← Criminality and economic conditions
Chapter 18
Criminality (part 2)
It is crimes of vengeance, therefore, which form the largest group, then come economic crimes, and then sexual and political crimes, both with low figures. If we do not count the very minor offense of insult in the third group, the first and third groups will be nearly of the same size. There are, then, almost no political crimes in England. As in Germany, sexual crimes are very rare, and it is the economic crimes and those committed out of revenge, etc., that are the most important. The latter preponderate even more in England than in Germany.
Germany, 1896–1900.
Crimes. Number of Persons Convicted of the Following Crimes in
1896. 1897. 1898. 1899. 1900. 1896–1900 Average.
Absolute Number. %
Theft and embezzlement 109,545 112,591 116,977 113,159 114,831 113,420 29.96
Receiving stolen goods and being accessory after the fact in general 8,164 7,922 8,490 8,124 8,068 8,153 2.15
Procuration, etc. 2,816 2,671 2,765 2,622 2,648 2,711 0.72
Counterfeiting 234 166 203 212 186 200 0.05
Perjury 1,523 1,450 1,478 1,316 1,198 1,393 0.37
Criminal breach of trust and obtaining money under false pretenses 28,649 25,169 26,546 26,580 26,079 25,604 6.76
Forgery 4,761 5,068 5,185 5,479 5,231 5,144 1.36
Robbery and extortion 1,048 995 1,114 1,114 1,009 1,056 0.28
Fraudulent bankruptcy 931 924 871 952 905 916 0.24
Total of economic crimes — — — — — — 41.89
Bigamy 76 72 64 70 64 69 0.02
Incest 462 381 397 411 448 419 0.11
Rape, etc. 4,483 4,182 4,507 4,597 4,762 4,506 1.19
Total of sexual crimes — — — — — — 1.32
Insults 53,968 54,143 55,988 55,514 52,883 54,499 14.39
Malicious mischief 17,485 17,486 18,213 18,858 18,261 18,060 4.77
Arson 479 468 501 519 472 487 0.13
Assaults 116,613 117,864 122,561 126,490 124,646 121,632 32.12
Rebellion 18,377 18,484 17,968 19,817 17,951 18,393 4.86
Homicide 1,511 1,562 1,468 1,542 1,580 1,532 0.40
Total of crimes of vengeance, etc. — — — — — — 56.67
Political crimes 561 428 466 416 305 435 0.12
General total — — — — — 378,629 100.00
England, 1881–1900.
Crimes. Number Arraigned for Each of the Crimes Given:
Annual Averages. 1881–1900 Average.
1881–85. 1886–90. 1891–95. 1896–1900. Absolute Number. %
Theft (of every kind) 57,373 52,573 50,432 45,960 51,584 32.92
Embezzlement 1,475 1,345 1,335 1,387 1,385 0.88
Receiving stolen goods 1,302 1,239 1,348 1,241 1,282 0.82
Burglary 1,464 1,530 1,665 1,630 1,572 1.00
Robbery and extortion 320 322 310 278 307 0.20
Fraud 1,054 965 997 870 971 0.62
Counterfeiting, etc. 534 410 365 309 402 0.26
Perjury 100 85 78 77 85 0.05
Fraudulent bankruptcy 49 41 43 35 42 0.03
Total of economic crimes — — — — — 36.78
Bigamy 116 99 104 103 105 0.07
Indecent assault upon girls under 16 — 305 258 236 249 0.16
Rape, etc. upon adults 647 639 636 595 629 0.40
Total of sexual crimes — — — — — 0.63
Malicious mischief 21,779 19,646 18,484 17,470 19,594 12.51
Arson 155 133 117 104 127 0.08
Assaults 72,707 66,020 63,601 59,611 65,484 41.80
Assaults upon officers 322 285 291 278 294 0.19
Homicide (including attempted homicide) 13,223 11,850 12,626 12,524 12,555 8.01
Total of crimes of vengeance — — — — — 62.59
Political crimes 4 0 0 0 1 0.00
General total — — — — 156,668 100.00
France, 1881–1900.
Crimes. Number Arraigned for Each Crime.
Annual Averages. 1881–1900 Averages.
1881–1885. 1886–1890. 1891–1895. 1896–1900. Average Number. %
Vagrancy 15,629 19,050 18,449 14,148 16,819 11.17
Mendicity 9,421 14,625 14,707 11,274 12,506 8.30
Aggravated theft 1,668 1,715 1,517 1,308 1,552 1.03
Simple theft 44,596 47,941 49,145 43,750 46,358 30.78
Counterfeiting 98 141 134 111 121 0.08
Procuration 341 361 406 304 353 0.23
Forgery 355 304 237 224 280 0.19
Obtaining money under false pretenses 4,210 4,422 3,898 3,496 4,006 2.66
Breach of trust 4,106 4,495 4,488 4,834 4,480 2.98
Commercial frauds 3,221 3,015 2,607 2,931 2,941 1.95
Fraudulent bankruptcy 86 63 63 44 64 0.04
Simple bankruptcy 934 967 802 860 890 0.59
Perjury 126 126 151 136 134 0.09
Total of economic crimes — — — — — 60.09
Bigamy 6 6 8 8 7 0.00
Adultery 1,038 1,758 1,838 2,212 1,711 1.14
Rape and indecent assault upon adults 103 76 95 70 86 0.06
Rape and indecent assault upon children 717 592 584 452 586 0.39
Total of sexual crimes — — — — — 1.59
Defamation and insults 3,513 2,918 2,940 2,877 3,062 2.03
Insults to officials 13,492 13,728 15,258 13,450 13,982 9.28
Malicious mischief 3,291 4,876 4,530 4,382 4,269 2.84
Arson 207 245 263 213 252 0.17
Serious assaults 187 155 178 183 175 0.12
Intentional assaults 27,768 28,971 33,443 36,158 31,585 20.97
Violence to officials 3,721 3,746 3,926 3,502 3,723 2.47
Homicide 518 506 515 461 500 0.33
Infanticide 191 191 157 118 164 0.11
Total of crimes of vengeance, etc. — — — — — 38.32
Political crimes 4 1 2 0 1 0.00
General total — — — — 150,607 100.00
Here, also, the political crimes and the sexual offenses show the smallest figures. The economic crimes exceed considerably those committed out of revenge, etc., a fact to be accounted for in great part by the inclusion of vagrancy and mendicity among the economic crimes. These tables hardly lend themselves to international comparison, since certain acts are regarded as misdemeanors in one country, and as contraventions in another.
Italy, 1891–1895.
Crimes. Number Convicted of Each Crime.
1891. 1892. 1893. 1894. 1895. Average 1891–1895.
Absolute Numbers. %
Simple theft 44,380 38,750 35,343 37,022 41,875 39,474 29.07
Aggravated theft 14,512 15,103 15,230 15,238 17,132 15,441 11.37
Fraud (of every kind) 6,288 6,202 6,446 6,861 7,917 6,742 4.97
Counterfeiting, etc. 85 59 59 68 90 72 0.05
Forgery 788 626 683 726 839 732 0.54
Procuration 182 188 185 162 267 196 0.15
Robbery, extortion, etc. 683 719 824 879 966 814 0.60
Total of economic crimes — — — — — — 46.75
Rape etc. 724 797 879 902 1,066 873 0.64
Corruption of minors and other offenses against morals and the order of the family 1,036 1,246 1,269 1,373 1,411 1,267 0.93
Total of sexual crimes — — — — — — 1.57
Defamation and insults 9,030 9,957 9,005 11,247 12,196 10,287 7.58
Malicious mischief 5,396 4,938 4,493 5,069 5,617 5,102 3.76
Arson 213 156 197 210 197 194 0.14
Minor assaults 24,275 27,617 23,740 27,479 28,924 26,407 19.45
Serious assaults 6,491 8,440 9,124 8,211 9,199 8,293 6.11
Threats 4,788 5,997 5,875 6,702 8,053 6,283 4.63
Violence, insults, etc., to officials 10,293 11,829 11,999 11,835 11,800 11,551 8.51
Homicide 1,686 1,946 2,145 2,035 2,049 1,972 1.45
Infanticide and abortion 60 59 54 64 81 63 0.05
Total of crimes of vengeance, etc. — — — — — — 51.68
Crimes against the safety of the state 11 9 10 10 12 10 0.00
General total — — — — — 135,773 100.00
The results of the Italian statistics agree in general with those that have gone before.
Netherlands, 1897–1901.
Crimes. Number of Convicts for Each Crime.
1897. 1898. 1899. 1900. 1901. Average 1897–1901.
Absolute Numbers. %
Vagrancy and mendicity 2,139 2,173 2,209 1,873 1,857 2,050 16.42
Simple theft 1,685 1,830 1,740 1,544 1,758 1,711 13.71
Aggravated theft 936 919 761 837 1,029 896 17.18
Receiving stolen goods 95 69 88 82 98 86 0.69
Embezzlement 320 262 295 309 269 291 2.33
Causing or being accessory to the debauch of a minor 14 6 10 14 16 12 0.10
Obtaining money under false pretenses 102 115 97 112 115 108 0.87
Extortion and blackmail 8 12 6 9 5 8 0.07
Forgery 75 72 49 64 42 60 0.48
Perjury 29 18 15 22 18 20 0.16
Fraudulent bankruptcy 14 14 12 20 12 14 0.11
Total of economic crimes 42.12
Rape and indecent assault upon adults 88 81 94 110 97 94 0.75
Rape and indecent assault upon children 13 5 13 6 18 11 0.09
Total of sexual crimes 0.84
Simple insults 356 319 330 288 291 316 2.53
Insults to officials 549 508 431 421 440 469 3.76
Malicious mischief 916 900 861 857 874 881 7.06
Arson 10 12 22 25 15 17 0.14
Rebellion, etc. 1,188 1,091 1,069 1,166 1,112 1,125 9.01
Assaults 4,241 4,020 4,101 3,814 3,715 3,978 31.87
Assaults upon officials 340 286 331 330 296 316 2.53
Homicide 16 16 12 14 19 15 0.12
Infanticide and abortion 4 3 4 4 0 3 0.02
Total of crimes of vengeance, etc. 57.04
Political crimes 3 1 1 0 0 1 0.00
General total 12,482 100.00
These figures thus confirm in general the results of the preceding tables. The most frequent crimes are those committed out of revenge etc. and the economic crimes. The sexual crimes only reach low figures, and the political crimes are negligible.
We have placed certain crimes, like homicide and arson, in all the tables, among the crimes of vengeance, etc., although they may also be committed from an economic motive. The French and Italian criminal statistics give information upon the frequency of the motives which lead to these crimes.
France, 1881–1900.
Presumable Motive of the Crimes. Percentage of the Crimes of Homicide and Arson due to Each Cause.
1881–1885. 1886–1890. 1891–1895. 1896–1900.
Cupidity 26 28 31 26
Love, jealousy 2 2 6 3
Adultery 3 3 2 2
Concubinage, debauch 6 6 5 8
Hate, revenge 24 27 28 28
Domestic disputes 15 13 9 12
Drink-shop quarrels 2 1 1 1
Various motives 22 20 18 20
About 28% of the crimes, then, had an economic motive, about 12% had a sexual motive, and 40% were committed out of revenge.
Italy, 1880–1881.
Presumable Motive of the Crimes. Percentage of Crimes of Blood due to Each Cause.
1880. 1881.
Cupidity 9.2 9.98
Question of interests 4.2 8.76
Love, lawful or unlawful 7.5 8.76
Family relations and questions of honor 2.6 3.11
Defense of life 4.9 3.04
Defense,, of,, property 1.7 1.89
Domestic disputes 3.0 4.43
Anger 30.3 23.67
Hate and revenge 26.5 28.46
Cruelty 4.1 2.72
Drunkenness 3.2 4.25
Politics 0.1 0.14
Various and unknown motives 2.6 0.79
Finally, it must not be forgotten that certain crimes of a different kind (leze-majesty and malicious mischief, for example) are sometimes committed simply that the author of them may get himself imprisoned, and hence should be classed as economic crimes.
We have now reached the question: how close a connection have the different crimes with economic conditions? We shall give only a detailed sketch of the subject; to treat it more fully would require extensive monographs. We shall limit ourselves to indicating the general lines.
Chapter II.
Economic Crimes.
It is necessary to divide these crimes into separate groups. Notwithstanding their partial similarity they differ too much among themselves to be treated together. I propose to speak of them under the four following heads: A. Vagrancy and mendicity; B. Theft, and analogous crimes; C. Robbery, homicide for economic reasons, etc. (that is to say, economic crimes committed with violence or directed against life); D. Fraudulent bankruptcy, adulteration of food, etc. (that is to say, economic crimes committed almost exclusively by the bourgeoisie, while those of the first three categories are committed almost exclusively by the poor). Some crimes, like that of embezzlement, belong to the second class as well as to the fourth (for example, a workman’s making off with a bicycle loaned to him, and the embezzlement of deposits by a bank director).
It seems to me unnecessary to explain this division. It creates four fairly distinct groups, which contain all the economic crimes. However, I must point out why I treat vagrancy and mendicity in this way, while both are generally regarded not as misdemeanors but as contraventions. Properly speaking they ought not, therefore, to appear in a work on criminality, but the following are the reasons why they nevertheless find a place here; first, they are the most important and the most common contraventions; second, there is a very close relation between vagrancy on the one hand, and criminality properly speaking on the other. This relation has been shown by many authors. As Professor Prins says in his “Criminalité et répression”, vagrancy and mendicity are the novitiate of crime. I will only recall here the opinions of two writers, Josiah Flynt and E. Sichart. The former, the author of “Tramping with Tramps”, has given up a part of his life to tramping for some years in America, Germany, and in other countries, in order to familiarize himself with the vagrant and the criminal; his conclusions accordingly have great value. He is of the opinion that the vagrants endowed with great energy become professional criminals, to fall again into vagrancy as soon as their physical and mental forces decline so as no longer to permit them to carry on their criminal trade with success.
Sichart, the prison director, having examined 3,181 convicts, found that 28% of them had been convicted before for vagrancy, and 27% for mendicity—55% in all. These figures differed according to the kind of criminal. There were to
each 100 thieves 44.2 vagrants, 35.0 mendicants
each,, 100 swindlers 11.1 vagrants,,, 20.2 mendicants,,
each,, 100 sexual offenders 14.0 vagrants,,, 17.3 mendicants,,
each,, 100 incendiaries 15.1 vagrants,,, 15.5 mendicants,,
each,, 100 perjurers 4.2 vagrants,,, 4.7 mendicants,,
For these reasons, then, it is necessary to treat of vagrancy and mendicity.
A. Vagrancy and Mendicity.
In examining the etiology of these contraventions, we perceive that different causes lead to them. We shall treat them successively and endeavor to find their relation to the economic life.
First. As a first cause of vagrancy and mendicity is the fact that under capitalism there are always workmen who cannot sell their labor. The number of these persons increases greatly at the time of a crisis. When the men out of work have no resource in their family and no longer receive aid from their union, they are obliged to go from place to place looking for employment, and if they do not succeed in finding it must have recourse to begging in order not to die of hunger. Statistics furnish the proof that the army of vagrants and mendicants is in fact made up in part of the unemployed who, though they wish to, cannot find work.
In the first place, vagrancy and mendicity increase in winter (as in general all economic criminality does), when forced unemployment is at its height, and needs are most pressing, while they diminish in summer. The following figures with reference to some of the German states show these facts.
Grand-Duchy of Baden, 1884–1891.
Months. Number Convicted of Vagrancy and Mendicity. Number Convicted per Diem, the Minimum = 100.
January 7,232 364
February 6,315 336
March 4,816 235
April 2,945 148
May 2,743 133
June 2,475 124
July 2,540 124
August 2,410 118
September 1,989 100
October 2,672 130
November 3,857 195
December 5,310 259
Hesse, 1899–1900.
Months. Number Convicted of Vagrancy and Mendicity.
Absolute Number. Daily Average.
December–February 479 5.32
March–May 334 3.63
June–August 259 2.82
September–November 531 3.64
The following figures confirm those that have preceded.
Saxony, 1882–1887.
Years. Number Convicted of Vagrancy and Mendicity.
First Quarter. Second Quarter. Third Quarter. Fourth Quarter.
Absolute Numbers. Percentage of Annual Total. Absolute Numbers. Percentage of Annual Total. Absolute Numbers. Percentage of Annual Total. Absolute Numbers. Percentage of Annual Total.
1882 6,752 36.1 4,220 22.6 3,181 17.0 4,546 24.3
1883 6,619 36.6 3,934 21.7 2,957 16.5 4,567 25.2
1884 6,641 37.6 3,855 21.8 2,721 15.5 4,462 25.2
1885 6,555 35.9 3,424 18.7 2,872 15.7 5,440 29.7
1886 7,139 41.5 3,507 20.4 2,654 15.4 3,900 22.7
1887 5,787 39.1 3,344 22.6 2,251 15.2 3,411 23.1
These statistics justify the conclusion drawn by Ostwald, from whom I have taken the figures for Hesse. This author is a competent witness, as he tramped as a vagrant for some time himself. He says: “These figures directly contradict the statement that antipathy to regular work forms the principal source of vagrancy and mendicity; especially as there is no inclination to frequent the highways in winter. It is the need that comes of unemployment that drives out these poorest of the poor; and whoever wishes to do away with vagrancy must make the economic existence of the working people secure, instead of visiting the victims of poverty with Draconian punishments.”
Another proof in support of the assertion that unemployment is a cause of mendicity and vagrancy, is to be found in the fact that the figures for vagrancy and mendicity rise considerably at the time of economic crises. The same phenomenon occurs more or less when the price of grain or bread goes up. Then those whose labor is only poorly paid must find some means of increasing their resources; and further when bread is dear less of other things can be bought, which brings about a decrease in production and consequently an increase in forced idleness.
In the first part of this work I have mentioned authors who have shown for different countries that the curve of vagrancy rises or falls as economic conditions become worse or better. I add here the data that I have been able to find elsewhere.
England, 1856–1896.
Years. Vagrants Convicted. Years. Vagrants Convicted.
Absolute Numbers. To 100,000 of the Population. Absolute Numbers. To 100,000 of the Population.
1856–57 19,270 99.7 1876–77 22,475 90.9
1857–58 21,473 109.9 1877–78 23,662 94.5
1858–59 16,401 83.0 1878–79 25,790 101.6
1859–60 16,374 82.2 1879–80 30,323 117.5
1860–61 17,496 86.9 1880–81 28,088 107.8
1861–62 20,636 101.4 1881–82 28,729 109.0
1862–63 21,758 105.8 1882–83 28,825 108.2
1863–64 20,414 97.7 1883–84 28,370 105.3
1864–65 20,307 96.7 1884–85 27,467 100.9
1865–66 19,607 91.8 1885–86 26,546 96.4
1866–67 21,071 97.5 1886–87 28,690 103.0
1867–68 24,125 110.2 1887–88 31,380 111.5
1868–69 29,890 134.8 1888–89 28,032 98.5
1869–70 28,367 126.3 1889–90 25,001 86.5
1870–71 24,902 109.4 1890–91 22,577 77.6
1871–72 21,325 92.4 1891–92 23,623 80.3
1872–73 19,433 83.2 1893 24,830 83.3
1873–74 19,582 82.8 1894 25,676 85.4
1874–75 17,692 73.5 1895 23,524 77.4
1875–76 19,841 81.4 1896 25,188 81.9
When we compare these figures with the course of economic events, we find the following: 1856 was a bad year economically, and 1857 and 1858 were still worse; in 1859 the situation improved, to become worse again in 1860, 1861, and 1862. The improvement was restored in 1863, while 1864 and 1865 were fair; in 1866, 1867, and 1868 conditions became worse again, but improved from 1869 to 1874. With 1875 things took a turn for the worse, and this condition lasted till 1879, when there was a slight improvement; 1880, 1881, and 1882 were fair, while 1883 was a passably good year. In 1884 a period of depression began, which lasted till 1888, following which there was an improvement until 1891, with the succeeding years up to 1894 not so good. In 1895 things once more took a turn for the better.
With some exceptions the curve of vagrancy rises and falls, then, pretty much as the economic situation grows worse or improves.
Bavaria, 1835–1861.
Dr. G. Mayr has proved that during the period named there was a close connection between the movement of the price of grain and the figures for vagrancy. (See p. 42 of this work.)
Flanders, 1839–1848.
Ducpetiaux had given proofs of the same correlation. (See pp. 33–37.)
France, 1840–1886.
Lafargue has proved that vagrancy and mendicity follow in general the curve for bankruptcies. (See p. 235.)
Hesse, 1895–1900.
Years. Number of those Convicted of Vagrancy and Mendicity.
Absolute Figures. To 100,000 of the Population.
1895 2,583 21.96
1896 2,244 21.49
1897 1,968 18.49
1898 1,658 15.60
1899 1,267 11.82
1900 1,442 12.95
In this period the economic depression in Germany, dating from about 1890, began to decrease.
Netherlands, 1860–1891.
Since there are no statistical investigations of the course of vagrancy and mendicity I have composed the following chart from the official data.
A comparison of the two curves shows that there is a parallelism, tolerably constant up to 1869. After this it ceases with some exceptions. The great fall in the price of bread, beginning with 1878 (as a consequence of the agrarian crisis), even coincides with a considerable increase in vagrancy and mendicity. To explain this we must consult the statistics of failures. These show that the great increase of vagrancy and mendicity coincide with an equally great increase in the number of bankruptcies, beginning in 1875 and lasting to 1882. For the following years there is no relation between the two phenomena apparent.
Prussia, 1854–1870.
I have composed the following table by means of the data given by Starke in his “Verbrechen und Verbrecher in Preussen” (pp. 55 and 115).
Years. Number of New Cases of Vagrancy and Mendicity. Price of 50 Kilograms in Marks.
Wheat. Rye. Potatoes.
1854 14,619 12.90 10.40 3.17
1855 16,665 14.21 11.45 3.37
1856 20,414 13.51 10.64 3.13
1857 15,801 10.18 6.87 2.18
1858 15,318 9.08 6.38 1.91
1859 16,978 8.93 6.79 1.98
1860 16,320 10.48 7.65 2.41
1861 14,239 11.04 7.71 2.79
1862 12,846 10.68 7.97 2.47
1863 11,840 9.18 6.78 2.04
1864 12,026 7.95 5.69 2.10
1865 11,640 8.13 6.24 2.03
1866 13,664 9.80 7.30 2.05
1867 15,339 12.89 9.87 2.95
1868 14,801 12.48 9.84 2.62
1869 15,091 9.70 8.08 2.16
1870 13,320 11.04 7.78 2.58
Although the curves of the price of foodstuffs and of vagrancy do not exactly conform, the influence of the price is none the less evident. The three periods of high prices (1854–56, 1860–62, and 1867–68) coincide with high figures for vagrancy and mendicity. (It is to be noted that the effect of an economic depression does not always make itself felt the following year.)
Kingdom of Saxony, 1889–1892.
Bebel showed that mendicity increased greatly in the above period (a crisis of great intensity). (See pp. 228–229 of this work.)
