and helpless victims, handcuffed, despised and outlawed, have been marching up to prison doors and still the procession comes and goes. Time does not stay nor punishment make it less. In fact the older the community and the better settled and undisturbed its life, the greater the number of these unfortunates whom, for some mysterious reason, the Infinite has decreed a life of shame and a death of ignominy and dishonor. If scaffolds and prisons and judges and jailers have no effect to prevent and lessen crime, common wisdom, to say nothing of humane instincts, ought to seek some other plan.

Intelligent men have long since ceased to believe in miracle or chance. Whatever they may think of ancient miracles and the original chance that brought the universe into being, still most people now believe that the world’s affairs, be they small or great, physical, intellectual, or moral, come within the realm of law.

In the ordinary affairs of life, men everywhere seek the causes that produce effects. Men are called into being, live their lives and pass away in obedience to natural laws which are as immutable as the movement of the tides. In our half civilized condition we partially comprehend this fact. The defect of the born cripple, the idiot, the insane is no longer charged to the poor victim who, unhampered by the world, still has a burden as heavy as should be given to mortal man to bear. The physician who would treat fever or measles or diphtheria without considering the cause would be considered the veriest bungler and responsible for his patient’s death. It is not so very long ago that a world about as intelligent as our own believed that disease, deformity, and sin came from the same cause,—some sort of an evil spirit that found its abode in man. The way to destroy the evil spirit was generally to destroy the man. The world will perhaps grow wise enough to not only believe that disease, deformity, and sin have a common cause, but perhaps so wise as to find their common cause. No skilful physician called to the bedside of a child suffering with scarlet fever would upbraid the child for the evil spirit that caused its pain; no more would he punish the consumptive for his hacking cough; he would understand perfectly well that the physical condition of each was due to some natural cause, and that the disease could be cured in these patients and avoided with others only when the cause was destroyed, or so well known that no one need fall a victim to the malady. Even in diseases of the most contagious sort, where the isolation of the patient is necessary to protect the lives and health of others, this isolation would be accomplished not in hatred or malice but in the greatest tenderness and love, and the isolation would last only for the purpose of a cure and a sufficient time for cure; and every pains would be taken to destroy and stamp out the cause which produced the disease.

The theory of disease is so well understood to-day that our physicians clearly recognize mental disease as well as physical. Insanity is no longer punished as a crime as in the days gone by, and even kleptomania is now a well classified and recognized disease. No intelligent person doubts the disease of kleptomania; its symptoms are too well established. When a person steals a thing he does not need, it is an evidence of kleptomania, an ungovernable will. When a poor person takes a thing he needs and cannot live without, there is no evidence of an ungovernable will.

Many facts have been classified concerning physical disease and our knowledge of its nature, cause, and cure grows year by year. Malignant spirits and accident are no longer considered in reference to disease; while the origin of all bodily ailments is not yet known, so many have been ascertained as to make it sure that with sufficient knowledge, all could be traced to their natural cause. And while the means have not yet been found to cure each disease, still so much is known as to warrant the belief that there is no physical ailment that will necessarily cause death.

And intelligent research is constantly adding to the known and ever narrowing the realm of the mysterious and unexplained. In physical disease long observation has shown that certain climates and certain localities are favorable to this disease or that; some places naturally breed malaria, and the mind of man is turned to discovering methods to overcome the conditions which produce the disease. If fevers abound, the conditions are carefully observed to find what breeds the infectious germ. It is not difficult to imagine that if the medical profession should ever labor purely to cure disease, instead of to make money for itself, and should continue its research and investigation, that few would die until old age should terminate life as simply and naturally as birth ushers it in.

But in the realm of the mental and the moral, the law has been content for centuries to rest at ease. Our practical dealings with crime are based on the same theories of evil and evil spirits that made wise physicians drive the devils into swine and swine into the sea. If any progress has been made it has been in believing that, instead of one being possessed of a devil, he really is a devil. When the physical condition of a man is sufficiently far removed from the physical condition of the average which is supposed to represent the normal man, he is treated for the disease. When the mental condition sufficiently varies from that of the ordinary man, the normal man, he is promptly imprisoned or put to death. Judges and juries debate and ponder over the question of whether a man has done some act that is not commonly done by his fellows, and if they determine that he is guilty of doing the act, the judgment follows that he must have wilfully and perversely chosen to do wrong. No one then inquires why he did the act and whether there are conditions of disease present in the community that will lead others to do like acts. There is but one thing to do. The man is evil. The state must lay violent hands upon him—must meet evil with evil, violence with violence. There is but one cure for malice and that is malice.