I am of the opinion that these data show sufficiently that the increase or diminution of vagrancy and mendicity are regulated by the economic situation; in other words, that a great many persons become guilty of these contraventions not because they are not willing to work, but entirely as a consequence of an unfavorable economic environment. There are some exceptions to this rule. Above (pp. 89–90) I have shown that these exceptions do not weaken the general conclusion; the unfavorable influence of the economic depression may be neutralized by counter-determinants. It must further be remarked especially with regard to vagrancy and mendicity, that the application of the laws relative to these offenses is quite arbitrary, and it happens at the time of a crisis that the courts do not punish those who are guilty of them, whence it follows that the statistics do not give an accurate picture of the reality.
It is impossible to fix exactly how far the influence of economic depressions extends; in other words, we cannot determine the number of vagrants and mendicants who become such directly through forced idleness. When it is necessary to record a certain number of convictions for vagrancy and mendicity, although the economic conditions are most favorable, we shall not even then be able to say that this proves that the convictions fell only upon persons who could have found work, but did not wish it.
Under the present economic system unemployment is chronic, that is to say, it is present even in times of economic prosperity. Consequently it has not been proved that those who are convicted during these periods are necessarily lazy and do not want to work. The only figure that I have been able to find with regard to the importance of this cause of vagrancy and mendicity is this: that in Germany, out of a total of 200,000 mendicants, there are 80,000 (40%) who are really in search of work. This figure being only approximate, its significance is not great.
Before leaving the subject of this cause, we must say something with regard to the objection that the workers who, on account of a long period of unemployment, fall finally into vagrancy, are inferior to the average, generally do not know a trade, and are often addicted to alcohol; and that consequently in this case an individual factor plays a rôle beside the economic factor.
It is true that most of the vagrants and mendicants do not know a trade, nor are worth much as workmen. In his study Dr. Bonhoeffer says that 55.4% of the vagrants and mendicants examined by him had not learned a trade, or had learned it insufficiently. This author also shows (we shall return to this later) that a great proportion of these people are also physically inferior to the average. This inferiority is in part not the cause but the effect of the conditions under which they have been living (insufficient food, etc.), and in part congenital weakness.
However, supposing that each of these individuals knew a trade, supposing also that they were all robust and healthy and in a condition to work regularly, would there then be fewer persons without work than there are now? The answer to this question must be negative. Even if every workman knew a trade, this fact would not increase the demand for skilled workmen. At any given time the labor market demands only a certain number of skilled workmen, and a certain other number of unskilled laborers; the number of unskilled laborers available has no influence. The same thing is true as to fitness for work; if all the workmen had the same energy, the same zeal, etc., this would not increase the demand for workmen; this demand is regulated by other factors.
In my opinion it cannot be a question of individual causes; individual differences explain partially who remain without work, and so become vagrants; but it is the economic system which causes the existence of persons without work. Vagrancy and mendicity would be no less extensive even if all the workers knew a trade and were equal in zeal and energy.
In the second place the world of vagrants and mendicants is composed of people too old to work, or more or less incapable of working, from physical or psychical causes, so that they are no longer employed. So far as I know the data concerning the age of vagrants and mendicants are not numerous; I can cite those that follow.
England, 1894–1900.
Years. Number of Mendicants Convicted. Of Whom there were of the Age of
50 to 60 years. Over 60.
Absolute Numbers. % Absolute Numbers. %
1894 13,021 1,638 12 1,916 14
1895 10,497 1,387 13 1,490 14
1896 11,839 1,512 12 1,801 15
1897 10,735 1,338 12 1,701 15
1898 11,047 1,540 13 1,838 16
1899 9,308 1,374 14 1,667 17
1900 8,402 1,253 14 1,690 20
Netherlands, 1896–1901.
Years. Number of Persons Convicted of Vagrancy and Mendicity. Of Whom there were of the Age of
50 to 60 years. Over 60.
Absolute Numbers. % Absolute Numbers. %
1896 2,181 541 24 273 12
1897 2,139 529 25 278 13
1898 2,173 534 24 291 13
1899 2,215 564 25 285 12
1901 1,857 491 26 257 13
Russia, 1897.
In the work of Löwenstimm already cited we find mentioned the fact that out of a total of 7,916 mendicants arrested in St. Petersburg, 1,185 (14.9%) were between 50 and 60 years of age, and 982 (12.4%) over 60.
As has been said, a certain number of vagrants are weak or sickly, and consequently are nearly or quite unable to work. In “Les habitués des prisons de Paris”, Dr. Laurent gives the following description of some vagrants observed by him, true types of this kind of individual. “I have known at the Santé in recent years an individual who has passed almost the whole of his life in prison, who was born and lived in misery. A natural child, his mother received him as a mistake and a burden and tried to destroy herself and him. Later, convulsions twisted him upon a hospital bed, and he has remained half-paralyzed. So far from knowing how to read or write he can hardly see clearly, for an opaque film covers his left eye. He has undergone more than twenty sentences for mendicity and vagrancy, and he is still only 37 years old. He leaves prison only to enter it again. So he complains bitterly and blames the judicial authorities, who, instead of placing him in an asylum, where he belongs, cast him into prison, because, says he, the food does not cost so much.
“An individual 29 years old, the son of a drunkard and a consumptive, has already been seven times sentenced for mendicity. He has been half-paralyzed since he was 13 months old and can walk only with crutches. Epileptic in addition, he drifts from prison to prison.
“These facts are very common, and it is impossible to estimate how many of these poor devils live in the prisons, which are a kind of refuge for them. Lately I saw a blind man who had been arrested for mendicity and sentenced to a fortnight in prison.”
The following figures, taken from the work just quoted, inform us as to the number of such individuals.
Breslau.
Physical and Mental Condition. Absolute Numbers. %
Physical condition weak 337 91
Incapable of military service from physical weakness 236 64
Mental anomalies 322 87
Epilepsy 43 11
Imbecility 86 23
Total number examined 369 100
Here it must be noted that in the years 1896–97 there were on the average only 9% of the conscripts of Silesia who were incapable of military service.
The other figures that are known agree with the ones I have just cited. Dr. Kurella found 20% to 30% of imbeciles or epileptics among the vagrants. Dr. Mendel also found a great number of psychic abnormalities among the vagrants.
All that I have just said demonstrates sufficiently, I believe, that the cause named above plays a considerable rôle in the etiology of mendicity and vagrancy. It is still necessary to give an answer to the question: do all the individuals who fall under the unfavorable conditions named under one and two, become vagrants or mendicants? It is evident that the answer must be negative. Three expedients offer themselves to one who has fallen into the blackest poverty; mendicity, theft, and suicide. It is partly chance (opportunity etc.), and partly the individual predisposition which fixes what anyone under the conditions named will become, whether a mendicant or a thief. Generally those who have still some intelligence and energy become thieves, the rest vagrants. The third expedient, suicide, also is frequently met with among the lower proletariat. Those who have recourse to it are either those who have known better conditions and find that the miserable existence that mendicity procures is not worth the trouble of living, or those who have lost all energy. Sometimes persons commit suicide to escape the shame of begging or stealing. These have been called “the heroes of virtue”; but, considered from another point of view, they may also be called the “victims of vice”, the vice of others, of course. These have been born with a very strong moral disposition and have lived in an environment where this disposition has been developed. These cases prove the degree of intensity that the social sentiments can attain; they are stronger than the fundamental desire to live, although those whom these “heroes” are unwilling to injure, reject these sentiments, by abandoning their fellows who find themselves in want.
Third. A third category of mendicants and vagrants is made up of children and young people. Let us see what relation there is between this fact and the economic and social environment. All those who have taken up this subject are agreed that a great proportion of the children are systematically taught to beg by their parents. Whatever may be the cause for which the parents act thus, these children are entirely the victims of the detestable atmosphere in which they are forced to live. Brought up in a wholesome environment they would become neither mendicants nor vagrants.
Another part of the vagrant body is made up of children who are either illegitimate or orphans, or deserted by their parents, or forced by bad treatment to run away from home. Tomel and Rollet mention the following typical case. A girl of 16 was charged with vagrancy, and made this heart-rending statement of her case before the tribunal: “I went on Friday to find the police commissioner of the ward; I told him that I had been without a lodging place for 15 days, and that I had not eaten for 48 hours. I was employed at the house of a wine merchant, who, when my mother died three years ago, took me as a servant (at 13 years of age) at two sous a day as wages. But my employer failed, his shop was closed, and I had to go out and wander in search of work without finding anything. My father, sentenced to hard labor for life, died in New Caledonia. I have no longer any mother, and since I did not wish to imitate my grown-up sister, who leads a bad life, I preferred to get myself arrested.”
It is difficult to tell how many of these children there are. The only figures that I know of are the following.
Italy, 1885–1889.
Among the minors sent to a house of correction for vagrancy there were
Divisions. Absolute Numbers. %
Illegitimate children 91 8.0
Orphans 498 43.8
Children whose parents were in prison 25 2.2
Other children 524 46.0
Total 1,138 100.0
We must now speak of another kind of vagrant and mendicant, those whom some criminologists have called born-vagabonds; children who run away from home to meet with adventures and to see something more than the neighborhood where they live. It makes little difference to us here whence comes this desire; everyone, especially every child, has it more or less (who is there who does not love to travel?) and there are those in whom it is very strong. “Who among us,” say Tomel and Rollet, “at certain moments of existence, does not feel the desire to break with social conventions, or more simply, to break through the circle of his horizon, in order to depart in search of the unknown? Put money in the pocket of the tramp and you make a tourist. The sportsman and the delinquent are separated only by the thickness of some hundred-sou pieces.”
These authors have hit the truth of the matter. Such children are called born-vagabonds, but then we meet thousands of born-vagabonds who have never become vagabonds in reality. The children who have a great love of adventure are found in all classes of society, but only those who come from among the poor become vagrants. It is in poverty then that we find the “causa efficiens”; the same inclination that brings poor children to prison, would perhaps lead them to a post of honor if they had lived in better surroundings. There are people of all kinds among criminals, and it cannot be denied that the majority of them are inferior in every way. But this does not apply to this class of little vagrants. Those who, as a consequence of years of experience, have a right to speak, are agreed that such children can be made useful members of society, if they are rationally guided. They are bold and energetic lads. Could it be believed that all the boys who, in 1889, came on foot to Paris from all parts of France to see the Eiffel tower (there were some of them under seven years of age) were not brave and energetic? Brought up in another environment they would have become sailors or explorers, or would have undertaken long journeys as tourists—while now they get into prison, to descend later lower and lower.
Fourth. Finally, the fourth category of vagrants and mendicants. This consists of those not included in the other three classes of people who are physically in a condition to work and who have opportunity to do so, but are not willing to work. It is hard to determine with certainty how large a part of the army of vagrants and mendicants they make up. But it seems to me certain that the facts given above prove that they are not as numerous as some authors and many other people believe. Besides, how is it that the philanthropic institutions where everyone admitted has to work, are always full, if it is true that most vagrants are persons who are not willing to work?
The vagrants of this class are then lazy persons, unwilling to work, but living at the expense of others, and consequently parasites. It is with reason that many authors have blamed such persons (though, as Dr. Colajanni says, justice would require that we should include all do-nothings, and not the poor only). But this does not advance the cause of sociology; her task is to find the causes of the phenomenon.
It is incontestable that the zeal and energy, evidenced by modern peoples in their work, are not innate but acquired. All sound individuals have, not in the same measure, it is true, an innate tendency to exercise their muscles and their intellectual faculties, but without external causes this inclination does not go very far. The primitive peoples work no more than is necessary to provide for their very moderate needs. They find people laughable who work more than is strictly necessary. The enormous change which took place in the method of production little by little induced men to produce a greater and greater amount of work; on the one hand were the slaves, forced to labor hard, and on the other hand the property owners driven to work by the desire of profit. In our present society the case is almost the same; the great mass are forced to work by fear of poverty, the smaller number by the desire for gain. And then the great majority of men have been accustomed to work from infancy; much work is done from necessity, but much from habit, which causes a feeling of uneasiness when one cannot work.
The first reason why there are people who do not want to work, is that they have not been accustomed to it from childhood. In general children, like primitive people, who are analogous to them in many ways, show little zeal for work. It is necessary to train them for a fairly long time before they set themselves to work assiduously. What will all those children whose parents have neglected them, or who have even taught them to beg, turn into when they are grown up, if not into vagrants and mendicants? They have never learned any trade, have never become accustomed to work, have never found any pleasure in it, so that later in life they will never have any desire to do anything.
Part of those who have not been able to work for a long time go the same road, they lose the habit of working, become lazy, and in the end are not willing to do anything any more. These, to be sure, are the least diligent by nature, but that would not alone send them into vagrancy if they had always been able to find work.
However, there is still one more thing to be said about the circumstances which give rise to this class of individuals. In the first place, the long duration, the monotony, and the disagreeable features of the work of the proletariat, which, as a consequence is rather hated than loved. In the second place: the small wages of a large part of the workers, and the comparatively large amounts that clever beggars are able to secure. Flynt gives the following data as to the “earnings” of tramps; in New York, $1 a day; in the Eastern States generally, from 50 cents to $1 or $2, without counting food; in New Orleans a skilful beggar can “earn” $1 a day. He estimates that in Germany the daily receipts of a beggar are from a mark and a half to four marks, and food; in England most beggars get from 18 pence to two shillings, though some very clever ones even get as much as 10 shillings. Löwenstimm tells that in Petrograd a skilful beggar has a daily income of three rubles. Florian and Cavaglieri say that in Paris a beggar gets four francs, and if he is very clever, even as much as twenty-five francs, a day.
In some cases, then, it is more profitable, and in all cases more easy, not to work. In consequence of these facts we read very often that the public ought not to give to these idlers. But the public cannot distinguish this class of mendicants from the others. It is certainly true that professional mendicity would diminish if nothing were given to mendicants; but on the other hand the great misery among the other poor would be aggravated still more. And I venture to doubt whether the advantage thus gained on one side would counterbalance the disadvantage created on the other.
And these laments upon the subject of the stupidity of the public are generally accompanied by anathemas upon those who prefer the life of the parasite to work. No one would naturally be inclined to excuse these individuals. But it is necessary to look at the question from both sides. If these people are blamed, blame must be attached also to a state of society in which honest labor is so poorly paid that begging is often more lucrative. These individuals are cunning egoists and as long as society is organized as it is, they are right from their point of view. To be sure, they have no feeling of honor, they attach no value to the opinion of others, but the feeling of honor is not innate but acquired. As the facts show, vagrants generally come from an environment where there can be no question of a development of moral qualities. Dr. Bonhoeffer shows, for example, that about 45% of the vagrants examined by him had been brought up in bad home surroundings (alcoholism of the parents, etc.). Then, as we have seen above, the social feelings can be developed only where there is reciprocity. I should like to know whether society really concerns itself with the fate of these unfortunates to such an extent that they in their turn care greatly for the opinion of this same society. Certainly not. They are pariahs, and since they are such the contempt of a hostile world is a matter of indifference.
As we come to the conclusion of our observations upon the etiology of vagrancy and mendicity, we have still but one category to consider, that of those who are indolent by nature. There are individuals in whom assiduous labor of any kind awakens a strong feeling of discomfort. As we have already stated above, in speaking of poverty in general (see p. 288), the cause of this phenomenon is a species of neurasthenia, more especially physical. It is necessary to recognize that, while these individuals are out of harmony with society, they are sick and must be cared for if society is to avoid trouble. Besides, Professor Benedict, who was the first to point out physical neurasthenia, himself recognizes that such sick persons need not become vagrants, if they are brought up in a favorable environment, and that later the struggle for existence will not be painful to them.
To sum up, it is evident that the principal causes of vagrancy and mendicity are lack of work, the want of care for the old, the sick, and the weak, the abandonment of poor children, the low wages and long hours of the workers. The persons who run most danger of being incorporated in the army of vagrants are the weak, whether mentally or physically, but this need not necessarily happen; the “causa causarum” is the environment.
History proves this also. If vagrancy and mendicity sprang from the innate qualities of man, there would always have been vagrants and mendicants, which is not the case. The appearance of these is due to the economic structure of society. It is not possible to discuss this at length and the reader is referred to the work of Florian and Cavaglieri, “I vagabondi” (I, Part One). These authors show that the first type of vagrant was the runaway slave, and then the serf who had fled from his lord’s domain. In the following periods the penalties with which vagrants were threatened (and they were very severe) were especially designed to force the proletariat to serve the purposes of the possessors of the means of production. In measure as the number of available workers increases and the proletariat submits to the will of the capitalists, this cause becomes less important, and disappears almost completely in our own time. It is rather the contrary that takes place, since the army of vagrants and mendicants is now mainly composed of those who have not been able to find work. Vagabondage and mendicity are at present punishable because of the importunity of the mendicants, the losses experienced by persons living in the country especially, and also because of the danger to society from the fact that the dangerous criminals are partly recruited from this class.
B. Theft and Analogous Crimes.
Before examining the motives inducing the commission of theft (the most important crime of this group, the others being mostly modifications of it) we must first stop a moment to ask the question, “Is honesty an innate characteristic or is it acquired?”
In my opinion it is indisputable that honesty is as little innate as any other moral conception. No child can distinguish between mine and thine, it is only little by little that he gains this concept. On the contrary he has the tendency to monopolize everything that he desires (the prehensory instinct, Lafargue names it). It is just this instinct that must be combated to make a child honest. It would, therefore, be more correct to say that dishonesty is innate. Unless one takes account of this fact it is impossible to give the etiology of theft and crimes of the same nature.
The motives for these crimes with which we are now occupied we shall speak of under three heads. The first group includes the crimes committed from poverty, the second those that result from cupidity, and in the third group we shall treat of the criminals by profession.
a. THEFTS COMMITTED FROM POVERTY.
There are some needs which a man must satisfy, without which his existence is impossible. These are fundamental needs, independent of environment. If a man has not sufficient food, if he has not (at least in non-tropical countries) clothing to protect him against cold, if opportunity for rest is lacking, etc., his life is in danger. In our present society there are always a number of persons who are in want of the strict necessaries of life, and who are therefore obliged to steal if they do not wish to succumb to poverty. It is evident that the word “poverty” is not to be taken in the most limited sense, so that one who can still buy a morsel of bread, and yet steals, may still be considered as a thief from poverty.
We must make here one more observation before we enter upon the proofs of this thesis. We have defined crime as an egoistic act. However, the same act may be at once egoistic and altruistic, and this is the case with some crimes committed from poverty, when an individual steals in order not to have those in his charge die of hunger. What conflicts of duty our present society creates!
The proofs that absolute poverty provokes a number of thefts are of three kinds. The first two are based upon the dynamics of criminality.
First. In winter, when poverty is most pressing, the number of thefts etc. is much greater than in summer. This is a fact so well known that it is unnecessary to give detailed proofs of it, and I think it will be sufficient to give the following statistics dealing with two important countries for a great number of years.
Germany, 1883–1892.
Crimes. Number of Punishable Acts Committed in the Months of
January. February. March. April. May. June. July. August. September. October. November. December.
Simple theft { a 7,991 7,342 6,909 5,777 6,097 6,003 6,230 6,481 6,249 7,436 7,966 8,523
b 113 115 98 85 87 88 88 92 92 106 117 121
Aggravated theft { a 913 877 830 777 840 856 879 866 818 956 971 996
b 102 107 92 89 94 98 98 96 94 106 112 111
Embezzlement { a 1,539 1,358 1,454 1,397 1,505 1,485 1,583 1,551 1,459 1,604 1,573 1,659
b 100 97 94 94 98 100 103 101 98 104 105 108
Receiving stolen goods { a 682 615 571 442 458 447 444 451 451 556 643 789
b 123 122 103 82 82 83 80 81 81 100 120 142
Professional and habitual receiving of stolen goods { a 3 5 4 8 4 3 3 3 6 3 3 5
b 71 130 94 195 94 73 71 71 146 71 73 118
Fraud { a 2,174 2,050 1,909 1,744 1,823 1,869 1,932 1,845 1,758 2,065 2,279 2,432
b 107 111 94 89 90 95 95 91 90 102 116 120
There is, then, a pretty considerable increase as winter approaches, and a decrease with the summer months. I would call the attention of the reader especially to the fact that it is the crimes of simple theft and the receiving of stolen goods which show this change in the most marked way, while aggravated theft, embezzlement and the professional and habitual receiving of stolen goods show it in less degree. It is the two former crimes which have poverty as their cause, while the three latter are more apt to be committed from cupidity and by professional criminals.
The following figures, taken from the criminal calendar composed by Professor Lacassagne, have to do with
France, 1827–1870.
Number of Crimes Against Property for Each Month, Reduced to an Equal Duration of 31 Days.
January. 16,350
February. 15,400
March. 14,250
April. 13,450
May. 13,625
June. 13,450
July. 13,225
August. 13,425
September. 13,875
October. 14,400
November. 16,100
December. 16,825
We have here, then, as always, a great increase in fall and winter, and a corresponding decrease in spring and summer.
Second. A second proof of the importance of absolute poverty as a cause of crime etc. is furnished by the fact that there is a considerable increase of the crimes in question in times of economic depression (high price of bread, lack of work, etc.). In Part One I have cited many works in which this phenomenon is proved for a number of countries. I refer the reader, therefore, to the more important of these, and add other data here.
Germany, 1882–1911.
Years. Price of Rye in Marks per 1000 Kilogr. (Berlin.) Imports and Exports in Billions of Marks. Number of Persons Convicted of Crimes given below, to 100,000 of Population over 12 Years of Age.
Simple Theft. Aggravated Theft. Receiving Stolen Goods. Fraud. Embezzlement.
1882 152.3 6.3 250 28 26 37 46
1883 144.7 6.5 241 25 24 38 46
1884 143.3 6.4 231 25 23 39 46
1885 140.6 5.8 214 22 22 38 45
1886 130.6 5.9 210 20 21 41 45
1887 120.9 6.2 198 21 20 43 44
1888 134.5 6.7 194 21 20 44 44
1889 155.5 7.2 211 23 21 49 47
1890 170.0 7.6 206 24 21 50 47
1891 211.2 7.7 216 25 22 54 50
1892 176.3 7.3 236 31 25 59 52
1893 133.7 7.3 202 26 22 58 51
1894 117.8 7.2 198 27 22 60 52
1895 119.8 7.6 192 24 22 61 53
1896 118.8 8.2 184 24 19 58 50
1897 130.1 8.5 188 23 18 61 51
1898 146.3 9.4 191 25 19 63 52
1899 146.3 10.0 179 24 19 63 53
1900 142.6 10.7 181 23 18 60 51
1901 140.7 10.2 190 26 19 64 52
1902 144.2 10.6 191 28 20 66 55
1903 132.3 11.4 182 26 19 64 54
1904 135.1 12.1 176 24 17 62 54
1905 151.9 13.2 175 25 17 61 56
1906 160.6 14.8 179 28 18 62 58
1907 193.2 15.5 178 28 18 61 60
1908 186.5 14.0 189 32 20 61 63
1909 176.5 15.1 182 33 20 62 65
1910 152.3 16.4 176 32 19 63 65
1911 168.3 17.8 169 30 19 63 65
If, in examining the preceding table, we do not lose sight of the fact that the rise or fall of the price of grain does not make itself felt immediately, and that in the criminal statistics of a certain year there appear also persons who have committed their crime in a preceding year, it is clear how enormous is the influence of the economic movement upon economic crimes. The price of grain had formerly a decisive influence upon the trend of economic crimes; now, in industrial countries like Germany, it is rather the industrial situation, without, however, the price of cereals losing all influence.
England, 1823–1896.
Dr. Tugan-Baranowsky proved for the periods 1823–1850 and 1871–1896 the correlation between good and bad times and the decrease and increase of criminality.
For the period 1858–1864 the same proof is given by Mayr (see Part I); and for the years 1840–1890 by Fornasari di Verce (see Part I). The figures of the former have reference only to crime in general, and do not, therefore, show sufficiently the effect upon crimes that are merely economic.
Grand-Duchy of Baden, 1875–1892.
J. S(chmidt), the statistician, shows the parallelism of the two curves for the period mentioned (p. 243).
Bavaria, 1835–1861.
Dr. G. Mayr was one of the first statisticians to show the influence of the price of grain upon crimes against property (pp. 39–42).
Belgium, 1839–1890.
Dr. Weisz has proved the influence of the price of grain during the period from 1841 to 1860 (p. 61) and Professor Denis that of the economic happenings for the period from 1840 to 1890 (pp. 235–237), while Ducpetiaux draws attention especially to the enormous increase of criminality in Flanders during the years of crisis, 1846–1847 (pp. 32–37).
France, 1825–1886.
The influence of the price of grain upon crimes against property has been shown for the periods 1845–1864, 1850–1864, and 1855–1864 respectively, by Drs. Weisz (pp. 60–61), Corne (pp. 48–49), and Mayr (pp. 46–47). Lacassagne and Lafargue have shown the correlation between the fluctuations of the economic life and those of economic crime for the years 1825–80 and 1840–86 respectively (pp. 149 and 231 ff.).
Italy, 1873–1890.
For this period Fornasari di Verce has shown the parallelism between the curves of economic occurrences and of economic crime (pp. 138–143).
New South Wales, 1882–1891.
The same author has shown here also the same correlation (p. 144).
Netherlands, 1860–1891.
Since researches for this country upon our subject are lacking, I have composed the following diagram from the official data.
The parallelism of the two curves is striking, there being simply a slight exception in the years 1871–1873. The increase of theft in the years 1879–1881 coincides with a very great increase in the number of bankruptcies, which continued until 1882.
The same parallelism has also been shown for Prussia, Russia, Wurtemberg, and Zürich by Starke and Müller, Tarnowsky, Rettich, and Meyer, as quoted in Part I of this work.
Few sociological theses, it seems to me, have been proved as conclusively as the one of which we have just been speaking. The important influence of the trend of economic events upon that of economic criminality has been shown for thirteen different countries for different periods of the nineteenth century. Some authors are of the opinion that poverty cannot be the cause of crimes that are committed when economic conditions are most favorable, and when economic crimes have consequently reached their minimum. This assertion still needs fuller proof, as I have already pointed out, since there are still many persons who are in want of the necessaries of life even in times of prosperity.
I must say here a few words in answer to a final objection to the preceding observation; namely, that the increase of theft etc., in times of economic depression, is, in great part, a consequence, not of absolute poverty, but of the impossibility of satisfying needs that have sprung up in more favorable times; and that the increase will be, therefore, in large measure due to an increase of crimes committed from cupidity, and not from poverty. This may be true in some cases, but not, in my opinion in the great majority of cases, for the following reasons. When the economic situation is favorable, when earnings are more than usual, and when, consequently, wants increase and become more intense, can everyone satisfy the desires awakened in him by the spirit of imitation? Surely not; even at such times of prosperity there are still many individuals with whom desire is awakened but who are not able to satisfy it in a lawful manner. On the other hand, wants in general diminish in times of crisis; cupidity is therefore less excited, and with a limited income men are quite satisfied with having the means of subsistence, when there are so many who lack the very necessaries of life. In my opinion, crimes from cupidity increase rather than diminish in times of prosperity, while in times of depression the opposite takes place. This cannot be proved for each economic crime separately, since criminal statistics do not show whether a crime is committed from poverty or cupidity. However, embezzlement, fraud, and aggravated theft are committed in a greater degree from cupidity than is simple theft, (and by professional criminals). Now statistics show that it is chiefly simple theft that follows the course of economic events, the other crimes named doing so much less; the same is true of the changes during the different seasons. Finally, while absolute poverty in countries like Germany has decreased and simple theft also, luxury and cupidity have increased, together with the other crimes named.
The third proof that poverty is a great factor in the etiology of theft is the enormous number of widows and divorced women who participate in these crimes (see pp. 452, 453). There is no reason to believe that these women are more covetous than married women or spinsters; but it is certain that their economic situation is often very burdensome.
We shall not employ any further methods to establish our thesis; since for the reasons already stated they would lead to results of no great significance, and it seems that the accuracy of the thesis has been sufficiently shown by the proofs cited.
We have now come to the end of our consideration of the subject of thefts committed from poverty. There are two ways in which it is the cause of theft. On the one hand it incites directly the appropriation of the property of others, and on the other hand it exercises a demoralizing influence.
b. THEFT COMMITTED FROM CUPIDITY.
We have now to deal with crimes of persons who steal neither from absolute poverty, nor by profession. Those who are guilty of these crimes earn enough to satisfy their more pressing needs, and they steal only when the occasion presents itself (whence their name of occasional criminals) in order to satisfy their desire for luxury.
The first question, then, which must be answered here is this: how do these needs arise? The answer can be brief; they are aroused by the environment. In a society where some are rich, who have more income than is needed to supply the fundamental necessities, and who create other needs for themselves, in such a society the cupidity of those who have not similar incomes at their disposal will be awakened. The desires which the criminals of whom we are speaking wish to satisfy by their misdeeds are not different from those of the well-to-do. It goes without saying that no one has ever desired any luxury that he has not seen someone else enjoying. It would be a waste of time to discuss this. Every need that is not strictly necessary, is not innate but acquired. If one has much, the other, an imitator, wants the same. There is but one piece of advice to give to those who are not convinced of this simple truth; that they read some ethnological works treating of peoples among whom there are neither rich nor poor. They will then see that cupidity, with us a universal quality, is there unknown.
The division between rich and poor is many centuries old and does not belong to capitalism alone, although under capitalism the distance between the two has greatly increased and is still increasing. The greater this distance is, the more, other things being equal, cupidity increases.
The cupidity of those who can satisfy only the desire for the bare necessities is not awakened in the same measure in each of them. As has already been remarked by Guerry and Quetelet (see Part I), economic crimes are most numerous in the countries where manufacturing and commerce are most developed, and where the contrasts of fortune are consequently the greatest. It is for this reason that the cities, where the contrasts between poverty and wealth are greatest, give also very high figures for crimes against property (see pp. 530–531).
Those who live in the same country or the same city are not, in spite of that, in the same environment. Every great city has thousands of workers who, because of the character of their labor, have no contact with luxury; others, on the contrary, have the desire for luxury awakened in them by the fact that their work brings them in touch with wealth. Hence it is, for example, that so large a number of economic crimes are committed by workers occupied in commerce (see p. 446), and by servants. There are workmen who have never been accustomed to more than they are able to earn at the time, but there are also those who have known better days and to whom the impossibility of satisfying needs previously acquired is a constant source of suffering.
However, the contrast between rich and poor is not the only cause of the origin of cupidity. We must also sketch in addition to the above, especially the manner in which commercial capital tries to draw buyers. The times are long gone by when the producer worked principally to order. Modern industry manufactures enormous quantities of goods without the outlet for them being known. The desire to buy must, then, be excited in the public. Beautiful displays, dazzling illuminations, and many other means are used to attain the desired end. The perfection of this system is reached in the great modern retail store, where persons may enter freely, and see and handle everything, where, in short, the public is drawn as a moth to a flame. The result of these tactics is that the cupidity of the crowd is highly excited.
After what has been said it is unnecessary to dwell longer upon the different ways in which cupidity is awakened in our present society. However we must note the following. Almost all the thefts of the class of which we are speaking (those committed by so-called occasional criminals) are thefts of articles of very small value (see the figures on p. 201); the exceptions are the thefts of large sums of money. The authors of these last are in general the employes of banks, etc., persons who, from the nature of their work, have the opportunity to appropriate other people’s money. When we investigate the reasons for their committing their misdeeds, we shall see that nine times out of ten (I cannot prove it by figures, but no one will contradict me) the criminal is a speculator who has lost, or perhaps an individual who visits prostitutes, and hence has great need of money.
Cupidity is thus excited by the environment, but not in the same degree in every case, the environment not being the same for all. However, even supposing that the environment were exactly identical for a number of persons, cupidity would not be excited in the same measure in some as in others, since they are not alike, one being born with more intense desires than others (admitting that it is the environment that calls forth the desires). The more intense a man’s desires, the more risk he runs, other things being equal, of falling foul of the law. As I have already remarked above, this is important for the person who is seeking the reason why A and not B has stolen, though both live in the same environment; for sociology this fact is only of secondary importance, for it does not ask “Who becomes criminal?” but rather “How does it happen that there are crimes?”
We have now examined one of the sides of the question; the principal cause of these crimes is the cupidity awakened by the environment. If the environment were different, cupidity would not be aroused and the crimes would not be committed. In my opinion most criminologists do not sufficiently appreciate the importance of this fact. It is very difficult for anyone who lives at ease to form an idea of what is passing in the mind of one who has only the bare necessaries of life and is deprived of every comfort and amusement, while he sees others who have too much, and yet often work less than he does.
Let us now examine the other side of the question. For this purpose let us make use once more of the figure of balances in describing the process that goes on in the brain of the man who hesitates. Upon one of the pans cupidity exercises its force, in different measure according to the person. What are the weights upon the other pan balancing the first? It is the moral forces which must be considered first. I have fully explained above how the economic environment has prevented the social instincts from being developed in man, and how this is especially true for certain classes of persons. It is unnecessary to repeat this here. It will be sufficient to note certain points which have a special importance for the kind of crimes with which we are occupied at the moment.
He who steals, prejudices the interests of another, does him harm, and at the same time injures society, the existence of which would become impossible were theft permitted. In my opinion, the present organization of society, of which the struggle of all against all is the fundamental principle, has reduced this moral factor to very small dimensions. In the economic domain each must be egoistic, for without egoism he would lose in the struggle for existence. In the case of theft and similar crimes, those injured are almost exclusively well-to-do persons, to whom the damage is disagreeable, but who, in general do not suffer much. The thieves, on the other hand, are almost exclusively persons who have to live on very little. How can we expect a poor man to take care not to do a small injury to the rich for fear of causing them a little discomfort, when most rich people are insensible to the suffering which without intermission, overwhelms the poor. The present organization of society is responsible for the fact that a slight sensibility to the misfortune of others offers only a trifling counterpoise to the tendency to realize one’s desires in a dishonest manner. The idea that society in itself is injured by theft cannot constitute any considerable counterpoise, since he who violates the eighth commandment cannot feel himself at one with a society which never has helped him when he was in difficulties.
After this general observation let us pass on to particular remarks that apply to certain classes of persons only. How does it happen that a great proportion of mankind are honest? To this question the answer must be, “because they have been accustomed to it from infancy.” The opposite also is true; a great number of thieves are such because any moral education was out of the question in the environment in which they were brought up. They satisfy their “prehensory instinct” without being conscious of any ill-doing. With these the balance inclines to the side of dishonesty, unless a counterpoise of some magnitude is found. Above (pp. 489 ff.) we have seen that most criminals, especially thieves, come from a totally corrupt environment.
This does not apply to another category of thieves; those who do not proceed from an absolutely corrupt environment—yet whose surroundings are not good and wholesome. Ferriani and Aschaffenburg go so far as to say that almost every child has once stolen something. This may be a little exaggerated but it certainly has truth at the bottom of it. If the child has no one to take the trouble to teach him that he ought not to steal, it is more than likely that he will have to answer for theft later (occasional theft is committed by children and minors especially). It is true that all the children whose education has been defective do not become thieves, nor even the majority of them; there are those for whom a single prohibition will be enough to make them respect the property of others for the rest of their lives. There are others of them, weak characters who, notwithstanding such prohibition, cannot resist when the temptation is strong. If their education had been good, the environment in which they were brought up more favorable, they would not have had to be turned over to justice. Hear the opinion of one of those most competent to judge of the matter, Raux, who, having put to himself the question whether the young people detained in the “Quartier correctionnel” of Lyons have a real tendency to steal, answers as follows. “Evidently not. Without entering into the analysis of the circumstances which provoke crime, we shall give, in support of our assertion, an observation as simple as conclusive. Young prisoners condemned for theft have shown us upon different occasions a probity, a most praiseworthy disinterestedness, in the presence of things that they might have appropriated without exposing themselves to any reproof.”
We might close our observations upon theft from cupidity at this point if there were not fear of an objection drawn from what has just been said, namely the following. If the occasional thief has become such, on the one side because of the cupidity awakened in him, and on the other side in consequence of his lack of a good education, and if he differs, not qualitatively, but only quantitatively from the honest man, possessing less strength of character than the average—if all this is true, then the figures for theft should be higher than the statistics show. All of which would go to prove that it is wrong to deny that criminals constitute a biological anomaly.
Here is my reply. First. Moral forces do not constitute the only counterpoise to the tendency toward theft. Since the moral check often lacks efficacy, another has been created which acts in the same way to turn the egoist away from crime, namely the fear inspired by the possibility of punishment. Any one would be credulous indeed to fancy that those who have an opportunity to steal and do not profit by it are deterred by moral forces. Without punishment criminality would be much more extensive than it now is. Where the danger of being found out is not great, the number of transgressions is enormous (think, for example, of the cases of smuggling).
Second. Many persons remain honest, not for moral reasons, but because they lack the courage, cleverness, or other qualities necessary for being otherwise, qualities which in themselves have nothing to do with crime.
Third. Still others remain honest for reasons based upon mature reflection. They find that it is too dangerous to commit an offense, but do not hesitate in the presence of acts essentially criminal, although they do not fall under the ban of the law. No one is ignorant of this, and only certain anthropologists who examine no one but prisoners, have lost sight of it.
Those who compose the criminal world are by nature very diverse. Some are the most dangerous individuals that it is possible to imagine, others are rather weak than wicked. Among these last are ranged the occasional criminals, who, taken together, form a danger to society, but taken singly are not dangerous men in the strict sense. Leuss, who learned to know prisoners, not as judge, or as medical expert, but as a prisoner himself, says: “The great mass of prisoners are more good-natured than the average man; the good-nature of thieves corresponds with their weakness of will, that invincible obstacle to their maintaining themselves in the world of industry. Stress must constantly be laid upon the fact that these weak-willed, good-natured persons are the ones who swell the number of crimes.”
When we place beside the occasional thieves, those who never steal but commit all sorts of reprehensible (though not illegal) acts, the comparison is not to the advantage of the latter. Their trickery, their pitiless egoism, often make them more dangerous to society than the others; which should be a reason for criminal anthropology not to build a system based solely upon investigations of prisoners.
Fourth. Finally many more crimes are committed than are mentioned by criminal statistics. Although I have already spoken of this (p. 84), I must return to it. In the first place, most criminal statistics give the figures only for those convicted. Those acquitted have no place, although, with few exceptions, a crime has nevertheless been committed. We know that the number of acquittals is very considerable. In Germany, there were 15 to 20 acquittals to 100 cases tried (1882–1896); in Italy the number of acquittals ran as high as 51.37% (1890–1895).
In the second place, in many cases the prosecution is postponed for different reasons, with the result that there is neither an acquittal nor a condemnation. Then a great many cases never come to trial because justice cannot discover the authors of the crimes. In Germany, for example, of all the cases on the dockets in the criminal courts between 1881 and 1891, only 43 to 45% actually came before the judges. During the period between 1886 and 1890, the examining judges dismissed on an average 8900 cases, either because the author of the crime was unknown, or because the proof was insufficient. During the same period and for the same reasons, 98,741 cases on the average were not prosecuted by the authorities. The authors of about 25% of the crimes committed in Italy remained unknown (1887–1894).
These two reasons by themselves show that the number of crimes is much greater than the statistics would generally lead one to suppose, even if one takes account of the fact that some of the complaints made to the prosecutors are false.
In the third place, we have been speaking so far of the cases that come to the notice of the officers, while in a great number of cases no complaint is made, especially in the matter of petty theft, either because the person injured wishes to avoid the annoyance of having to appear in the police court as witness, or because he wishes to spare the delinquent.
In the fourth place, a great many small thefts remain unknown even to the person injured, since he does not notice the loss that he has suffered.
All this goes to show that crime, taken in the strict sense, and especially theft, is much more extensive than one would expect at first, and the objection that might have been made to my thesis is hence without weight. It is evident that the number of criminals unpunished cannot be fixed with certainty. Dr. Puibaraud places it at 50%; while Tarde believes that it is greater; Yvernès, the well-known French statistician, says that 90% of the professional thieves remain unknown, and Dr. Thomsen, from whom I take this last fact, says that this applies to other categories of criminals also. However this may be the number in any case is very considerable.
To sum up. I believe I have shown that the fundamental causes of theft and similar crimes committed from cupidity are, on the one hand, the cupidity aroused by the environment and, on the other, neglected childhood among the poor. It is especially those weak in character who run the greatest risk of becoming guilty of these crimes.
c. CRIMES COMMITTED BY PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS.
In considering all the kinds of theft and analogous crimes, we note that the thefts committed by professional criminals represent only a minority. But as soon as we limit our consideration to the more serious forms of theft, such as burglary and similar crimes, we shall discover that they are committed almost exclusively by individuals whose principal or subsidiary occupation is theft, and who, in general, do not consider it shameful, and do not feel the slightest repentance.
The question arises, how it is possible for anyone to embrace so abject a profession, and thus become so harmful a parasite. There are authors who would have us believe that there are persons who have chosen crime from pleasure in it. As Leuss observes in his work, “Aus dem Zuchthause”, this opinion is so absurd that it would be a waste of time to consider it. No one of sound mind could possibly prefer so abominable a profession, and one so full of risks from the point of view of simple calculation. There must be other reasons for the existence of such persons. If we wish to examine these causes we must divide professional criminals into separate groups.
The first category is composed of children. Sad as this is it is none the less true. It is plain that not a single child follows the profession of thief from pleasure, for a child prefers not to work at all. These children, then, are taught to steal by their parents. If they are not very numerous, in the great cities there are always some cases of this kind. Dr. Puibaraud, former police official in Paris, describes one of these as follows. “We recall that one day, on visiting the Petite-Roquette, we found in a cell a child scarcely eight years old, with a wide-awake face, a quick eye, but whose physiognomy was already very peculiar. It was a young pickpocket who had been found drunk upon the street, and who, being arrested by an agent and taken to the station, had confessed that the gold he had in his possession was the proceeds of a theft committed by him without the knowledge of his ‘papa.’ This capture ended by the whole family’s being arrested at their lodgings, near the Place Maubert.
“This gamin was very intelligent and gave the following account of himself, which was corroborated by what was brought out in the examination. ‘My father showed me how to pick pockets, but so far I have only “done” ladies because that is easier. With gentlemen you may touch their leg when you stick your hand in their pocket and they turn round, and that’s no joke! With ladies you do not get so close and they do not feel your hand. It isn’t hard at all. Papa taught me well. We went every day together to the Palais Royal and Place de la Bastille omnibus stations. The Palais Royal is no good. The best is the Madeleine, but Mother G. works that and she quarrels with papa. We don’t go there any more. Last week papa told me to wait for him at the Palais Royal omnibus stand. He didn’t come, and, “ma foi!” I went to work by myself. I got a purse from an old lady. There were sixty francs in it. I drank a bit and then I was arrested.’ ”
As we see this child found theft the most natural thing in the world (and any other child in the same environment would think the same); he “worked” with his father. If exceptionally favorable circumstances do not happen to present themselves to such children they will belong to the army of professional criminals all their lives.
Now, as for the others, those who have not been brought up for a life of crime, yet practice it as their profession—how can we explain their manner of life? The answer to this question can be found only in the works of those who have familiarized themselves with the life of criminals, and who have lived in their midst in order to know them (like Flynt, for example), or who are in a position, because of their profession, to study them in detail, and become their confidants (like the well-known almoners of the Grande-Roquette: Crozes, Moreau, and Faure).
Except for a few subsidiary circumstances the life of the professional criminal may be summed up as follows. With very rare exceptions he springs from a corrupt environment, perhaps having lost his parents while still very young, or having even been abandoned by them. Being misled by bad company, he commits an “occasional” theft while still a child, for which he must pay the penalty of an imprisonment; he may, at times owe his entrance into prison to a non-economic misdeed. This, however, is a very rare exception. As we have remarked above, prison never improves him, and generally makes him worse. If he is in contact with the other prisoners, among whom there are naturally a number of out and out criminals, he hears the recital of their adventurous life, learns their tricks and all that he still needs to know to be thoroughly informed as to “the profession.” Nor will the separate cell be any more profitable to him, brutalized as he already is by his earlier environment. Then after a certain time he is set at liberty and returned to society. The partisans of free will say that he has expiated his fault and can now commence a new life.
That is easy to say, and certainly justice will not concern itself with him any further until he commits a new offense. But this is not the same as saying that society pardons him and aids him, in order that he may remain in the right path. On the contrary, forgetting that we must forgive those who have trespassed against us, society makes life hard for him. It is almost impossible for him to find work; the fact that he has been in prison is enough to insure his being refused everywhere. Why should anyone hire an old prisoner when there are so many others who have never got into the courts? And then most prisoners have never learned a trade, and this is one reason more why they cannot easily find employment. The liberated convict becomes a nomad, begins by losing all contact with the normal world (supposing he ever had any) and feels himself a social pariah. On the other hand he has relations more and more frequent with the “under world”, with those who recognize no duty toward a society which is not interested in their fate. His moral sense comes to be more and more blunted until he becomes a criminal by profession, having a feeling neither of shame nor of repentance.
The ignorant public, who know nothing about the professional criminal except when he appears before the tribunal, is astonished to find that there are persons so abject. This astonishment is like that of some one who has never seen a house built, and cannot imagine how such a colossus can be put up. But he who has seen how the house has been erected by adding one small brick to another no longer feels any astonishment. It is the same with the professional criminal; he who has followed the story of the criminal’s life recognizes with Dr. Havelock Ellis, that his crime is but the last link of a solidly forged chain.