But however ignorant the law and its administrators, some of the rules of conduct have been brought to light; while judges have been sentencing, and hangmen and jailers plying their grewsome trades, there have been thinkers and students and historians, who did not believe in the old theory of witchcraft and evil spirits on which human punishment really rests. These students and scholars have labeled and classified facts and have at least learned something as to the cause and origin of what men call crime. Enough at least has been discovered to prove that punishment has absolutely no effect to lessen crime.

The ancients believed in the existence of the body and the soul as independent entities. Each had its own sphere of action and neither one had any relation to the other. This idea has come down to us and is present in all our dealings with our fellow man. Particularly is this the view of government in its tender care of those who are the subjects of its laws. The care and treatment of the body come within the province of the physician. The care and treatment of the soul belong to the priest and the hangman. Whether man has a soul that ever existed or can exist independent of the body may be a question that will remain forever open to occupy our thoughts. But this at least is true: that the condition of the body has the greatest influence over the mental and so-called moral nature of man. The body and mind grow together and decay together. Health in one generally indicates health in the other. The overfeeding or the starvation of the one means the disease of the other. It is doubtful if any mental characteristic or abnormal condition could not be traced to its physical cause either in the individual or his ancestors, if science were far enough advanced.

Everyone who is familiar with the inmates of jails and penal institutions has learned to know the type of man that is confined as a criminal. In nearly every case these are inferior physically to the average man. In nearly every case they are also inferior mentally to the average man. One needs but visit our criminal courts day after day to find that the average criminal is a stunted, starved, deficient man. More than this, almost universally they come from the poorer class—men and women reared in squalor and misery and want, surrounded from youth by those who have been compelled to resort to almost any means for life; people who, whatever their own code of ethics, have not been able in their growth to maintain those distinctions in conduct which to the common mind constitutes the difference between lawful and unlawful acts. Here and there, of course, one finds some one in jail who has been differently reared; but these are the exceptions which in no way disprove the rule. These cases too can be traced to their cause like all the rest. There are certain moral diseases like speculation, for instance, that seize on men exactly as the measles or the mumps. These diseases generally flourish in great cities and are not indigenous to country life. Not only are these prisoners deficient in stature and intellect, but the shape of their heads shows them different from other men. As a class their heads are much less symmetrical and what are known as the higher faculties are much less developed than with the ordinary man.

If it were established even that the criminal type is inferior mentally and physically and that they have all misshapen heads, this alone ought to be sufficient to raise the inquiry as to who was responsible for their acts. Long ago a wise man said that no one could by taking thought add a cubit to his stature, and yet we hang and pen because these unfortunates have not grown as tall, as large, or as symmetrical as the ordinary man. But the mental actions of man have been shown to be as much due to law and environment as his physical health,—certain sections of the world are indigenous to men who kill their fellows; and more than this, certain portions produce men who kill with guns, others who kill with a knife, others still who administer poison. In certain sections, the chief crime is horse stealing; in others, running illicit distilleries; again, burglary; in some places, poaching; sometimes, robbery; and again, smuggling. A study of conditions would reveal why each of those crimes is indigenous to the particular soil that gives them birth, and just as draining swamps prevents the miasma, so a rational treatment of the condition caused by the various crimes would cure them, too. If our physicians were no more intelligent than our lawyers, when called to visit a miasmic patient, instead of draining the swamp they would chloroform the patient and expect thus to frighten all others from taking the disease.

Observation as to so-called crime has gone much further. The number of inmates of our jails is much larger in winter than in summer, which ought to show that there is something in the air that produces a wicked heart in the winter, or that many persons directly or indirectly go to jail because in winter, food and warmth are not easily obtained and work is hard to get. For many years it has been observed that jails are very much more crowded in hard times than in good times. If work were sufficiently plenty or remunerative both jails and almshouses would be compelled to close their doors. Long ago it was ascertained from statistics that the number of crimes rose and fell in exact accord with the price of bread. All new communities, where land is cheap or free and labor has ample employment, or, better still, a chance to employ itself, are very free from crime. England made Australia its dumping ground for criminals for years, but these same criminals when turned upon the wide plains with a chance to get their living from the soil, became peaceable, orderly citizens fully respecting one another’s rights. England, too, used certain portions of her American colonies where she sent men for her country’s good. These criminals like all the criminals of the world were the exploited, homeless class. When they reached the new country, when they had an opportunity to live, they became as good citizens as the pilgrim fathers who were likewise criminals themselves. As civilization has swept westward through the United States, jails have lagged behind. The jail and the penitentiary are not the first institutions planted by colonists in a new country, or by pioneers in a new state. These pioneers go to work to till the soil, to cut down the forests, to dig the ore; it is only when the owning class has been established and the exploiting class grows up, that the jail and the penitentiary become fixed institutions, to be used for holding people in their place.