Generally the professional criminal does not give the least sign of repentance. He does as much injury to society as he can, without having any shame about it. Yet he is not entirely deprived of moral sense, only it extends merely to those who are really his fellows. All the tales of the world of professional criminals which depict them as void of all sense of duty toward their fellows, proceed rather from the imagination of the authors than from facts really observed. The only competent authors are those who have been able to study the criminal in his own environment, and not in prison, where his true character makes itself known as little as that of an animal in a cage. Hear the opinion of Flynt, for example. “It is often said that his (the professional criminal’s) lack of remorse for his crimes proves him to be morally incompetent; but this opinion is formed on insufficient knowledge of his life. He has two systems of morality: one for his business and the other for the hang-out.” There follows the description of the relations existing between him and society of which we have already spoken, after which the author continues as follows.
“In the bosom of his hang-out, however—and this is where we ought to study his ethics,—he is a very different man. His code of morals there will compare favorably with that of any class of society; and there is no class in which fair dealing is more seriously preached, and unfair dealing more severely condemned. The average criminal will stand by a fellow-craftsman through thick and thin; and the only human being he will not tolerate is the one who turns traitor. The remorse of this traitor when brought to bay by his former brethren I have never seen exceeded anywhere.”
After expatiating upon this subject, Flynt continues: “It is thought by criminologists that the good fellowship of the criminal is due to self-preservation and the fear that each man will hang separately if all do not hang together. They maintain that his good feeling is not genuine and spontaneous emotion, and that it is immaterial what happens to a ‘pal’ so long as he himself succeeds. This is not my experience in his company. He has never had the slightest intimation that I would return favors that he did me; and in the majority of instances he has had every reason to know that it was not in my power to show him the friendliness he wanted. Yet he has treated me with an altruism that even a Tolstoi might admire. At the hang-out I have been hospitably entertained on all occasions; and I have never met a criminal there who would not have given me money or seen me through a squabble, had I needed his assistance and he was able to give it. This same comradeship is noticeable in all his relations with men who are in the least connected with his life and business; and it is notorious fact that he will ‘divvy’ his last meal with a pal. To have to refuse the request of one of his fellows, or to do him an unkindness, is as much regretted by the criminal as by anyone else; and I have never known him to tell me a lie or to cheat me or to make fun of me behind my back.”
This is altogether different from what is generally said and written by those who allow themselves to be led away by their imagination. It is plain that the manner in which criminals act toward a society that is hostile to them will not fail to influence the relations they have with their fellows, just as war for those who take part in it cannot leave their moral sense as regards their compatriots unharmed. However, nothing permits us to put the actions of these persons among themselves in the same rank as those towards society. In my opinion this fact has great significance for the moralist and the criminologist; it is one of the forms of the dualism of ethics. It is of very high importance for the criminologist, for its shows that we are upon the wrong track, since it is precisely the more serious forms of crime that the present methods of repression favor.
In imprisoning young people who have committed merely misdemeanors of minor importance, and who have not yet lost all touch with normal society, and putting them in contact with inveterate criminals, or perhaps putting them into a cage like beasts, without striving to enlighten their darkened minds or teach them morality, and without making them capable of sustaining the struggle for existence by teaching them a trade, we are bringing up professional criminals. Punishment, as a means of intimidation, misses its aim in great part, for the professional criminals are recruited among individuals who are not easily intimidated.
We have now come to the question why a certain number only of those whose childhood has been neglected and who have committed a light offense, become professional criminals. In the first place there are those whom chance favors, since they are assisted, it may be by their families, it may be by some philanthropist, and so return to the right path. There are those also who have the advantage of being able to find work, since no one knows that they have been in prison.
Others have less chance; no one aids them, there is no work for them; all, however, do not become professional thieves. Those who become such are the more intelligent, energetic, ambitious, and courageous of these outcasts; the others become vagrants and mendicants. Here is the opinion of Flynt upon the criminal by profession, an opinion which agrees with that of other competent authors. “I must say … that those criminals who are known to me are not, as is also popularly supposed, the scum of their environment. On the contrary, they are above their environment, and are often gifted with talents which would enable them to do well in any class, could they only be brought to realize its responsibilities and to take advantage of its opportunities. The notion that the criminal is the lowest type of his class arises from a false conception of that class and of the people who compose it.…
“In this same class, however, there are some who are born with ambitions, and who have energy enough to try to fulfil them. These break away from class conditions; but unfortunately, the ladder of respectable business has no foothold in their environment.…
“Not all of these ambitious ones are endowed with an equal amount of energy. Some are capable only of tramp life, which, despite its many trials and vicissitudes, is more attractive than the life they seek to escape. Those with greater energy go into crime proper; and they may be called, mentally as well as physically, the aristocracy of their class. This is my analysis of the majority of the criminal men and women I have encountered in the open, and I believe it will hold good throughout their entire class.”
There are readers, perhaps, who will find that these qualities of the professional criminal give the lie to the environment hypothesis, since individual factors are recognized in a certain way. For myself I do not find it so. The qualities mentioned have nothing to do with crime as such; they can be utilized to the profit as well as to the detriment of society; it will depend upon the environment in which the individual endowed with them has been raised what direction he will take. It would not be difficult to name a number of historic celebrities (Napoleon, for example) who, if they had been born in the lower stratum of a great city, in place of in a favorable environment, would have had only the sad celebrity of criminals exceptionally endowed.
The psychology of this kind of criminals is not yet complete however. Besides intelligence, energy, and courage we find cupidity as their great characteristic. They see others who can enjoy themselves without working hard, and it is their ambition to do the same, cost what it may. Since fate has made it impossible for them to attain it honestly they risk another method. This type of criminal is well delineated in the remark made by the notorious Lemaire, when he said to the president of the court: “If I were a property owner, I should not be here.”
To have invested funds, to spend plenty of money, not to have to work much, this is their ideal; to share the lot of the working-man, who, notwithstanding his long and hard labor, never succeeds in procuring for himself the pleasures of the rich, makes life insipid in their eyes. M. Gisquet, former prefect of police, gives in his memoirs the following declaration made by Leblanc, the notorious professional criminal. “If I were not a thief by vocation I should become one by calculation; it is the best profession. I have computed the good and bad chances of all the others, and I am convinced by the comparisons that there is none more favorable or more independent than that of thief, nor one that does not offer at least an equal amount of danger.
“What should I have become in the society of honest men? A natural child, with no one to protect me or to recommend me, I could only choose a disagreeable trade, become a delivery-boy in a store, or at most reach the miserable place of shipping clerk in a warehouse; and there, a supernumerary for many years, I should have died of hunger before I reached a salary of six hundred francs. As a workman in any class whatever you exhaust yourself quickly through the fatigues of your labor, to earn a miserable wage, and to live from day to day; then when accident, sickness, or old age come you must go beg or die in the poorhouse.…
“In our condition we depend only on ourselves; and if we acquire skill and experience at least they profit ourselves alone. I know very well that we have risks to run, that the police and the courts are at hand, that the prison is not very far distant; but out of eight thousand thieves in Paris, you never have more than seven or eight hundred in jail; that is not a tenth of the whole. We enjoy, then, on the average, nine years of liberty to one in prison. Well, where is the worker who has not a dead season? Besides, what does he do when he is without work? He carries his possessions to the Mont-de-Piété; while we others, if we are free, lack for nothing; our existence is a continual round of feasting and pleasure.”
This is the type of the perfect egoist. In ranking men according to their social sentiments, such an individual would be put at the very lowest point in the scale. And then he has grown up under unfavorable circumstances (illegitimate birth, etc.). The innate egoism of this individual may perhaps be modified by the individual factor. But this in no way diminishes the truth of the environment hypothesis, for we are treating for the moment the question why this particular individual has become a criminal, and not that of the cause of the existence of professional criminals. And these two questions are far from being identical. The existence of individual differences is the reason why one runs more danger of becoming a professional criminal than another; but it is the environment which brings it about that the predisposed individual actually becomes such. The falsity of the environment hypothesis would be demonstrated if such individuals could be proved to become criminals under all circumstances. This is of course not the case. When individuals like these are not brought up in an atmosphere of poverty, they no longer see on the one side persons who enjoy everything while doing nothing, and on the other side those who, while toiling hard, live in poverty,—they will not become examples of altruism indeed, but they will not become guilty of crime. They may even become very useful members of society, since they are generally more largely endowed with intelligence, energy, and courage than the average man. Rightly exercised, these qualities are very useful; but badly directed they are very harmful to society.
So far we have been treating of the etiology of theft and analogous crimes; we shall conclude this section with some observations upon the causes that have led to the designating of these acts as crime.
Theft is a crime only because it is very harmful to society. If in the majority of cases the individual does not take account of this, the assertion is nevertheless true. Everything that is harmful to society the individual considers as immoral. (Why this is so is a psychological question, with which we are not concerned here.) If we picture to ourselves present-day society, based as it is upon exchange, without the strict prohibition of theft, we shall see that it could not possibly exist. Life would be especially impossible in a society where the division of labor has attained a high degree of development, if it were permissible to take anything without giving an equivalent.
Since the human race has existed there has been private property, however trifling and unimportant it may have been. It is therefore very unlikely that theft has ever been permitted (it is impossible to produce proofs in support of this), since it is difficult to imagine that anyone would consent to see himself stripped of things destined for his own use, to which, further he was more or less attached. But there is a great difference between a prohibited act and a crime. It is proved that among primitive peoples theft is not reckoned among the crimes. Hear the opinion of one of the greatest specialists in this field, Dr. Post. “We find here and there a phenomenon very surprising from our modern point of view, namely that theft is not universally regarded as a misdemeanor, but the thief rather respected for his cleverness. The maximum obligation that a theft lays upon the thief is simple restitution of the stolen property. The consequence of theft is thus simply the duty of restitution under the civil law.… Theft lies entirely outside of the province of criminal law.”
It is not difficult to explain the cause of this. Let the reader picture to himself the primitive forms of society, so different from those we have at present; contrasts of possessions were unknown, and the needs of men consequently less numerous; men produced only for their own consumption and not for exchange. If by chance more was produced than was needed, the surplus was given to others, for it was impossible to exchange it, or to preserve it for any great length of time, the necessary technique for this not having yet been acquired. “The law of hospitality” was universal and enjoined men to provide those in need with whatever they lacked. It is quite comprehensible that at such a stage of development theft should not be in evidence, for the motives which drive men to it would be lacking. On the one hand cupidity was not awakened, and theft did not result from absolute poverty, since if there was poverty the whole group suffered together. On the other hand the social instincts, being highly developed by the environment, constituted a restraint that would prevent the execution of a theft if the thought of it should occur. But even supposing that in such a society a theft, for no matter what cause, should nevertheless be committed, it would be little thought of, and certainly the thief would not be severely punished, for his act would not be very harmful to society.
As the social structure changed the ideas about theft changed equally; with the origin of the system of exchange and of the contrasts of property, came powerful motives for theft, and at the same time the social instincts grew weaker. Thus theft came to be considered a more serious matter than before, and the graded system of punishments for it, beginning with a fine, ended in capital punishment. It is not our task to investigate the reason why the punishment for theft has not always been the same during the whole civilized period; it is enough for us to establish the fact that the act has always been considered as a grave offense, the perpetrator of which incurred severe penalties.
C. Robbery and Analogous Crimes.
As the figures reproduced above (pp. 535–542) have shown, the crimes with which we have now to concern ourselves are relatively rare. It is unnecessary to say that this has not always been so, but that there have been great changes in this regard. At one time robbery and similar acts of violence were the ordinary forms of professional crime. Happily for peaceable folk this is no longer the case; these crimes have been in large measure replaced by others less serious, like theft and fraud. All modern states have not reached the same stage of development, nor all parts of the same state. There are those of them that, more than others, recall the past to us. So is it in regard to their criminality. While robbery may be said to have disappeared from the states of northern Europe, it is still very common in a country like Italy, and is met much less frequently in the modernized provinces of northern Italy than in the backward southern provinces, as the following figures show.
Italy, 1887–1889.
Provinces. Average to 100,000 Inhabitants.
Robbery, etc., with Homicide. Robbery, etc., without Homicide.
Apulia 5.01 0.27
Basilicata 2.42 4.18
Sardinia 2.06 12.11
Sicily 1.22 14.56
Liguria 1.07 8.65
Calabria 0.97 6.36
Latium 0.89 17.15
Campania and Molise 0.71 8.08
Piedmont 0.63 4.67
Romagna 0.63 6.47
Abruzzo 0.58 2.07
Marches and Ombria 0.55 2.46
Venetia 0.33 2.58
Emilia 0.28 5.80
Lombardy 0.21 3.14
Tuscany — 5.68
According to the figures given by Dr. Bosco, in the United States, also, the most backward states give the highest figures for homicide.
The poorer classes have more resemblance to the people of a bygone day than have the well-to-do; it appears from the statistics (see pp. 438 ff.) that economic criminality takes a more violent form among the former than among the latter.
An investigation into the causes of this change in the form of economic criminality will indicate also the principal causes of the persistent existence of this kind of crime, however it may have decreased in modern times. In my opinion these causes are as follows:
First. The opportunity for committing them presented itself more often formerly, since the means of communication were very primitive, travelers had to traverse uninhabited countries, etc., and in addition the states were not so well organized as at present, and had not the means of suppressing bands of brigands vigorously.
Second. While the opportunity to commit violent economic crimes successfully was diminishing, there was a constantly increasing opportunity to commit other economic crimes, such as theft, embezzlement, and fraud. The accumulation of great wealth in the cities, the development of credit, in short, the enormous extension of capitalism, has multiplied the opportunity for economic crimes without violence.
Third. One of the consequences of the development of society has been the gradual diminution of the importance of the rôle played by violence, and, since criminality presents itself always and everywhere under the same forms as the normal life, violent economic criminality has also commenced to form a smaller and smaller part in the totality of economic crimes. The assertion that violence has lost the importance of its rôle upon the human stage might surprise one, and appear ironical in times like ours when war is the chronic condition, when the military preparations of all the states have reached a degree hitherto unknown. Violence, however, has decreased in so far as it is exercised by the individual as such. The greater becomes the centralization of the state, the more it claims for itself the exclusive right to use violence in the cases where it judges it necessary, and the more it prohibits individual acts of violence.
It is not the development of the state that is alone to be considered in this regard; the economic system enters in also. Under capitalism violence is of no use; he who is master of the means of production attains his end, i.e. makes a profit, without the use of violence. Where it is necessary, however, modern man does not recoil from it, as the wars of expansion prove.
Fourth. Civilization (in the proper sense of the word) has become more general. Formerly the privilege of a few only, it now extends to a greater number. The great mass are still deprived of it, but primary instruction contributes to its development.
When we consider the gradual diminution in the number of economic crimes committed with violence, it clearly appears how false is the notion that anyone committing such a crime is for that reason a biologically abnormal being. Will anyone claim that the number of biologically abnormal persons has constantly diminished? The contrary is much more likely.
We need not concern ourselves with the details of this question, since it has already been thoroughly treated by Professor Manouvrier (see Pt. I of this work, pp. 168–171). He who uses violence to attain an economic end may perhaps, physiologically considered, be a perfectly normal man. How many children are there who do not use force to take a toy from a weaker child? Must we class them as abnormal on that account? And are those who voluntarily take part in a war abnormal? Certainly there is a great difference between those who take part in a war, and those who, for economic reasons, commit a crime, but this difference is of a social nature. Our ideas of war and homicide are not the same, but the act of killing one’s neighbor remains identical. If homicide were the evident proof of biological abnormality the soldier also would be abnormal.
Scientific questions can be solved by reason alone, and not by sentiment. We who experience a profound repulsion at the thought of a murderer, hold him for a being apart, since we feel ourselves so remote from him. Scientific research tells us that this feeling is not innate but acquired, for we detest such acts because the environment in which we live has accustomed us to hate them. If our environment were different, our feelings would likewise be different. Besides, war proves that these feelings are not innate, by hardening the mildest persons in a very brief time.
With time the number of persons who have a horror of violence has increased. Does this prove that men have become better, or simply that they feel a repugnance to the act only and not to its effect? J. J. Rousseau once said: “If, in order to fall heir to the property of a rich mandarin living at the farthest confines of China, whom one had never seen or heard spoken of, it were enough to push a button to make him die, which of us would not push that button?”
It is certain that beside a great number of persons who would not wish to charge their consciences with such a crime, there would also be plenty who would commit it, and their number would be great enough to make the order of mandarins pass into legendary history. There is no reason to suppose that there are fewer persons in our day who would commit such acts, than formerly; if men are no longer as violent as they once were, they do not recoil any more than formerly when it is a question of suppressing, through the agency of a third party, those who oppose them; as witness the wars of expansion.
As the motives of these crimes are the same as those of economic crimes without violence, we shall treat first those that are caused by poverty; secondly, those that are committed from cupidity; and thirdly, those that are the work of professional criminals.
Statistics show that a part of the economic crimes of violence are committed from poverty, for their movement is influenced by the fluctuations of economic conditions. We take from the German criminal statistics the following table of the course of these crimes in the different months of the year.
Germany, 1888–1892.
Number of Crimes a Day in the Different Months, on the Basis of an Average of 100 Crimes a Day throughout the Year.
Number of Crimes a Day in the Different Months, on the Basis of an Average of 100 Crimes a Day throughout the Year.
Crimes. January. February. March. April. May. June. July. August. September. October. November. December.
Robbery, etc. 100 87 78 84 94 98 99 106 84 120 132 116
The highest figures are shown in the winter months when poverty is at its height. (The slight increase from April to August, which appears also in the case of a number of other economic crimes, I am unable to explain.)
As we have seen in the statistics in Part One, the economic situation also exercises its influence upon the movement of these crimes during a period of years. We refer to them here while adding some others.
Germany, 1882–1898.
Years. Price of Wheat and Rye per 100 Kilogr. in Marks. To 100,000 Inhabitants over 12 there were Convicted for
Robbery. Extortion.
1882 185.19 1.3 1.7
1883 165.37 1.3 1.5
1884 159.73 1.4 1.5
1885 154.01 1.1 1.4
1886 147.26 1.3 1.3
1887 145.99 1.2 1.4
1888 155.43 1.2 1.3
1889 169.64 1.2 1.4
1890 181.32 1.3 1.4
1891 216.31 1.3 1.4
1892 184.00 1.4 1.8
1893 146.94 1.1 1.6
1894 127.10 1.3 1.7
1895 132.17 1.1 1.9
1896 139.29 1.2 1.7
1897 152.08 1.0 1.7
1898 170.55 1.3 1.6
Although there are exceptions, the influence of the price of grain makes itself felt. It should be remarked that the years 1889–1892 were years of crisis.
France, 1825–1882.
In his study “De la criminalité en France et en Italie” Dr. Bournet shows that in the period mentioned the maxima of assassinations coincide with the years of economic crises, namely: 1839, 1840, 1843, 1844, 1847, 1867, 1876, and 1881. It should be remarked that assassinations are committed not simply from economic motives, but for other reasons, whence it follows that the parallelism cannot be as great as in the case of economic crimes that are not committed from other motives.
Italy, 1873–1890.
Dr. Fornasari proves that economic events have a great influence upon these crimes (see Part One, p. 143).
Prussia, 1854–1896.
Dr. Starke (see Part One, p. 64) and Dr. Müller (see pp. 76–78) have proved that the changes of economic conditions are here also cause of an increase or diminution of these crimes.
Although these data are less numerous than we might desire, they show sufficiently that, in part, violent economic crimes are committed because of poverty.
Above I have shown how it happens that only some of those who live in absolute poverty commit crime. We have only, then, to ask ourselves why one commits a crime with violence and the other without violence. The causes are of different kinds. Oftenest it is chance, i.e. opportunity, that is the cause. No one uses violence if it is not necessary, and since the opportunity of committing a successful theft is much greater than that of committing an economic crime with violence, it is the first that is most often practiced. Those who, when driven by abject poverty, commit an economic crime with violence, when the opportunity presents itself, are persons who lack neither the force nor the courage necessary, and in whom the environment in which they live has not inspired a great aversion to violence. Further, absolute poverty is so powerful a factor that it often neutralizes the important influences of education and environment.
From cupidity. The class of criminals who use violence or commit a homicide from cupidity is very small. They furnish only a minor part of violent economic crimes, the total number of which is not itself very great. To show how far the influence of economic environment goes I will cite some striking cases taken at random.
First. In 1892 a certain Scheffer was convicted at Linz (Austria) of attempted murder. His crime was the following. He and his wife could earn their living only by working hard. Chance brought a change. One of their relatives, a young girl who had lost her father and mother a short time before, came to live with them. The girl being very rich, the condition of the Scheffers was entirely changed; from then on they could live in abundance. Once habituated to this wealth they were filled with the fear that their relative would marry and the money pass to someone else. Little by little the idea came to them of persuading the girl to make a will in their favor, and then killing her, an idea which they rejected at first, but which nevertheless became stronger and stronger. From unforeseen circumstances the crime was never consummated, but stopped in the attempt.
Second. In a little village upon the frontier of Austria and Bavaria there was committed in 1893 a murder under the following circumstances. One evening, while returning by himself along a lonely road, a rich peasant who was in the habit of carrying a considerable sum of money with him, was killed and robbed. It was proved that his servant was the author of the crime. This man was a natural child, very poor, and had had to work very hard all his life. Seeing his strength going he was in great fear of being no longer able to earn a living. His sole enjoyment in his monotonous and toilsome life was getting drunk on Sundays. Like most of the inhabitants of his commune he was an ardent poacher.
Third. In 1892 the wife of an employe of the post office was assassinated in her dwelling in Berlin, and all her money stolen. The criminals were two young workmen of 17 and 18 years of age, one of whom knew by chance that the woman had savings.
These three cases, types of hundreds of others, have in common the opportunity which had excited, in an unusual degree, the cupidity of the criminals, and the fact that these were very poor. Whatever other causes may have entered in, it is certain that without the great difference of fortune between the authors of the crimes and their victims, the crimes would never have been committed.
Finally, we come to the influence of the environment upon the authors of the crimes. As we have seen, the conditions under which criminals are brought up are in general very unfavorable, and this is especially the case with dangerous criminals. Consider, for example, the second case (we know nothing of the environment of the criminals in the first). What a life this murderer had behind him. The influences which give most men their aversion to violence were entirely lacking. On the contrary his environment had brutalized him. A natural child, he had been brought up in very poor circumstances, and was stupefied by long and toilsome work, with a weekly intoxication as his sole relaxation. No one would assert that this same individual would have become an assassin if he had lived under totally different conditions.
Or look at the third case. One of the guilty parties had been brought up under unfavorable conditions (of the education of the other we know nothing), both were forced, quite young, to earn their living and had been thrown with bad companions, and one of them had already been sentenced to imprisonment.
It is a mistake to believe that such a case is the exception instead of being the general rule. He who takes the trouble to read the biographies of these criminals knows that they have always been brought up in an unfavorable environment, that they have suffered imprisonment at an early age, and have fallen lower and lower. As far as I know there are no statistics upon this subject except those of Dr. Baer in his study already referred to. Out of 22 young assassins examined by him 9 (40%) had had a bad education, 11 (50%) a defective education, and only 2 (10%) a better education; 8 (36%) were orphans; 11 (50%) had been brought up in very poor circumstances and were obliged while quite young to contribute to the support of the family; 10 (45%) had grown up in the streets of a great city and had thus been exposed to demoralizing influences; and 13 (60%) had received an insufficient primary education.
The researches of Dr. Baer have to do with Germany, but they hold good for other countries also. Take, for example, the opinion of Tomel and Rollet, who are authors of great experience. In speaking of the “criminal type” they say: “Well, no, this type does not exist, since we always find the same conditions in the genesis of the criminal temperament, and if these educational and environmental conditions had been absent, the destiny of the little assassin might have been quite different.”
We have still to fix our attention upon one side of the environment in which the authors of the crimes with which we are concerned at the moment, have lived. They come generally from an environment where,
First, education often consists simply in the administration of a sound beating to the child, a fact which habituates him to the idea that violence is an ordinary act, especially as he sees the members of the family often strike one another;
Second, the men ordinarily carry a knife, and do not hesitate to threaten with it, or even to use it in case of a dispute. It is evident that the influence of this upon character is great at the impressionable age of childhood. The tendency toward violence, combated among children of the well-to-do classes, is, on the contrary, often strengthened among the children of the poor. If later chance places in their way an opportunity to profit by violence they recoil from it less than others.
The authors of violent economic crimes spring nearly always from the lower classes of the population; the exceptions are few in number. We will take up one of these exceptions which has attained considerable notoriety, an evident proof of the rarity of these cases.
In 1878 an old woman was murdered in Paris and all her papers of value were stolen. It was proved that Barré, a business agent, and Lebiez, a medical student, both of whom had passed their youth in a favorable environment, were the guilty persons. This is one of those very rare cases where objection can be made to the environment hypothesis with a semblance of truth, but a closer examination shows that environment nevertheless played its part in this frightful tragedy. The two criminals, sprung from fairly well-to-do provincial families, having gone to Paris, had been living in straitened circumstances. At the time of their deciding to commit the crime their pecuniary condition was very bad. In the second place, both had constant recourse to prostitutes; and in the third place both were ardent speculators. Because of his business Barré was in contact with those who gambled at the bourse, and seeing men enrich themselves without work he entered feverishly into speculation. He lost, drew his father into a new deal, and was still unfortunate. In order to go on and retrieve his losses he used money entrusted to him (his first crime), but still lost. Going from one malversation to another he finally, in order to extricate himself, had recourse to the crime narrated above. His accomplice was found in nearly the same situation.
The effect of environment is to be discerned, then, as easily in this case as in those that have been referred to before. Limiting ourselves to the principal influence alone, we see that if these individuals had not been in contact with the world of speculation, their cupidity would not have been excited to such a point that they were induced to commit crime. Here the rôle played by chance in such cases clearly appears; if they had been fortunate in their speculations they would never have become criminals.
As with all crimes, the question presents itself as to how far individual factors were active, in other words, do the individuals who are guilty of such crimes differ from other men? Certainly, and that to a considerable extent. But in granting this we do not, however, recognize a qualitative difference between them and other men such as would make them biologically abnormal. The motives which have induced these persons to commit crime, are present, though only in small measure, in everyone. Those who commit these crimes have by nature very intense material needs; in the curve A D (see p. 534) they occupy the places near D. As regards their social sentiments they are ranged near the other end of the curve, and their repugnance to violence is very small. Further, they have the necessary courage and strength. If we consider how little chance there is of finding all this united in one individual, it will become clear that few individuals are predisposed to these crimes, and when they are committed the criminal is found in a special environment. In my opinion there can be no question of individual factors, then; it is the environment that decides here. There will be persons always and everywhere who run more danger than others of committing such a crime; but it is the environment which will decide whether they will commit it or not.
Professional criminals. The great majority of violent economic crimes are committed by professional criminals. When an individual has fallen, from whatever reason, into the world of professional crime, sooner or later comes the time when he must use violence if he wishes to attain his end. Joly has very well said in his social study, “Le crime”: “The man who has formed the habit of breaking into houses and bursting open safes, is forcibly drawn sooner or later to rid himself of witnesses who surprise him at this work, or of a victim who might perhaps recognize him.” It cannot be asserted of these individuals any more than of others, that they are born with a special tendency toward assassination, a tendency to be explained by atavism, or something approaching it. They have been living in an environment in which such acts are considered as a necessary evil inherent in their trade. Driven by the tendency to imitate, they do as others do. Certainly there are those of them who do not commit these crimes, but that proves nothing, for it may be that chance has favored them and they have never been under the necessity of using violence, or they have less courage and force than the average man, or, it may be, have an exceptional innate aversion to violence.
As Professor Manouvrier remarks, the case would be entirely different if such criminals killed without plausible motives, if they committed murder without anything but the act in view. The facts show that this is not so. Note the opinion of Flynt. “The taking of life is … [a] deed that he [the professional criminal] regrets more than he has been given credit for. One thinks of the criminal as the man who has no respect for life, as one who takes it without any twitchings of conscience; but this is not the general rule. The business criminal never takes a life, if he can help it.”
We need not treat here of the causes which have led to the designating of these acts as crimes; they are the same as those given above in connection with economic crimes without violence. The harm done by these crimes is naturally greater than in the case of crimes without violence, since they put life as well as property in danger. It is interesting to note here, once more, the dualism of ethics; many primitive peoples consider these acts as crimes when they are committed within the same group, but very honorable when once the act passes beyond the limits of the group. Further, with modern peoples this difference still persists; colonial wars often resemble a colossal robbery.
D. Fraudulent Bankruptcy, Adulteration of Food, and Analogous Crimes.
We reach now the last group of economic crimes, those which are committed wholly, or in great part, by the bourgeoisie. The motives of these crimes are not all the same; here too it is necessary to make distinctions. The categories into which we must distribute the motives leading to these crimes are analogous to those which lead to theft etc., poverty and cupidity. And as in the case of theft it is necessary to add a third category, that of the great criminals, who can be compared with criminals by profession.
The first category may be compared with that of theft committed from poverty; those who fall into this class are persons who, for one reason or another, have seen their business decline, and not knowing any other way to escape from their difficulties, hope to retrieve their losses and save themselves by committing a misdeed. I take from Moreau’s “Le Monde des Prisons” a typical case. After having described how a certain R. had succeeded in setting himself up in business and had been successful, the author speaks as follows. “Unhappily the panic caught him among the first. His business became worse and worse. In a few months he lost several thousand francs. Two of his traveling salesmen ran off with their goods. Orders ceased coming in. It was failure, dishonor. He fought, but was wrecked.…” Finally, in order to escape ruin he committed a breach of trust; he was discovered and convicted.
We cannot say that it is absolute poverty that drives these persons to commit a crime, for generally they have enough left to keep them from dying of hunger. And if not, they are generally members of families who are in a position to keep them from the worst poverty. Further they can try to provide for their wants by paid labor. Nevertheless these cases are somewhat analogous to those of absolute poverty. Picture to yourself the state of mind of one who has led a more or less comfortable life, who has been independent, and enjoyed the esteem granted to a man who is well-to-do, and who sees that the time is approaching when all this will come to an end, and that there remains nothing for him to do but accept some minor poorly paid employment, and lead henceforth an existence that cannot satisfy him in any way. Imagine also that chance throws in his way an opportunity to commit a crime with good hope of success. It must be granted that we find here very powerful determinants to crime.
This cause of crimes of this class is of an entirely social nature. Under another mode of production, for example, under that of village communities, the idea of committing such crimes could not arise. For this reason we cannot say that social causes have often nothing to do with the matter, but that it is the man’s own fault if his business goes to pieces. This is certainly true at times; but it is the present organization of society which makes it possible for a man to be in charge of an enterprise which he is not fitted to conduct, while another who is fitted for it cannot find employment for his talents. It is only in a society where complete anarchy reigns in the economic life, that it is possible for a man to think he is capable of directing a business merely because he happens to have capital.
Let us now examine the other side of the question. What are the forces capable of preventing these projects from being realized? First let us ask, what is the environment in which many of these individuals who are guilty of such crimes are brought up? Certainly they have learned that one must be honest, that it is wrong to pick pockets, etc., and they will not fail in this regard. But they have learned also that the principal end in life is to grow rich, to succeed. Too often this is contrary to the principle of probity. “Be honest, be honest, if possible, but … make money!” This is the principal rule imprinted upon the minds of the children in certain bourgeois environments. It is an honesty of a special kind that is inculcated, not a moral honesty, but an honesty for the sake of one’s own interests. “Honesty is the best policy” says the quasi-moral precept. Those whose probity has this for a basis have only a weak check to prevent them from becoming criminal, when the thought of the wrong act arises within them. They remain honest so long as it is to their advantage, but woe to society when this is no longer the case.
But further, the environment in which these persons have lived after their youth has not contributed to reinforce the social sentiments, and consequently those that are working in an anti-criminal direction. “Every man for himself” is the principle of success in such an environment. It is evident that the social sentiments must be strongly opposed in their development if the maxim just given is that which dominates. To act morally implies sacrificing one’s own advantage for the sake of the general good. He who is compelled always to have his own interests at heart can give very little thought to the interests of others.
As in the case of all crimes, it is necessary with regard to these also to put the question, are the individuals who are guilty of them, as regards their innate qualities, like those who have lived and still live under the same conditions? And as is the case with all crimes, the answer here must be in the negative. Those who are guilty of these crimes are, in general, those who are below the average in the strength of their moral qualities. They are rather weak than bad; they are conscious of the harm that they do to others and are ashamed of it, but they are too weak to resist the pressure of circumstances. As always it is the environment that is the cause of the crimes’ taking place; it is the individual differences which explain in part who is the one to commit them. Adapting the well-known sentence of Quetelet we may say, “it is society that prepares the crimes, it is the men of inferior moral caliber who execute them.” If the environment were entirely different the men of inferior moral caliber would not be guilty of crime.
It may be observed, perhaps, that if it is true that a special predisposition on the part of the individual is unnecessary for the explanation of these crimes, they ought to be more numerous than they are. This is true enough, but it does not refute the opinion which has been expressed. For, first, as is the case with all the others, these crimes are more numerous than the criminal statistics show; second, there are reasons why some men do not commit crime, although all circumstances lead to it, and their moral condition does not prevent. For example, there are those who, as a consequence of the struggle for existence, have lost all energy and all courage, and give up the fight, even the fight with dishonest weapons; others, prudent by nature, take into consideration the fact that, bad as their situation may be, it would be worse if the crime were discovered, etc.
Statistics prove that it is really the decline of business that is the cause of a great number of bourgeois crimes. In the first part of this work I have given some which show this correlation, namely:
Italy, 1873–1890.
For this country the statistics on this question (see p. 144) have been compiled by Dr. Fornasari di Verce. This author has shown that with the exception of fraudulent bankruptcy (an astonishing and inexplicable fact), commercial crimes are strongly influenced by economic happenings.
Prussia, 1854–1878.
Dr. Starke has proved that the curve of these crimes is parallel with that of economic events (p. 65).
These statistics, to be sure, are not numerous, since the number of crimes committed by the bourgeoisie is small, and the other economic crimes, like theft, for example, are much more important, and hence draw the attention of statisticians more.
We come now to the second category; bourgeois economic crimes from cupidity (as is always the case, the line of demarcation between this group and the preceding one is not distinctly traced, there being many gradations between the two). They are committed, not, as in the first category, by those whose business is declining, but by those whose affairs are more or less flourishing. The only motive, then, is cupidity; what they get by honest business is not enough for them, they wish to become richer. After what has been already said about cupidity it is unnecessary to go into detail here. It has been shown that it is only under certain special circumstances that this desire for wealth arises, and that it is unknown under others. It will be necessary only to point out the fact that although cupidity is a strong motive with all classes of our present society, it is especially so among the bourgeoisie, as a consequence of their position in the economic life. This, then, is the first and most important cause of these crimes, a cause which is not individual, but entirely of a social nature.
In the second place, the opportunity to commit these offenses undetected is enormous (I refer especially to the adulteration of food). In general the consumer cannot judge whether the merchandise is pure or not, and in most cases there is no inspection by experts, or else it is worthless, since the experts are named by the producers themselves.
In the third place, we have to ask ourselves, in what way does the environment in which these persons live exercise an influence upon their social sentiments? We have already called attention to this point some pages above, and can be brief therefore. This environment tends to weaken the social sentiments which might act as a check upon very egoistic acts.
Considered from the point of view of the consumer the adulteration of food products is a grave crime, for it injures the health and may even endanger the life. But what moral impropriety will be seen in it by a producer who derives great profits from the exploitation of children, or who, by a corner in grain, causes a great increase in the price of bread? Is there, sociologically speaking, a difference between these two groups of acts? Certainly not; the one is as harmful as the other, nay, the last two probably more harmful than the first.
This kind of crime must be the despair of those who seek for some biological anomaly of the criminal as the primary cause of crime, for here the anomaly forms almost the rule. Dr. Puibaraud, in his “Malfaiteurs de profession”, rightly says: “The adulteration of food is carried on under our eyes, at our very doors, and we are so used to it that we say nothing. They put fuchsine in our wine, margarine in our butter, chicory in our coffee, tallow in our chocolate, and we swallow it all in perfect good humor. What is the use of protesting? So things are, and ‘business could not be carried on’ if they gave us really pure food. So we swallow it all without gagging or moving a muscle. Provided we are not poisoned—too quickly—we profess ourselves satisfied.”
Everyone knows that the adulteration of food is enormous. If anyone has any doubts let him read the reports of the chemists upon a product whose adulteration is easy, milk, for example. His doubts will disappear rapidly; at least half of the milk is adulterated. It is only the adulteration of food products that constitutes a legal offense, but the adulteration of other articles does not differ from this when considered from a sociological point of view, and it is unnecessary to say that there too the adulteration is enormous.
There are, to be sure, manufacturers and merchants who are not guilty of such acts; first, because certain articles cannot be adulterated; second, because in certain branches the oversight in the interests of the consumers is very rigorous; third, because certain producers find it more advantageous to be honest, knowing that thereby they will procure a large body of regular customers. These three reasons have nothing moral in them, though there is a fourth reason which affects certain producers, namely that they have scruples against such practices.
Let us consider once more the curve of the individual differences. Those persons who should be placed between A and B are those who, if the conditions we have named are present, will commit without scruple misdeeds of the kind we are considering. The great average class, between B and C are those who, in general, are not guilty of acts prohibited by law, but who probably do things which in reality do not differ much from these, and, in any case, are not permissible by the moral code of the consumers (for commerce has a morality of its own). These are the persons who get rid of their merchandise by means of all sorts of tricks and dodges, are silent about the bad qualities of their wares and exaggerate the good ones; these are the dairymen who put water in their milk (“for absolutely pure milk is not wholesome”, they say); the doctors who make visits when they are no longer necessary; these are those who.… But let us stop; we could fill pages with the practices of those whose honesty is not proof against trial.
In going from B to C the moral aversion to such acts, observed in individuals, becomes gradually greater, and the danger that they will commit such practices diminishes, and we finally approach those who should be placed between C and D, those who are in no way guilty of such acts.
As is always the case with economic crimes, it is, then, the environment that is the cause of these offenses, while individual differences explain in part who are the authors of them.
We come now to the last category of the criminals of this group, to the great criminals, to those who throw themselves into gigantic enterprises while knowing beforehand that these will certainly or probably fail, or those who make great purchases of stock, and afterward cause a rise in price through the dissemination of false news, etc.
If there is any kind of crime that is the consequence of the economic environment exclusively, this is the one. Such crimes can arise only in a time like ours, with its insatiable thirst for gold, with the unlimited opportunity to deceive the public, greedy for great profits. A superficial knowledge of economic history is enough to make it plain that the bourgeois crimes, and especially those which we are now discussing, can be committed only under an economic system of the kind that ours is.
This should make those anthropologists reflect who wish always to find the causes of crime in the man himself and not in his surroundings. Naturally the originators of such deeds are marked out by characteristic traits. But there is no reason to admit that persons with such dispositions could not have been born also under a different economic system. Yet such crimes do not appear under any other mode of production.
What is the kind of persons who commit these crimes which society has prepared for? We note first that chance must have prepared such individuals in the proper environment, for a crime of this kind. If they were in the class of agriculturists, for example, the idea of committing it would not have occurred to them; it is only in a special environment that such crimes can be committed.
These people are characterized, in the first place, by excessive cupidity. In this regard they come high in the curve. Their prodigality is without limits; once they have executed a great coup they buy splendid palaces, give costly fêtes, support several mistresses, etc. An individual of this type, Arton, had a mistress who cost him 300,000 francs in one year; he needed a million to cover his annual expenses. This is why they are not content with the large incomes which they could obtain honestly; they wish to surpass others in wealth, being ordinarily very vain.
We have said that such individuals would probably have succeeded in securing large incomes honestly, for all are of a high order of intelligence. In following their machinations we are astonished by their perspicacity and their cleverness. Plans like theirs could never have been conceived and still less executed by men of mediocre intelligence.
“I believe,” says Professor Morselli in his preface to Laschi’s work which we have quoted, “in fact, that no common intelligence is needed to cover up malversations for a long time, to organize clever swindles, outrageous frauds and bankruptcies, exploitations of the credulous public. It needs no more talent, perhaps it needs less, to accomplish a great number of useful and honest things, to make a so-called discovery or invention. We have, as I have said elsewhere, a fetishism with regard to genius, talent, higher intelligence. The effort of mental energy which is required by the complex planning and execution of a financial crime does not differ, as far as cerebral dynamics are concerned, from the effort demanded by an action that is perfectly regular from a moral point of view.”
In the third place, this class consists of persons who, as to the intensity of their moral sentiments, take the lowest place. What an ordinary criminal does in a small way, they do on a gigantic scale; while the former injures a single person, or only a few, the latter bring misfortune to great numbers. And they do it with indifference, for the disapprobation of honest men does not touch them.
As I have already shown elsewhere, brought up in no matter what environment, such individuals would not excel in the strength of their social sentiments. But I have added that, nevertheless, the influence of the environment of these persons is very great. We do not know much of the circumstances under which they have passed their youth. At least Laschi makes no mention of them in “Le crime financier”, the principal work upon this class of misdeeds. It is more than probable that their moral education is totally lacking, or has been only very superficial. Theresa Humbert, for example, had already been instructed by her father in the art of swindling on a large scale.
On the other hand we know the environment in which they have generally passed the rest of their lives. They belong to the world of speculation, an environment which has very special ideas upon economic morals. In most of the cases of this kind, facts are brought out which show that the moral ideas in these circles differ much from those of the rest of mankind. It is evident that those who commit these crimes go farther than the morality of their world permits. But it takes great moral perspicacity to distinguish in this field the demarcations between what is permitted and what is not, and it is just this perspicacity that some persons lack. This is why most criminals of this kind, when they are brought into court, say with sincere conviction that they are innocent, that they have done nothing that is incompatible with morality.
Then, speculation etc. is one of the infallible means for killing all social sentiments; it is egoism pure and simple. Can we be astonished that some of these individuals in such an environment enter into conflict with the penal law? It seems to me not. Nor is there any reason to grant that they are abnormal from a biological point of view. So even the Italian school is forced to admit that the stigmata found elsewhere cannot be pointed out in these individuals. Furthermore, in this case we can hardly speak of atavism. It may be that our ancestors were great offenders, but it is not probable that they ever were guilty of swindles of this kind.
It is not necessary to speak fully of the reasons which cause these acts to be classed as crimes. They are harmful to the regular progress of capitalism and consequently are threatened with penalties. The punishment of the adulteration of food-stuffs, on the contrary, is a consequence of the opposition of the consumers to one of the harmful effects of this system.
In this connection it is interesting to note, first, that the penalties prescribed for these crimes are relatively light as compared with those for ordinary economic crimes, like theft, for example, especially when we reflect that the harm done by them is much greater; second, that the number of punishable acts is very limited as compared with those which really deserve punishment. As Baccaro observes in his work, “Genesi e funzione delle leggi penali”, it is these crimes which show clearly the class character of the penal law.
Chapter III.
Sexual Crimes.
Most authors who treat of the correlation between criminality and economic conditions, have devoted their attention to economic crimes especially, and have had little or nothing to say about sexual crimes. Man’s sexual instincts, they say, have nothing to do with the economic life, they are a factor apart, and accordingly there is no relation between criminal sexuality and economic conditions.
We flatter ourselves that we shall be able to show that their opinion is erroneous, that a relation between sexual criminality and economic conditions does exist, although it is by nature less direct than that between economic crimes and the mode of production.
Having already remarked that the social forms of the sexual life (marriage and prostitution) are, in the last analysis, determined by the mode of production, we will not return to this topic. And it does not fall within the province of this work to speak of the relation of the intensity of the sexual life in general to economic conditions. From history we see that the sexual life plays now a greater, now a smaller part. It would be hard to admit that the causes of these changes are within man and not outside of him, particularly when very evident causes are to be found in the environment. Who does not see that the intensity of the sexual life of the upper classes of Rome of the decadence is explained by the exaggerated luxury, the idle existence of this group, and the dependent position of a part of the women (slaves).
In our present society the relation between the sexual life and economic conditions is equally clear. Everyone knows that the sexuality which occupies a very great place in that part of the bourgeoisie which passes its life in idleness and prodigality, is the consequence of this manner of living. On the other hand the low intellectual condition of the proletariat is the cause of a sexual life much more intense than it would be if the environment permitted a harmonious development of the whole nature. Engels, in his “Condition of the Working-class in England”, says of the English proletarians, what is applicable to the workers in other countries also. “Next to intemperance in the enjoyment of intoxicating liquors, one of the principal faults of English working-men is sexual license. But this, too, follows with relentless logic, with inevitable necessity out of the position of a class left to itself, with no means of making use of its freedom. The bourgeoisie has left the working-class only these two pleasures, while imposing upon it a multitude of labors and hardships, and the consequence is that the working-men, in order to get something out of life, concentrate their whole energy upon these two enjoyments, carry them to excess, surrender to them in the most unbridled manner.”
Further the dependent economic position of woman in our present society is also a factor of the increase of the intensity of the sexual life (especially prostitution).
However, it is not this question but sexual criminality upon which we must fix our attention. Here also we must divide the crimes into groups, as they differ too much among themselves to be treated of together. We shall take up in order, then: A. Adultery; B. Rape and indecent assault upon adults; C. Rape and indecent assault upon children.
A. Adultery.
It has been said, “the history of property is also that of theft.” In the same way we may say that the history of monogamy is also that of adultery, or in other words, that there is no monogamy without adultery. There must be, therefore, powerful and constant causes occasioning this offense. As we have seen above when we were setting forth briefly the history of marriage, adultery by the man was a permitted act at different stages of the social development. If we ask why men committed this permitted act, but one reason can be alleged; they are not monogamous by nature. On the part of the woman the same act constituted, on the other hand, most often a very serious offense, threatened with the most severe penalties, which did not, however, prevent adultery on her side also. The cause is not different for the two sexes; women, too, are not monogamous by nature, though perhaps more nearly so than men.
From what we have just said the etiology of this crime is fixed. The only difference between the present and the past is that adultery by the man also is punished in our time—there is no change in the etiology of the crime. It may be said that the fundamental cause of adultery is to be found in the nature of man, then, and that it is thus anthropological and not social. I cannot admit this view of the matter any more than I can believe that the ultimate cause of theft is the necessity of eating in order to live. If the fundamental cause of the offense of which we are treating is to be found in man, it would be present always and everywhere without reference to the environment. Sociology shows however, that this is not so. Up to a certain degree of social development men and women alike have been free in this respect; in other cases it is only the woman who is forced to remain true to her husband; and at times both have been compelled to remain faithful. Consequently, for one who does not consider society as an immovable body, but sees that everything is in motion, the fundamental cause of this crime is to be found in the structure of society itself, which in certain cases, prohibits a man from satisfying his natural inclinations. When the polygamous tendencies are stronger than the pressure of society a crime is committed.
If we consulted only the criminal statistics we should hardly ever meet with adultery. It is unnecessary to add that the penal laws dealing with this matter are so drawn up that a prosecution for adultery almost never takes place; it goes without saying, however, that in reality the offense is very common.
In the first place we must look into the question of the classes of society in which the offense occurs oftenest. Though there are no statistics on the matter I believe that we shall not be far wrong in saying that adultery takes place oftenest in that part of the bourgeoisie that lives in idleness, often also among the proletariat, and least often among the intellectual bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie. In seeking for the causes of this fact we see clearly that they cannot be found in the man himself, for the individuals forming these classes do not differ as to their innate characteristics. Consequently, these causes must be found in the environment; the following being the principal ones.
First. The more marriage is contracted for convenience the greater the danger of adultery. This is one reason why adultery is more common among the “upper ten thousand”, where marriage is often a commercial affair, and why it is less frequent among the intellectual bourgeoisie, in which there are more marriages of inclination.
Second. The more frivolous and trifling the life any class leads, the more frequent will adultery be in it. This is another reason why adultery is frequent among the idle rich, and less frequent in the intellectual class and the petty bourgeoisie.
Third. The more the social causes of marriage are felt in a certain class, the greater the moral aversion to adultery. This is one reason why this offense is found less often among the petty bourgeoisie than in the working class.
Fourth. The greater the number of marriages concluded for purely physical reasons without any intellectual reasons entering in, the more numerous will be the cases of adultery. This applies especially to the proletariat, among whom most of the marriages are contracted from affection, but where, because of lack of culture, there is often no possibility of intellectual communion. When this harmony is lacking it comes about that the difficulties of life, so great in this class, cause an estrangement from which infidelities frequently result.
Finally, let us consider briefly the question of which individuals in the different classes are guilty of adultery. The predisposition to polygamy is not the same for all. In the second place, the sexual instincts are much more intense in some cases than in others. In the third place the environment in which one has lived is not the same as that of another, and opportunities do not occur in the same way for each. The joint action of these causes explains sufficiently why one commits the offense in question and not another.
In setting forth the etiology of adultery we have been giving the reasons why it has been designated as a crime. Little by little the conception of marriage has been modified in consequence of the social changes that have taken place; there is a growing number of persons who consider the life in common permissible only when both parties desire it without being constrained by the law. The partisans of this opinion disapprove of adultery, but for different reasons from others, who consider it as the infraction of an acquired right. Professor Ferri formulates this new morality as follows. “What is vile about adultery is not that it is an assault upon individual property, it is the disloyalty of the act, the trickery and hypocrisy of it.”
While finding adultery immoral the adherents of this opinion believe that the law has no right to interfere. Even the persons who do not share their point of view believe that the penal code should cease to concern itself with this crime. Hence it comes, among other things, that the laws are so drawn that prosecutions are very rare. It is probable that adultery will disappear from the list of offenses.
B. Rape and Indecent Assault upon Adults.
In his work, “Genèse normale du crime”, Professor Manouvrier expresses himself as follows upon the crime of rape. “Every normally constituted man would be a born violator if the sexual appetite could find no other means of satisfaction than rape. The crime is rare, however, and we know why; there are women for the ugliest and the poorest. However, famine may come; there is also opportunity, and many devils capable of leading into temptation the brute that every man is at his birth. For the ‘criminologists’ must not delude themselves upon this point if they wish to make criminal anthropology truly scientific. If we were to take a well-born child of a distinguished European family, and isolate him from his birth from all the influences of environment except those strictly necessary for the preservation of his life, we do not know what strange beast he would turn into. On the other hand we do know that behind our acquired polish our natural brutality still persists.” Here in a few words is the environment theory applied to the origin of the most serious sexual crimes. Let us consult some facts to see whether the theory is correct.
First of all it must be remarked that this crime is not the act of a pervert but of a brute. It is important not to forget this since perversion does play a part in the crimes which we shall take up under C. Some authors do not make a distinction between these two kinds of crimes, which prevents their giving a really fundamental treatment of the etiology of them.
Let us see what the movement of this crime teaches. Its curve in the different months shows that it rises towards spring, to reach its maximum in summer, after which it regularly decreases, reaching its minimum in winter. An example of this is given in the following table, which includes also crimes committed against children.
France, 1827–1869.
Months. Sexual Crimes Committed Upon Days of Conception
1863–1871.
Adults. Children.
Absolute Figures. % Absolute Figures. % Absolute Figures. %
January 584 7.09 1,106 5.57 2,603 7.84
February 563 6.84 1,041 5.23 2,661 8.02
March 643 7.82 1,366 6.88 2,608 7.85
April 608 7.39 1,700 8.56 2,887 8.69
May 904 10.98 2,175 10.95 3,000 9.21
June 1,043 12.67 2,585 13.03 3,018 9.08
July 860 10.45 2,459 12.42 2,911 8.76
August 794 9.64 2,208 11.13 2,742 8.25
September 653 7.93 1,773 8.93 2,810 8.46
October 523 6.46 1,447 7.29 2,625 7.91
November 514 6.24 983 4.95 2,620 7.89
December 534 6.49 939 5.05 2,665 8.02
The movement of sexual crimes does not tell us much about their etiology. It is plain that the opportunity of committing them occurs much oftener in summer than in winter, and the chance of catching the criminal “in flagrante delicto” is also much greater during the hot months. Even without statistics we should know that the temptation to these acts is greater in warm weather, and further, the rise of temperature towards spring probably increases the sexual tendencies. But all this does not explain the origin of this class of crimes, for if it is true that the sexual tendencies in man are increased by the rise of the temperature toward spring, this affects the sexual life in general, and not the sexual criminality alone (as is shown by the column of the days of conception).
In the same way we learn little of the etiology of these crimes from their movement in the course of the years. In the first part of this work we have given some statistics on this question, which we recapitulate here with additional data.
England.
The author of the English criminal statistics of 1899 fixes attention upon the fact that the maximum of sexual crimes was reached in 1893 and 1894, when the price of wheat was very low (p. 48).
France, 1825–1878.
As Professor Ferri shows in his study upon the influence of temperature, the curve of rape committed upon adults presents some resemblance to that of economic events, the years that were economically bad coinciding with the minimum figures for the crime in question. Thus the unfavorable years of 1835–37, 1846–47, 1865–68 brought a diminution of rapes committed upon adults, and the favorable years of 1832–35, 1847–50, 1857–59 an increase. Although there are some exceptions, the influence of the economic situation is indubitable.
Italy, 1873–1890.
Dr. Fornasari di Verce says that indecent assaults increase with the improvement in economic conditions, and vice versa (p. 143). On the other hand, Dr. Colajanni proved for the different parts of Italy (1875–1880) that a greater consumption of meat did not lead in most cases (22 out of 35) to an increase in the number of indecent assaults (op. cit., pp. 501–504).
New South Wales, 1882–1891.
As we have seen in Part One (p. 144) Dr. Fornasari di Verce has shown that in this country sexual crimes increase in prosperous years, and vice versa.
Prussia, 1854–1896.
As to this country, Professor von Oettingen gives, for the years 1854–1859 and 1862–1871, some figures which show a slight connection between the price of grain and sexual crimes (Part One, pp. 53, 54). Dr. Müller also shows (see the tables pp. 77, 78 and pp. 80, 81) that economic conditions exercise an influence upon sexual crimes; thus, for example, the years 1857–1859 were characterized by cheap grain and high figures for sexual crimes; the same was true of the years 1863–1866 and 1869. On the contrary the years 1854–1856 and 1861, show a high price for grain and low figures for the crimes in question. There were, however, some exceptions; during the crisis of 1873–74 the sexual crimes did not decrease, and in the following years the correspondence of the curve of these crimes with that of the economic situation is no longer to be noted.
The data upon the relation between the economic situation and these crimes are not as numerous as those upon economic crimes, and there are also many exceptions. With some reservations, however, we can say that an improvement in economic conditions tends to increase the crimes in question. However, this does not teach us much with regard to the etiology of them; the statistics of births have long since shown us that the sexual life is more intense during the periods of economic prosperity, than during those of depression. Better nourishment renders the sexual instincts stronger, without its being necessary that they should manifest themselves in a criminal manner. The proof of this is furnished by those who are sufficiently nourished both in good times and bad and are yet not guilty of these crimes. (For statistical proofs see the statistics given later.)
We must then try to discover the true crime-producing factors in other statistical data. First let us inquire whether married or unmarried persons are more often guilty? As we have seen above, German criminal statistics are the only ones which give us absolutely certain information on this point. These show (see p. 454) that at all ages bachelors, widowers, and divorced men are more often guilty of sexual crimes than married men, and at certain ages much more so. Unfortunately these statistics do not distinguish the rapes committed upon adults from those committed upon children. The data of Dr. J. Socquet give us some slight information.
France, 1876–1880.
Civil Status. To 1,000,000 of the Population in
Each Group there were Charged
with Rape upon Adults
Bachelors 8
Married men 3
Widowers 2
Marriage, then, tends to diminish the number of these crimes. The economic life having, in its turn an influence upon the number of marriages the relation between this life and the crimes in question is clear. If the economic situation of many persons did not prevent their contracting marriage at the period of life indicated by nature, these crimes would be much less frequent. As Dr. Augagneur says: “Our laws and physiological exigencies do not harmonize.”
A second question is, what is the class of the population that commits these crimes? As we have seen, the statistics of Italy and Austria show (see pp. 437, 438) that it is almost exclusively the poor who are guilty of sexual crimes. In Italy 92.1% are indigent or have only the strict necessaries of life; in Austria 91.2% are without fortune, and only 0.2% are well-to-do.
The statistics of the professions of convicts in Germany (see p. 441) show also that those who are arraigned for these crimes are especially working-men, and particularly unskilled laborers (among whom the statistics include also white-slave traders, professional criminals, etc., see p. 442). Unfortunately these statistics do not distinguish between sexual crimes committed upon adults and those committed upon children. The following table shows that the number is greater for the first than for the second of these crimes.
France, 1836–1880.
1836–1840. 1876–1880.
Percentage of Total Number Accused of Rape and Indecent Assault Committed Upon
Adults. Children. Adults. Children.
Engaged in the cultivation of the soil, laborers, farm servants, etc. 38 33 52 39
Workers engaged in handling the products of the soil, iron, wood, etc. 30 26 25 25
Bakers, butchers, cabinet-makers, etc. 5 4 4 4
Tailors, wigmakers, hat-makers 7 8 3 6
Merchants 3 5 3 5
Sailors, carters, porters 6 5 4 3
Domestic servants and keepers of inns, lodging houses and cafés 3 4 3 4
Liberal professions 5 11 4.5 10
Vagrants 3 4 1.5 4
100 100 100 100
Although this table by itself has little value, since the comparative figures for the population in general are lacking, it suffices to show, by comparison with the preceding tables, that the crime with which we are concerned is committed by working-people especially. The criminals in a large number of the cases are rural, as the last table proves to a certain extent, and as further appears from the following.
France, 1846–1880.
Residence. 1846–1850. 1876–1880.
Absolute Numbers. % Absolute Numbers. %
Rural population 804 74 412 67
Urban population 264 24 160 27
Residence unknown 16 2 38 6
Total 1,084 100 610 100
Even when we take account of the fact that the rural population in France is more numerous than the urban, we still see that the crime in question is committed in the country especially.
We must further inquire what is the part of the proletariat that is guilty of rape upon adults? The answer must be that it is that which forms the lowest stratum of society. As preceding statistics have shown us (see pp. 427–430, 432), the number of illiterates or of those who know only how to read and write, is very great among the authors of sexual crimes. The following table gives us data more detailed and concerned only with rape upon adults.
France, 1875–1884.
Education. Absolute Numbers. % To 100 Persons upon the Conscription Lists (1880).
Unable to read or write 319 28 13.8
Able to read and write 802 71 —
With a higher education 12 1 —
Upon the basis of this table we have the right to say, then, that this crime is almost never committed by persons having more than a primary education.
This fact destroys the theory that the “human beast” exists independent of environment; for if such were the case, this crime would be relatively as frequent among more highly developed persons as among those that are less so. This table proves what is always forgotten by criminal anthropologists, that a man becomes a brute only under certain fixed circumstances, and commits then acts that would be repugnant to him if he lived in a different environment.
Those who commit these acts come from the strata of society in which, in consequence of their living conditions, the sexual life is considered from a purely animal point of view. What is the environment in which the children of the lowest classes grow up, and what is the sexual morality that they derive from it? The simple truth is that there is no sexual morality for them. In consequence of the detestable housing conditions (compare what was said upon this subject in connection with prostitution) and of the bad society with which they are thrown, the children are thoroughly conversant with the sexual life in its most bestial manifestations. Their attention is fixed upon the sexual life at an age at which it is still a closed book to children brought up in a wholesome environment. As Dr. Lux says in his excellent study upon sexual crimes, “Need, misery, and vice are the natural surroundings of the children of the proletariat, and especially of the lower proletariat; they form the environment out of which the child draws his first and most lasting impressions; they are the school from which they derive the lessons of a system of ethics which is in marked contrast with the ethics of progressive humanity. Conceptions of moral restraints can hardly be awakened in the offspring of the lowest ranks of the proletariat; on the contrary, so far as the sexual sphere is concerned, they are suppressed by the undisguised sexual intercourse of parents, other adults, and prostitutes, with whom the children are continually coming into contact.…”
One of the consequences of the lower position of woman in our present society is that man considers women as destined to submit to his sexual will. This is especially the case in the lower strata of the population, where the woman is often only a means by which the man may satisfy his desires.
Finally, alcoholism is still to be added as a criminogenous factor. Above (pp. 509 ff.) we have seen that there are many chronic alcoholics among the authors of these crimes; in Germany 23.3% and 20.5%, in France 51.5% and 55.7%, in the Netherlands 10.84%, and in Wurtemberg 36.3%.
There is still another way in which alcoholism figures in the etiology of these crimes. At a certain stage of intoxication the sexual instincts are stimulated, while the moral forces are weakened. So in the cases where a sexual crime has been committed in a state of drunkenness we may be sure that alcohol has been one of the principal factors of it. The following figures give us some information on this point.
England.
In his report to the international penitentiary congress at Brussels, Dr. M. W. C. Sullivan shows, as the result of an investigation, that more than 50% of the sexual crimes were caused by alcoholism, and that acute alcoholism is especially active in the case of rape upon adults.
Austria, 1896–1897.
Out of 179 cases of rape, etc., there were 46 (25.7%) committed in a state of drunkenness.
France.
In his report at the Congress mentioned above, Marambat says that 6.6% of the rapes and indecent assaults have been committed in a state of intoxication.
Netherlands.
The criminal statistics show that 11.82% of those convicted of sexual crimes commit them under the influence of alcoholic drinks.
Sweden.
Sigfrid Wieselgren, director general of the penitentiary establishments of Sweden, in his report to the Brussels Congress gives a table which shows that about 36% of those guilty of indecent assault were drunk at the time of the crime.
Switzerland, 1892–1896.
According to the criminal statistics, 21.5% of all the sexual crimes are due to alcoholism.
To sum up, we see that the causes of these crimes are the economic condition which prevents some individuals from marrying at the natural age, the inferior social position of woman, alcoholism, and above all the sexual demoralization and lack of civilization in the lowest strata of society.
It is plain that not all the individuals who live in this environment are guilty of the crimes in question. The sexual instincts do not have equal force at all ages, nor with all individuals. There are individuals who have very pronounced sexual propensities, others who are almost indifferent in this respect, and between the two extremes lies the great majority. It is only for the first class that the danger of a crime against morals is great, for the others it is less so. If the opportunity (rape is almost always an “occasional” crime) presents itself to persons already predisposed, the moral check to restrain them is lacking. If they had lived in another environment, this act would be repugnant to them, as statistics prove; for this crime is not committed by persons of the other classes, although there are naturally proportionally more persons with strong sexual instincts among them. The opportunity to commit these crimes is happily not very frequent. As Voltaire has expressed it, “Rape is a crime as hard to prove as it is to commit.”
We must add a few words upon the history of this crime and the causes that have led to its being classified as such. As Dr. Post (the principal authority upon this question) has shown, among many primitive peoples rape is only considered as a detriment to the property of the man. It is only little by little as the position of woman improves, and her individuality is recognized, that rape is considered as a grave encroachment upon the liberty of the woman, and that it is punished as such.
C. Rape and Indecent Assault upon Children.
An examination of the etiology of these crimes shows that in great part the individuals who are guilty of them belong to the same category of criminals as those who commit sexual crimes upon adults. If they seduce or outrage a child and not a woman it is from accidental reasons (opportunity, lack of bodily strength, etc.); they are brutes who wish to satisfy their sexual instincts at any price; they are not, however, perverts. Although there is a quantitative difference between the man who violates an adult and one who commits this act upon a child (the latter being grosser and more egoistic than the former), there is no qualitative difference between the two so far as the majority of the criminals of whom we are speaking are concerned. We should only repeat ourselves if we treated of the etiology of these crimes more fully.
As with the crimes of which we were speaking above, there is with crimes against children also, a great increase toward spring, the maximum being reached in the month of June, after which there is a decrease, with the minimum in winter. The statistics given for France show also that in this country the periods of economic prosperity bring an increase of these crimes, and the periods of depression a decrease. And it is probably the same with other countries. As has been said also of the crimes against adults, all this shows us very little of the etiology of these crimes, since the intensity of the sexual life in general rises and falls in accordance with the economic situation.
Here also the married men play a smaller part than the unmarried and divorced; the poor classes show a larger number of crimes than those that have property (see p. 616); the illiterate, and persons who know how to read and write simply, show also proportionately higher figures than persons with a higher education, and alcoholism again takes its place among the causes of this crime.
A minute comparison of the statistics of sexual crimes committed upon adults and of those upon children shows that a part of the latter are of a character quite different from the former. By comparing, for example, the statistics of the civil status of persons arraigned, we see that the number of married men and widowers is proportionately much greater in the case of crimes against children than against adults. The following table shows this:
France, 1876–1880.
Civil Status. To 1,000,000 of the Population of Each Group there were Arraigned For Rape Upon
Adults. Children.
Bachelors 8 37
Married men 3 25
Widowers 3 50
A comparison of the statistics of the occupation of the two groups of these criminals (see p. 616) shows that in the crimes upon children, the liberal professions show twice as many as those committed upon adults. The same is true of merchants.
The figures with regard to education show that the illiterate are about equally numerous in both groups of criminals, but that the percentage of those who have a higher education is 5 in the case of crimes upon children, and barely 1 for those upon adults.
While, as we have seen, sexual crimes upon adults are chiefly committed in the country, the cities and manufacturing centers occupy a much more important place in the statistics of those upon children, as the following table proves.
France, 1876–1880.
Residence. Rape and Indecent Assault Upon
Adults. Children.
Rural 67 53
Urban 27 43
Unknown 6 4
Contrary to what we find with regard to sexual crimes against adults it is also the departments with the great cities which, in comparison with the rural districts, give the highest figures.
It appears from an examination of these data that sexual crimes upon children and those upon adults have, in part a different etiology. Many sexual crimes upon children are committed by persons who could also satisfy their desires with adults, but abuse children instead. These, then, are cases of sexual perverts.
A thorough examination of the causes of this perversion would be ill placed in the midst of our investigation of the social etiology of crime, for they are principally of a pathological nature. However prostitution should be mentioned as contributing more to sexual demoralization than any other cause. As Dr. Després says in his work “La prostitution en France”, “Physicians think that rape is an aberration of the genetic faculty and that this crime is more often the result of satiety than of deprivation of the natural exercise of the genital functions.”
Dr. Ladame expresses himself thus. “All the causes which divert the genetic faculty from its natural end may lead to crime, and among these causes prostitution plays, without doubt, the principal part.”
It is plainly difficult to show by figures the degree of importance of prostitution in the etiology of sexual crimes. The Swiss statistics, which try, though very imperfectly, to record the causes of crimes, say that 5.3% of the sexual crimes are caused by prostitution. It is unnecessary to say that this figure is too low.
We may add in conclusion that it is almost always upon the children of the poor that these crimes are committed. The children of well-to-do parents are so well guarded that crimes against them are the rare exceptions.
Chapter IV.
Crimes from Vengeance and Other Motives.
Besides economic, sexual, and political criminality, there is still a fourth category of crimes, the motives of which are quite diverse. We shall treat, A. Crimes from vengeance, and B. Infanticide. The first group is important both quantitatively and qualitatively; the second, especially, qualitatively. The crimes committed from other motives are either very rare, or very insignificant, or may be explained by the same causes as those included under A, and hence may be passed over in silence.
A. Crimes Committed from Vengeance.
In a sociological work like ours we need not consider the psychology of vengeance. For our subject it is sufficient to show that the feeling is innate in everyone, although in different degrees. As soon as one person injures another, whether bodily, or in his interests, or his honor, the desire to retaliate in one way or another immediately appears. If this desire transforms itself into act, this act calls forth a stronger reaction on the part of the opposing party, etc. It is this that is called the instinct of vengeance.
We must then begin by treating the causes calling forth feelings of revenge, and by fixing our attention upon the two principal categories of causes, those which spring from the economic life, and those which are due to the sexual life.
We shall speak first of the causes that are due to the economic life. The fundamental principle of the mode of production in which we live is competition, strife—in other words, doing injury to others. So there are innumerable cases in which the desire for revenge is excited by the economic life. Many sociologists extol the beauty of this struggle and pretend that its effect upon society is excellent. We shall refrain from examining the truth or falsity of this statement; for the matter in hand we need not concern ourselves with the fortunate victors, but simply with the vanquished. After the exposition of the present system of production it is superfluous to show all the opposing economic interests and the feelings resulting therefrom; we shall mention a few, and the others will be easily understood.
Imagine, for example, the state of mind of a small retailer who finds himself totally ruined by the competition of a large department store in the neighborhood; of that of working-men suffering great privations during a strike, who see themselves supplanted by others, who think only of their immediate interest in acting as strike-breakers. Or imagine, again, the innumerable cases in which questions of inheritance awaken vengeful feelings. And side by side with all this, picture the economic life of village-communities where all the economic interests were parallel, and where consequently the economic life engendered neither envy nor jealousy. Anyone who grasps the enormous difference between these two modes of production, will understand also how the feelings of revenge are excited by the present economic system.
In the second place, how far are vengeful feelings aroused by sexuality? As Sutherland remarks in his “Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct”, there are no peoples who are not more or less jealous in sexual matters, but great differences are to be observed in this respect. While Nansen, for example tells how the Eskimo women are almost ignorant of sexual jealousy, there are other peoples among whom the woman is killed by her husband if another man evinces any regard for her.
The facts show that the greater the power of the man over the woman, the greater also is the sexual jealousy of the man, a jealousy which, among other things, manifests itself in the very severe punishment of adultery. He who has a right to something wishes to keep it for himself and does not tolerate injury to it on the part of anyone else. When the man considers the woman as his chattel, or when he has great power over her, sexual jealousy is strengthened by the feelings connected with property. These latter feelings were more predominant among the primitive peoples than true sexual jealousy, a proof of which is that fact that among many of these peoples the law of hospitality required putting the wife at the disposal of the guest.
From the present form of marriage (as among many primitive peoples) it follows that each party has a right with relation to the other. The violation of this right is considered as a serious injury and gives rise to a desire for revenge. This phenomenon is not natural, but historical. If the present state of society did not necessitate an artificial stability in sexual relationships, if the man and his wife were economically independent, they would not believe that they had rights over each other.
Here is the first bond between sexual jealousy and the social environment, but there is also a second, though a more remote one, namely, that it is with those who have a gross conception of the relations of man and wife, that revengeful feelings arise after love disappears. Those who, because of the environment in which they live, have formed a different idea of the relation between man and wife, while feeling the most violent grief, remain strangers to the desire for revenge. He who knows that neither love nor sympathy can be bidden, knows also that a right in this matter can bring no change in the feelings, and must remain only a nominal thing; he sees only the action of fate, where the brute sees an evil will. This is one reason why the number of crimes of passion is smaller among civilized people than among the partly civilized.
We must notice, further, one kind of crime of passion, the revenge of a woman seduced and then abandoned. Besides sexual jealousy there are, in these cases, other motives playing their part. Often the woman has not given herself for love alone, but also with the prospect of a marriage, or a betterment of her economic position. It is not sexual vengeance that is the sole motive here then, but also vengeance for economic reasons. Further the prohibition of inquiring into the question of paternity may also enter in.
After having pointed out the two principal categories of causes that awaken revengeful feelings we must now enquire why, with certain individuals, these feelings are translated into acts. Many criminologists prefer to find environment of small importance in these crimes and the individual factors the predominant ones. Let us see whether the facts will uphold this theory. To begin with let us ask what the movement of these crimes teaches us.
As statistics show, they increase towards spring, reach their maximum in summer, after which a decrease follows with the minimum in winter, as the following table proves.
Germany, 1883–1892.
Crimes.
On the basis of a supposed Average of 100 Crimes a Day the Daily Average for the Different Months would be
Serious assaults Homicides
January. 75 88
February. 78 84
March. 78 100
April. 84 95
May. 102 108
June. 116 113
July. 119 118
August. 116 133
September. 110 124
October. 106 106
November. 93 93
December. 80 78
Some authors seek for a remote explanation, when there is one near at hand: in summer persons are more in contact with each other, a fact which gives opportunity for disputes, and an increased danger of consequent crimes.
We may sum up the principal data upon the movement of these crimes in relation to the economic situation (given in Part One of this work) as follows.
England, 1840–1890.
Fornasari di Verce draws attention to the fact that crimes against persons (represented in great part by crimes of vengeance) increase in times of economic prosperity and vice versa (see p. 144. See also the data of Mayr, pp. 43 and 44).
Bavaria, 1835–1861.
Mayr shows for this period that crimes against persons increase when the price of grain falls and vice versa (see pp. 40–42).
Italy, 1873–1890.
According to Fornasari di Verce there is a diminution of homicides and assaults when economic conditions grow worse, and vice versa (see p. 143).
New South Wales, 1882–1891.
The same author says that homicides and assaults increase, while minor offenses against persons decrease, when economic conditions grow worse and vice versa (see p. 144).
Prussia, 1854–1896.
Dr. Starke and Dr. Müller show that the crimes we are considering increase when economic conditions improve, and decrease when they grow worse (see pp. 66 and 83). However, they show at the same time that these phenomena did not take place at the beginning of the period observed by them. Later they follow the regular course.
Canton of Zürich, 1853–1892.
For the period mentioned Meyer proves that crimes against persons increase when economic conditions improve (see p. 69).
Examining these results we observe that the crimes in question increase in the periods of prosperity, and vice versa; but we see at the same time that there are also noteworthy exceptions (New South Wales and France), and that in Germany in the last 20 or 30 years, this tendency is no longer present. It is not difficult, it seems to me, to explain why these crimes increase in periods of prosperity. Men are thrown then into contact more frequently, they live a little more for amusement, and consume (and this is certainly one of the principal reasons) more alcohol than usual. Some authors see in this movement of crimes against persons a natural law, according to which criminality would be a fixed quantity, manifesting itself in economic crimes in periods of depression, and in crimes against the person in periods of prosperity.
As I have already said more than once this theory is erroneous. If it were really true that an improvement of the economic situation inevitably brought about an increase of crimes against persons, the class of individuals who are always in fairly good circumstances would also be largely guilty of these crimes. Statistics show us the contrary.
Thus we arrive at the very important question, what are the classes of the population which are especially guilty of these crimes? As the statistics already given show they are the poorest classes (see pp. 437 ff.). In Italy, for example, 89.8% of those who commit homicide, and 91.1% of those guilty of assault, were indigent or had only the bare necessities of life, though these form but 60% of the population. The same is true of Austria, and the statistics of occupations gives a similar result for Germany (see pp. 441 and 442).
The statistics that give information upon the degree of education of these criminals are more interesting still. As we have seen above, only 0.1% of those guilty of assault had a higher education, while 40.5% of these criminals were illiterate, and 59.4% knew only how to read, or to read and write. In France from 1896 to 1900 the completely illiterate constituted 16% of those guilty of assault, and 15% of the assassins, while in the general population there were only 4.5% who did not know how to sign their names. In Italy only 1% of the assassins and only 0.6% of those guilty of assault had a higher education, 99% and 99.4% respectively were illiterate or knew only how to read and write. These are striking figures.
In this connection let us stop for a moment to consider the geography of these crimes, and place beside the figures on this point those of illiteracy. We will begin with a table of figures for homicide and assaults followed by death, for some of the countries of Europe.
Country. Years. Homicides and Assaults followed by
Death to 100,000 Inhabitants. Years. Illiteracy
%.
Italy 1880–84 70.0 1882 57.43
Spain 1883–84 64.9 1889 68.10
Hungary 1876–80 56.2 1880 59.70
Austria 1877–81 10.8 1880,, 40.10
Belgium 1876–80 8.5 1880,, 21.66
Ireland 1880–84 8.1 1882 30.00
France 1880–84,, 6.4 1882,, 13.10
Scotland 1880–84,, 4.4 1882,, 11.00
England 1880–84,, 3.9 1883 14.00
Germany 1882–84 3.4 1881–82 1.54
Holland 1880–81 3.1 1880 11.50
No one will deny the striking parallelism between these columns, the highest figures for homicide being found where there are also the largest figures for illiteracy. As we have seen already, however, international statistics have inherent defects. The following figures are better in this regard:
United States.
Birthplace. Number of Homicides to 100,000 Inhabitants. Illiteracy
%.
Sweden, Norway, Denmark 5.8 0.42
Germany 9.7 0.57
England and Scotland 10.4 2.50
Austria 12.2 16.73
Ireland 17.5 41.65
France 27.4 43.60
Italy 58.1 51.77
We have here also, then, a striking parallelism. We will now take up the geography of homicide, etc., in different parts of one country; some of the faults inherent in the geography of crime are thus eliminated.
Germany, 1893–1897.
States and Provinces. Number of Persons Convicted for Serious Assaults to 100,000 Inhabitants over 12 Years of Age. Percentage of Illiterates among the Recruits
1892–1893. Percentage of Votes Given to the Socialist in the Election of 1898.
Bavaria 391 0.03 18.0
West Prussia 334 4.01 4.9
Posen 326 1.72 1.7
East Prussia 265 0.98 18.3
Silesia 252 0.57 22.3
Baden (Grand Duchy) 250 0.02 19.1
Hesse 248 0.03 33.9
Alsace-Lorraine 237 0.30 22.7
Pomerania 227 0.22 17.2
Westphalia 223 0.08 17.7
Germany 219 0.38 27.1
Prussia 211 0.59 24.1
Rhine Province 201 0.08 15.0
Wurtemberg 197 0.04 20.3
Saxony (Province) 185 0.07 34.0
Brandenburg 184 0.15 35.6
Hesse-Nassau 161 0.14 30.9
Hanover 146 0.04 25.6
Sleswick-Holstein 106 0.10 38.9
Saxony (Kingdom) 82 0.01 49.4
The parallelism between the first two columns is undeniable; the states and provinces with low figures for illiteracy show also a small number of assaults, and vice versa, with some exceptions—notably Bavaria. The reason why Bavaria is at the head of the list is undoubtedly because of the alcoholism that prevails there.
United States, 1890–1900.
States. Number of Inhabitants in 1900 to Each Murder (Annual Average from 1890 to 1900). Percentage of Illiteracy in Population Over 10 Years of Age (1900). States. Number of Inhabitants in 1900 to Each Murder (Annual Average from 1890 to 1900). Percentage of Illiteracy in Population Over 10 Years of Age (1900).
Nevada 1,086 12.8 Nebraska 6,360 3.1
Colorado 2,141 5.2 N. Carolina 6,645 35.7
Montana 2,704 5.5 United States 7,649 13.3
Texas 2,986 19.7 Rhode Island 8,241 9.8
Mississippi 3,001 40.0 Missouri 8,582 9.1
Florida 3,367 27.8 S. Dakota 8,924 4.2
California 3,519 7.7 N. Dakota 11,005 6.0
Delaware 3,849 14.3 W. Virginia 11,021 14.4
Louisiana 3,859 45.8 Indiana 11,037 6.3
Alabama 3,966 41.0 Minnesota 11,105 6.0
Wyoming 4,206 3.4 Iowa 11,147 3.6
Maryland 4,250 15.7 Michigan 11,810 5.9
Arkansas 4,300 26.6 Connecticut 12,443 5.3
Utah 4,855 5.6 Ohio 12,523 5.2
Tennessee 4,957 26.6 Wisconsin 13,435 6.7
Washington 5,079 4.3 New York 14,195 5.5
Oregon 5,235 4.1 Illinois 15,306 5.2
Kentucky 5,394 21.6 New Jersey 15,697 6.5
Georgia 5,817 39.8 Pennsylvania 20,169 6.8
Idaho 5,992 5.1 Massachusetts 29,222 6.2
S. Carolina 6,064 45.0 Maine 38,581 3.3
Virginia 6,079 30.2 New Hampshire 45,732 6.8
Kansas 6,253 4.0 Vermont 57,274 6.7
Although less complete than in the preceding table, the parallelism here is nevertheless striking; all the states below the average for illiteracy, except one, rank low also in the number of murders. There are however some very remarkable exceptions to the general tendency, some states with small figures for illiteracy having nevertheless high figures for homicide. It is not possible for me to explain the cause of this, the details with regard to this country being lacking (it is very remarkable that the newest states are those that constitute the exceptions). The relation between these crimes and illiteracy is undeniable however.
Italy, 1880–1883.
Provinces. Simple Homicides and Assaults Followed by Death to 100,000 Inhabitants. Illiteracy among the Conscripts (1896).
% Provinces. Simple Homicides and Assaults Followed by Death to 100,000 Inhabitants. Illiteracy among the Conscripts (1896).
%
Girgenti 36.5 65.15 Italy 7.0 36.65
Campobasso 29.5 56.35 Lecce 6.9 58.57
Avellino 29.5 56.07 Ascoli Piceno 6.7 53.81
Caltanissetta 29.0 58.02 Pisa 6.0 35.86
Cantanzaro 27.3 65.76 Treviso 5.9 24.95
Trapani 26.1 58.49 Cueno 5.5 18.68
Cosenza 25.7 44.17 Alessandria 5.2 9.86
Palermo 22.3 45.21 Turin 4.9 19.71
Naples 22.2 45.15 Florence 4.3 35.16
Potenza 21.4 55.63 Genoa 4.2 24.16
Caserte 21.3 43.11 Mantua 4.0 25.06
Aquila 20.7 38.56 Udine 4.0 11.08
Calabria 19.5 43.95 Venice 3.9 31.92
Rome 17.7 35.33 Bologna 3.9 24.68
Salerno 17.4 60.37 Sienna 3.9 48.56
Catania 16.7 64.04 Piacenza 3.5 37.82
Chieti 16.6 57.44 Padua 3.0 34.32
Sassari 16.1 53.09 Porto Maurizio 3.0 13.64
Leghorn 14.0 15.68 Novara 2.9 12.18
Teramo 13.8 61.37 Bergama 2.8 27.00
Arezzo 13.4 38.60 Vicenza 2.5 31.41
Ancona 13.1 36.24 Brescia 2.5 20.72
Lucca 11.9 18.49 Emilia 2.4 33.08
Messina 10.9 49.52 Como 2.3 8.89
Forli 10.2 49.63 Pavia 2.3 21.39
Grosseto 10.2 61.42 Verona 2.3 31.86
Bari 10.1 64.60 Ferrara 2.2 36.97
Ravenna 10.1 43.23 Modena 1.8 35.41
Perugia 10.0 48.99 Belluno 1.7 25.62
Cagliari 9.7 68.08 Cremona 1.6 12.71
Pesaro e Urbino 9.4 53.94 Milan 1.4 18.85
Massa e Carrara 8.3 34.46 Parma 1.1 31.68
Macerata 7.5 43.43
In this country also the parallelism is undeniable; almost all the provinces with low figures for illiteracy have also low figures for criminality, and vice versa.
To conclude, here are some figures with regard to
The Netherlands, 1901.
Provinces. Assaults to 100,000 Inhabitants. Illiteracy among the Conscripts.
%
Drenthe 15.9 7.2
Limburg 13.7 3.6
North Brabant 12.9 4.1
Groningen 12.6 2.8
Zeeland 8.3 2.3
Overijssel 8.2 3.3
Gelderland 8.2 1.7
Netherlands 7.6 2.3
Friesland 7.3 2.3
Utrecht 6.9 1.1
South Holland 4.2 1.1
North Holland 3.8 1.2
We have here then a confirmation in a general way of the rule proved for other countries.
In view of all the preceding data we must conclude that it is the less civilized persons who commit crimes of this class. How is this to be explained? This is what we shall proceed to examine.
The first reason is that the more civilized a person is the less revengeful feelings arise when some one injures him. The more the motives of actions are appreciated, the less the desire for revenge springs up. A child wants to revenge himself even upon an inanimate object that has hurt him; it is almost the same with uncivilized peoples, who so rarely take account of the motives of human action. It is not so long ago that men took vengeance upon maniacs, a thing which could not happen today.
In the second place, when the idea of revenge arises in a civilized man he is more in a position to restrain himself than the uncivilized; he is less impulsive; he knows that later he will repent of his act, and that it may have disagreeable consequences for him.
In the third place civilization inspires a great aversion to acts of violence.
Thus we come to the correlation between these crimes and the education of the poor. The child is often moved to revenge, there is no inner check to restrain his passions. When his education has been neglected he runs, as his age advances, more danger than others of being guilty of these crimes. And then children are very imitative. If we had good statistics with regard to violent criminals we should see that they almost always spring from surroundings in which violence is common. All authors who are especially concerned with this matter are in agreement on this point. The fact that parents among the lower classes use blows as a means of instruction has for its national consequence that when the children are grown they themselves have no fear of making use of violence.
One further observation must be made here. Many persons think it quite natural that one should not have the right to avenge himself for an injury. Sociology, however, teaches us quite otherwise. Among primitive peoples revenge, instead of being a thing prohibited, is a sacred duty. Little by little vengeance, at first unlimited, became confined to “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”; this in turn was replaced by the so called “compensation”; and this in its turn yielded to penalties inflicted by an authority superior to both parties.
If we enquire which are the countries where homicides and assaults are committed most frequently we find that they are the most backward, and thus give a picture of time past. Here we have in mind especially Sicily (see the table with regard to Italy some pages higher) and Corsica (while between 1880 and 1884 there was an annual average of 6.4 homicides to the million inhabitants, the figure for homicides in Corsica was 110.2). Nothing is more mistaken than to believe that we have here a question of race. As Professor Tarde remarks (see the quotation on pp. 109–110), there have been times when the people of these countries were much less violent than the northern peoples, now so little given to this kind of crime. These two islands have so high a figure because the “vendetta” is still universal there, and because it is considered as a duty.
Although in less degree, the case is almost the same with the lower classes of other countries as regards this type of crime. There are those who from their manner of life most resemble our distant ancestors. They are not, at least so much as other classes of society, instilled with the idea that they have no right to avenge themselves personally. On the contrary it is often considered an act of cowardice to allow an insult or an injury to pass without taking revenge. This is why the police are often resisted and their interference considered as an intrusive meddling with matters with which they have no concern.
Such, in my opinion, are the principal reasons why the less civilized classes are guilty of these crimes, and thus we are given an idea of their etiology.
In the first table upon the relation between illiteracy and serious assaults (Germany) we added also the percentage of votes given to the socialists. As the table shows the percentage of these votes is in general smaller in the localities where the kind of crime of which we have been treating is most frequent; and vice versa. It is, then, evident that there is a correlation between the two phenomena, and this is easily explained. In the working circles in which socialism is beginning to make its way, there is growing little by little, an interest in things other than those which formerly occupied the working-men in their leisure hours. They begin to become civilized and to have an aversion to the coarser amusements. At the same time the feeling of solidarity is awakened in them, and thus a powerful moral check is created.
It was especially the figures for the crimes of vengeance that we placed beside those for the votes given to the socialists, since the relation between the two phenomena stands out very distinctly. This correlation, however, holds for criminality in general, for almost all the countries with a large number of socialist voters show also fairly low figures for criminality, and vice versa. Nevertheless this correlation is not as great for other crimes as for those which we are at present considering, which is explained by the fact that most of the criminals who are guilty of them are not much like other criminals, especially those who have no respect for property (criminals from poverty excepted). These last, greedy of pleasure, and always looking out for their own interests, are those who, as regards the intensity of their social instincts, occupy the last place. All this is inapplicable to criminals by violence; they are not always really wicked, and after their crime they often show a sincere repentance. Socialism exercises no influence upon the category of individuals from whom the economic criminals (from cupidity) are recruited, persons, that is to say, who think only of their own interest, and show themselves insensible to a movement for the well-being of the whole working class.
We have still to speak of one question which is sometimes put in treating of this subject. If it is true, says some one, that it is principally in consequence of their ignorance and their lack of civilization that the lower classes commit the crimes in question, these crimes must little by little present themselves less often, for the development of these classes is improving, even if only gradually. Now criminal statistics do show a gradual diminution in these crimes. Homicide, the gravest form, has continually decreased in England, Switzerland, France, and Sweden (where it has been reduced to a very small figure), and in Italy (where a considerable diminution has been shown). If we had criminal statistics much more ancient than the existing ones it would be shown that this crime has decreased enormously compared with remote epochs. The progress of civilization in the lower strata of society is very slow, and criminal statistics are all of relatively recent date.
Germany is, as far as I know, the only country where there has been any considerable increase in these crimes (except those against life) in the last twenty years. This exception does not, in my opinion, invalidate the rule. The lack of civilization among the lower orders is not the sole cause of these crimes; the innumerable conflicts engendered by the present social system are also a cause. Besides, the impulse given by the economic development in Germany during this period has hardly been equalled in other countries; it has seen its population grow and become congested, and conflicts increase in like proportion, a cause sufficient to neutralize the civilization which brings it about. Further there is the possibility that the police and the courts have been more efficient during this period, so as to make the increase of crime seem greater than it really is. Finally, alcoholism is increasing, and may also neutralize the effect of civilization.
We come, then, to one of the most important causes of this kind of crime, namely alcoholism. Not only is chronic alcoholism demoralizing (as we have seen on pp. 509 ff.), but drunkenness at the acute stage makes a person more disposed to commit acts of violence, and at the same time less able to control his instincts and passions. Further, the degree of civilization reached by the individual has a great influence upon his conduct when he is intoxicated; the civilized man is then much less dangerous than the man without education. Dr. Grotjahn puts it as follows: “The development of the moral consciousness is not without influence upon the harmlessness or danger of intoxication. Persons in whom the sense of responsibility for the consequences of their actions has been sharpened by education, whether they owe this to their teachers or their parents or to their own experience, in case they become intoxicated to the point of having their minds clouded, will still always keep a remnant of their power of judgment, which will hold them back from violent and disastrous actions. On the other hand, in the case of persons who lack all moral training, the scanty moral restraints which check their native impulses most quickly disappear.”
An examination of the physiological process caused by large doses of alcohol not coming properly within the scope of a sociological work like this, it is sufficient to show that great quantities of alcohol undoubtedly do have this effect. We shall accordingly pass on to the question of the correlation between violent crime and the acute stage of alcoholism.
There are different ways of attempting to settle this question. In Part One we have seen that some authors have tried the dynamic method, Fornasari di Verce, for example, showing that in Italy, Great Britain, Ireland, and New South Wales, these crimes increase and diminish with the consumption of alcohol. Professor Ferri shows that during the years 1849–1880 the increase and diminution of cases of assault in France coincide with the success and failure of the vintage.
Another method consists in inquiring what day of the week assaults are most frequent. If the abuse of alcohol is really an important factor in the etiology of these crimes more of them must be committed upon Sunday, Saturday, and Monday, for the abuse of alcohol is greatest on these days. The following table throws some light on the matter.
Number of Assaults Committed on Different Days.
Vienna Korneuburg Canton of Zürich Düsseldorf. Worms
(1896–97). (1896–97). (1890). (1896–98).
Sunday 68 72 60 121 142
Monday 49 12 22 32 57
Tuesday 27 11 } 41 9 34
Wednesday 19 14 9 34
Thursday 19 15 5 35
Friday 18 4 4 27
Saturday 28 11 18 35 37
The figures and the thesis agree, then, perfectly. It is plain, to be sure, that we cannot charge all the cases falling on Sunday to alcohol, since people come together more on that day, and hence the danger of a conflict is greater, but most of the Sunday cases are certainly due to alcohol.
Other authors compare the geography of these crimes with the consumption of alcohol. Professor Aschaffenburg, for example, in the study already quoted, points out the fact that in Germany the countries with the greatest number of assaults are also those where there is the largest consumption of alcohol.
However, although these indirect methods are not without value, it seems to me that since they contain so many elements of uncertainty they yield to the direct method. It is for this reason that I shall follow here especially the direct method and shall indicate the percentage of those who have committed these crimes when they were in a state of intoxication. Though making use of this direct method I do not think it infallible, but it is less liable to error than the others. The especial weakness of it is that the persons who are accused pretend in extenuation that they committed their crimes in a state of drunkenness. Good statistics do not rely solely upon the statements of the prisoners, but also upon the facts brought out at the trial. And then, as Professor Löffler remarks, all those arraigned are not acute enough to simulate a state of drunkenness, and there are even those who, although addicted to overindulgence in alcohol, will deny that they were intoxicated, either from shame, or for fear of a more severe punishment.
Most criminal statistics do not concern themselves with this subject, and even those that do are less detailed than we might wish. Nevertheless they are sufficient, I believe, to prove the correlation in question.
Austria, 1896–1897.
Crimes. Percentage of Convicts who Committed their Crimes in a State of Drunkenness.
Vienna. Korneuburg.
Rebellion 77.7 70.0
Malicious mischief 63.4 43.5
Threats 56.8 46.7
Serious assaults 54.1 56.4
Baden (Grand Duchy), 1895.
In 1895 64% of the cases of rebellion and 46% of the assaults were committed in a state of inebriety.
Belgium, 1872–1895.
Out of the 2,045 convicts who entered the central prison at Louvain from 1874 to 1895, 344 or 16.8% were drunk at the time of committing the crime; of the 130 sentenced to hard labor for life 53, or 40.7%; of the 88 condemned to death 38, or 43.1%. If we consider that a very great number of these criminals were guilty of economic crimes, and doubtless did not commit these in a state of intoxication, the percentage of those who must have committed crimes of vengeance in such a condition becomes very large.
France.
At the penitentiary congress at Brussels Marambat reported that out of a total of 787 convicted of homicide, assault, etc., studied by him, there were 260 or 33% who committed their crimes in a state of drunkenness.
Hungary, 1897.
At the same congress Dr. J. Fekete stated that in 1897, 75% of the 25,000 street brawls, 66% of the 1,574 cases of resistance to the authorities, 50% of the 13,564 serious assaults, and most of the homicides were committed in a state of intoxication.
Massachusetts, 1894–1895.
Crimes. Percentage of Crimes
Committed in a
State of Intoxication.
Malicious mischief 70.0
Homicide 64.7
Threats and violence 59.6
Murder 25.0
Resistance to officers 19.0
Norway, 1886–1889.
Crimes. Percentage of Prisoners who had
Committed their Crimes in a
State of Intoxication.
Resistance to officers 81.8
Homicide 66.6
Assault 55.0
Threats 40.0
Netherlands, 1901.
The criminal statistics of the Netherlands being among the few that give any information upon this point, the following table is of real importance:
Crimes. Percentage of Convicts who
Committed their Crimes in a
State of Intoxication.
Serious assaults 51.88
Resistance to officers 58.04
Malicious mischief 41.69
Threats 39.77
Assaults 31.27
Sweden, 1887–1897.
During this period, out of 2,020 convicted of crimes against the authorities, 1,648, or 81.5%, had committed their crimes in a state of intoxication, and 4,358, or 67.4% out of 6,464 convicted of murder, homicide, and other crimes of violence.
Switzerland, 1892–1896.
The official statistics for these years tell us that 34.8% of the assaults and homicides were caused by alcohol.
It cannot be claimed, of course, that none of these crimes would have been committed if their authors had not been drunk, but everyone will agree with me that these high percentages show that acute alcoholism is a very important cause.
We have now reached the end of our remarks upon the etiology of these crimes, and have shown that the principal causes are, first, the present structure of society, which brings about innumerable conflicts; second, the lack of civilization and education among the poorer classes; and third, alcoholism, which is in turn a consequence of the social environment.
What part is played in these crimes by the so-called individual factors? It seems to me that it is like that which the individual factors play in other crimes—they explain in part which are the individuals that commit the crimes, but they do not explain why the crimes are committed.
This is totally contrary to what many criminologists claim, namely that it is especially the effect of individual factors that is seen in these crimes. Statistics prove the inaccuracy of this. If it were true these crimes ought to appear equally in all classes of society, which, as we have seen, is not the case. A choleric person naturally runs more danger of committing such a crime than one who is phlegmatic; but no one will deny that in all classes the proportion of the persons born with a choleric disposition is the same. However, the influence of environment brings it about that in the well-to-do classes even the choleric run little danger of such a crime. Superficial civilization (for a veneer is all that a great part of the bourgeoisie possesses) is sufficient to limit these crimes to an insignificant minimum.
The obviousness of the reasons which have caused these acts to be classed as crimes is such that it is needless to speak of them. In a society like ours, with its numerous conflicts and its dense population, life would be impossible if the individual were not forbidden to avenge himself personally. Sociology teaches us that vengeance, at first permitted, and even obligatory, has become a prohibited act, because of the great harm it does to society.
B. Infanticide.
There are two chief motives for infanticide, which operate separately or together, namely, fear of dishonor, and poverty. We shall speak first of the former and put the question to begin with, what sort of persons are guilty of this crime? Criminal statistics answer that—
First, they are, almost without exception, women.
Second, they are unmarried women much oftener than married.
Third, the guilty are almost exclusively very poor. According to Italian statistics 88.1% of them are indigent; in Austria, 90.8%; and there are no rich or well-to-do women among them.
Fourth, the women of the working class are much more often guilty than those of the independent class, and the class of domestics furnishes especially a very high figure (Germany). These results are confirmed by the data of other countries. In Austria 80% of those convicted between 1880 and 1882 were domestics, and in France the same was true of 35% of those convicted between 1876 and 1880.
Fifth, the women working in the fields are especially likely to fall into this crime (Germany); the data of other countries also show that it is especially in the country that infanticide is committed. Dr. Socquet shows that in France between 1871 and 1875 there were, to the million inhabitants, 35 persons arraigned out of the rural population, and 22 to the urban.
Sixth, illiteracy is very frequent among those convicted of infanticide. We have seen that in Austria 39.5%, in France 20.0%, and in Italy 92.9% were illiterate. Women knowing more than how to read and write were not found among these criminals.
Most of the cases of infanticide are identical; it generally is, as Fournier says, “a girl who has allowed herself to have a child without the permission of the municipality”, and who has been abandoned by her lover.
The ruling moral ideas place before her a frightful dilemma; if her pregnancy is known by those about her and the child remains alive, she is covered with ignominy, and a painful life awaits her. On the other hand if she makes the child disappear, the others ignore everything, and she avoids dishonor and its consequences. She therefore attempts to conceal her pregnancy as long as possible, in the hope of a miscarriage. But when she finds herself disappointed, when not only terrible physical pains, but also mental tortures are making her almost mad—then it happens that she kills her child.
Statistics show that most of these crimes are committed by women of the lower classes. The number of unmarried mothers is here relatively great; infanticide is quite rare (though a little more frequent than one would suppose from the criminal statistics). There must be special circumstances, therefore, to lead some of these women to this crime. As we have seen in treating of marriage, the ideas of intimate relations between persons who are not married are much less severe in the proletariat, than in the bourgeoisie (a consequence of the fact that the social causes of marriage are much less strong in the latter than in the former), so that among the proletariat these relations are pretty common. If they have consequences, the father and mother generally marry. In this case the idea of killing the child does not come to the woman. The unmarried mothers (very often domestics), who are guilty of this crime are especially those who, seduced and then abandoned by men of a higher class, have no family that can receive them.
Besides women of the working class, there are also among the infanticides some of the petty bourgeoisie, where the moral disapproval of extra-matrimonial sexual commerce is very severe.
Not all women who find themselves in the situation described commit the crime in question, of course. One will reason more than another, and will prefer dishonor to the danger of a criminal trial; one woman has the maternal instinct more fully developed than another, etc. In relation to the social sentiments we see here a situation contrary to what occurs in the case of most crimes. Crime is an egoistic act, that is to say an act which injures the interests of others. This is true of infanticide, but this differs from most of the other crimes in being committed to escape moral disapproval, while they are committed only to obtain a personal profit or to satisfy the passions. This is why those guilty of infanticide are not generally those whose social sentiments have little intensity, as is mostly the case with those who are guilty of economic or sexual crimes. Infanticides are persons sensitive to the opinion of others, while those who have little social feeling easily bear shame.
These individual differences explain in part which are the individuals who become guilty of the crime in question, but not the cause of its existence. There are only a few crimes whose social origin is as clear as that of infanticide. If the present structure of society did not make the present form of marriage necessary, and thus bring about moral disapprobation of extra-matrimonial sexual relations, there would be no infanticide caused by fear of dishonor.
The repression of some of the strongest natural desires, required by our present society, is so great that these requirements are bound to be violated by some individuals in whom these desires are very pronounced. This is true not only in the sphere of the economic life, but also in that of the sexual life. As long as cupidity is awakened in many, while only a few can satisfy it, theft will exist; as long as the satisfaction of the sexual desires is permitted only after certain economic conditions have been complied with, the prohibition will be violated, and some persons will try to destroy the evidence of their acts.
Besides the fear of shame, poverty also plays a part in the etiology of infanticide. Again, it is the two motives combined that are responsible. The great number of infanticides among domestics are not committed simply from fear of shame, but also because the mother, abandoned by everyone (especially in a country where inquiry into paternity is prohibited) does not know how to support her child. Besides these cases there are some committed from poverty alone, for example when married women commit this crime (something, it should be added, which happens very rarely).
Some statistical data will show that poverty is a fairly important factor in the etiology of infanticide. Dr. Weiss shows that in Belgium infanticide increased greatly in the years that were bad economically (see p. 63 of Pt. I), and Dr. Starke does the same for Prussia (see p. 66).
As we have pointed out above, infanticide for the cause of poverty was quite general among primitive peoples, since they were not in a position to support a large population. It was for this reason that the act was not considered immoral, and that it was even required in some cases. In consequence of the continually increasing productivity of labor, infanticide fell more and more into desuetude, and at the same time was considered more and more reprehensible.
Chapter V.
Political Crimes.
Finally we have still to treat of political offenses, offenses which, in comparison with others, occur very rarely, and which by their nature are totally different.
The origin of the state, and the possibility of political crimes, are bound up with a certain phase of the development of the economic life, that is to say with the origin of marked contrasts of fortune. Those who had monopolized the power in the state defended their position by laws whose infraction was threatened with severe penalties. Economic conditions, however, undergo considerable changes, and when these have reached a certain degree, the oppressed class, having become the more powerful, breaks the political power of the ruling class and seizes it for itself. If the dominant class does all that it can to maintain its position unimpaired to the last moment, it will necessarily happen that this development will lead to political crimes. This kind of political crime may be called great political criminality. In western Europe the last great struggle of this nature was that of the feudal classes and the bourgeoisie. The former, once necessary, had become superfluous and harmful; the bourgeoisie on the other hand, from an insignificant class had become the most important. It overturned the whole political system which embarrassed it, seized the power, and transformed the state according to the exigencies of the economic system. A repetition of the same process in eastern Europe we are now witnessing in the changes going on in Russia. The economic development no longer corresponds to the political system, which sooner or later will inevitably be replaced by the modern system.
It would be a waste of time to insist upon the fact that those who commit these acts have nothing in common with ordinary criminals but the name. Most criminals are individuals whose social sentiments are reduced to a minimum, and who injure others purely for the satisfaction of their own desires. The political criminals of whom we are speaking, on the other hand, are the direct opposite; they risk their most sacred interests, their liberty and their life, for the benefit of society; they injure the ruling class only to aid the oppressed classes, and consequently all humanity. While the ordinary criminal is generally “l’homme canaille” (as van Benedikt phrases it in his “Biologie und Kriminalstatistik”) the political criminal is “homo nobilis.” History rights the matter, for the name of the ordinary great criminal is pronounced only with horror, and ends by falling into oblivion, while the political criminal survives in the memory of posterity as a hero.
We must put in the same class the political criminals who aim to deliver a subjugated people from their oppressors. The authors of these crimes also have nothing in common with ordinary criminals.
Besides these two kinds of political crimes, which are plainly collective in their nature, there are cases of crimes committed by individuals which for the most part are attempts upon the life of the monarch or of one of his representatives. The more absolute a government, the more liberty is restricted, and the less chance there is, consequently, of seeing the situation changed by legal means, the greater will become the danger that one of those oppressed will kill the autocrat, either to better the situation or to take revenge for what he and his have suffered. Anyone who wants to follow the genesis of this kind of crime has only to turn to Russia. There all the factors meet which lead to political homicide; the repression of all freedom, a corrupt bureaucracy, and the impossibility of obtaining the least change by legal means.
These circumstances naturally excite the revengeful feelings which sooner or later show themselves in acts. Though we may have the conviction that these acts are almost always useless, though we may have a deep aversion to violence—this does not justify us in ranking those who do these things with ordinary criminals. It matters not how we may abhor violence as such; every reasonable man will justify it when it serves to defend oneself, and most of the acts of political criminals in Russia are only acts of defense against the unheard-of cruelty and violence of the government.
Finally there remains a third kind of political crimes, analogous to ordinary crime, the assassination of the monarch by individuals who thus attempt to place themselves in power. These are actuated by the same vile motives that inspire the robber-murderer—cupidity, desire to dominate, etc.
Now what are the political crimes committed in our days? Leaving aside the case of Russia, which is still living in an epoch that western Europe has left behind, there are only the political crimes of socialists and anarchists. There is little to be said about those committed by socialists. The international social democracy attempts to reach its end by legal means. Since the fall of absolutism it has been possible to exercise an influence on the state in this way, an influence which varies with the country. It is this possibility that the social democracy makes use of. In conformity with its fundamental principles it rejects all violence against the head of the state. Accordingly its partisans have never committed such acts. The more democratic the constitution of a country, the less justification the social democracy will have for political crimes, as in Switzerland, for example, a country where the penal code, moreover, mentions but few political crimes. In other countries, where the democratic institutions are weak, where the constitutional monarchy has still an absolutist character, and where social democracy has become powerful, as in Germany, political crimes are inevitable. Their number, however, is insignificant in comparison with ordinary crimes. From a criminological point of view they have little importance, though often punished severely, and they are generally limited to the crime of leze majesty. Social democrats are, then, sometimes guilty of minor political offenses, and in some countries only. Whether this party will not in the future be guilty of crime of the great political type, or, in other words, whether it will not come to political revolution, is another question and one that no one can answer with certainty. Like all the bourgeoisie when the contest with the feudal classes was still going on, the social democrats are a revolutionary class; they wish to place society upon a basis different from the present one. It is possible that in democratic countries they will attain this by legal means, and consequently without there being any reason for political crime. However, it may also happen that at a given moment when the proletariat forms the majority of the legislative body, the ruling class may have recourse to a “coup d’état”, to a political crime, in order to prevent the proletariat from governing. This possibility is even a probability in some countries, where the opposition of classes is very marked. In Germany, for example, where the social democracy is very powerful, it is very likely that the government will attempt some day to suppress universal suffrage by a “coup d’état.” It is only in such a case that the social democracy will in its turn abandon the legal way and be forced to have recourse to other methods.
In the second place there are the political crimes of anarchists. Their number is not great enough for us to learn their etiology from statistics. We must therefore analyze individual cases. What are the individuals that are guilty of these? The anarchists of the propaganda are most exclusively young men. Leauthier and Langs were 20 years old, Angelillo also, Henry 21, Caserio 21, Schwabe 23, Pallas 24, Lucheni 25, Vaillant and Bresci 31, and Salvador 33, at the time they committed their crimes, and as far as I know there were none of them who were over 33. In disposition they were very excitable. As soon as an idea took hold of them they thought of nothing else. Chance brought them into contact with anarchism which immediately made a conquest of them. Brought up in another environment they would have become, for example, religious devotees; in fact Caserio, Salvador, Vaillant, Cyvoct, and Henry were such before becoming anarchists.
Extreme individualism is also a characteristic of theirs. They abhor discipline, from which it follows that they nourish a fierce hatred of militarism. Even a mild form of discipline, such as that of a party of which one voluntarily becomes a member, is insupportable to them. Some of them have been socialists, but have soon left the party. Among these was Henry, who says in his defense: “For an instant I was attracted by socialism, but I did not delay in separating myself from this party. I had too much love for liberty, too much respect for individual initiative, too much repugnance to incorporation, to take a number in the enlisted army of the fourth estate.”
Another characteristic of nearly all active anarchists, and one intimately connected with the preceding, is great vanity. Lucheni, for instance, in speaking of his crime said, “I wanted to kill a person of note, because that would get into print.” Vaillant had himself photographed before making his attack, distributed his portraits right and left, and when arrested asked whether the journals had printed his picture, etc.
These traits of character, observed in the case of these individuals, are not rare; vain and excitable individualists are fairly numerous, yet almost none become active anarchists. We must therefore seek the explanation elsewhere, and ask ourselves the question, in what environment have they lived? When the president of the tribunal before which Lucheni appeared, asked him what was the motive that led him to commit his act, he replied, “It was poverty.” This is applicable to almost all the active anarchists. See, for example, the life of Vaillant. An illegitimate child without any education, he had to earn his living at the age of 12; having escaped from his employer, with whom he was living, he implored his mother to take him in. Rebuffed he had himself arrested by the police, but when he was once more brought back to his parents they refused anew to receive him. He tried to make his own way, but failed in all that he undertook. It was when embittered by all the miseries he had experienced that he became acquainted with socialism, but finding this too theoretical he ranked himself on the side of the anarchists, and the last link in this chain of misery was his well-known crime.
There are authors who claim that poverty is not to be considered as one of the principal causes of anarchy, and in support of their assertion cite the case of Henry and some others, who while not living in easy circumstances, yet did not know the blackest poverty. Those who reason thus have a false notion of the motives that impel anarchists. It is not only the poverty that they have themselves experienced that moves them, but also, and chiefly, the poverty of others. Those who remain insensible to the sufferings of their neighbors never become anarchists; for not being able to draw any personal profit from anarchism, they consider it madness. Placed in unfavorable conditions such persons become ordinary criminals, or commit suicide. They never sacrifice themselves for an ideal.
Thus we come to another psychological trait of the anarchists, namely that they are born with pronounced altruistic tendencies. It is their altruism which separates them from the ordinary great criminal, whose social instincts are very weak.
It seems paradoxical to say that persons who commit such acts are of an altruistic nature, but the paradox is only apparent. When two persons, an egoist and an altruist, see a child being maltreated, the former goes on his way saying that he would only get himself into trouble if he interfered; the latter, on the other hand, delivers the child from his tormentor, to whom he may give a good thrashing in addition. Here the violent person is the altruist, the other the egoist. Every comparison is imperfect, and this is the case with the one before us, but there is some analogy between the act cited and those of the anarchists. The crimes which they commit are egoistic towards certain persons, but altruistic with reference to others. As a consequence of their own poverty and of the irritation they feel when they see that of their fellows, they have been seized with a hatred of society and wish to avenge themselves. These sentiments are not tempered by much intellectual development. This is a very important factor in the development of active anarchism. Almost all these persons are either very ignorant or have only an elementary education, some know a little more, and persons of thorough education are not found at all among them. Further, most of them lack pronounced intellectual aptitudes, but are rather especially impulsive.
These individuals, excitable, vain, with little intellectual capacity, and ignorant in addition, but oppressed by their own poverty and that of others, and filled with a hatred of society, come into contact with anarchism. It is unnecessary to give an exposition of this doctrine; the active anarchists in their ignorance get no clear idea of any theory whatever, and certainly not of anything as vague and confused as anarchism. They have heard it said that it looks to the formation of a society of altruists where there will be no more poverty, and this appeals to their altruistic instincts; at the same time anarchism gives a preponderating part to the individual, and this draws their vanity. Thus their hate increases, and at the same time attaches itself to certain individuals, whom anarchism holds responsible for existing conditions. Further, the absurd opinion has been instilled into them that it is possible for society to be reorganized at a single stroke, and that to attain this end it will be necessary to use violence.
Is it astonishing that such individuals come to attempt homicide? No; to be sure all persons of this kind do not go so far; for that it would be necessary that other conditions should be complied with. It is plain that persons with a great aversion to violence would run little risk of attempting an assassination; with others it is courage that is lacking; others still attach too high a price to life and liberty to be willing to risk them; etc. We must note this last point especially. Generally active anarchists are persons who care nothing for a life in which they have nothing further to lose. Their conduct in court and their indifference in the face of death are proof of this; knowing beforehand that they will almost certainly not go unpunished their act is often an indirect suicide.
If we ask what the active anarchists wish to attain by their crimes the answer is principally that they wish to avenge upon society the misery experienced by others and by themselves, they wish to terrorize the ruling classes, in order to force upon them social reforms; they wish to set an example to the working classes and finally, they wish to satisfy their vanity, by making themselves talked of. Once committed, the crime is often the commencement of a vicious circle, since society avenges itself upon the author, who, in turn, is avenged by his friends; imitation thus leading to new crimes.
As in the case of all other crimes, I find for anarchism only social causes, and in the last analysis, only economic causes. To be sure, the individuals who commit these crimes are already predisposed in that direction, but this is true of other crimes also. Only the predisposition in these latter is simple, while that which leads to anarchistic crimes is much more complex. However, this predisposition alone explains nothing. I would ask those who think that only individual factors play any part, whether fanatical persons with all the characteristics of the anarchists of our time have not been found in all ages and countries. Everyone, I think, will answer in the affirmative. Well then, anarchistic crimes have occurred only during a certain period and in certain countries. No one can deny that there are as many persons predisposed to anarchistic crimes in a country like Germany, as there are in Italy, for example. Yet anarchistic crimes do not occur in Germany, for the good reason that the material conditions of the proletariat there are so much better than in Italy, and the degree of intellectual development in the working people is so much higher; the German working-man derides the “naïveté” of the anarchists, and detests their futile crimes. It is in the environment alone then that we find the causes of active anarchism, the poverty and ignorance in which the lower classes live.
Chapter VI.
Pathological Crimes.
So far we have been examining crime in its relation to the economic and social environment. We have not been able to discover the existence of individual factors; the celebrated formula, “crime = individual factor + social factor,” has been shown to be incorrect if we are seeking for the causes of crime instead of asking why a certain individual has become a criminal. The conclusion obtained by sociology is the same as that arrived at in anthropology by authors like Manouvrier, Baer, and Näcke.
However, when one is trying to determine the cause of crime by sociology, certain cases are at times met with that cannot be explained in this way. For example, one person will steal useless objects which he is perfectly well able to buy; another will assault or kill without provocation, etc. These cases, it is true, are the exception, but they do exist and must not be neglected. We have here, then, real individual factors, factors which are found in certain individuals only. Other crimes, forming the great majority, are committed from motives which form the basis of all human acts, but are stronger with some few than they are with the general body of mankind. It is these individuals who run more danger than most of committing a crime when they live in a certain environment. The great mass of criminals differ only quantitatively from persons who never get into the courts; the criminals we are about to consider on the other hand differ qualitatively also.
One thing more before we ask ourselves what this individual factor is. As many authors have remarked, it very often happens that, even in the cases we are about to treat, there is a social factor. The proof of this is that individuals thus disposed to crime, but belonging to the well-to-do classes, seldom get to the point of committing them; because their education being better, the tendency is sooner noticed, they are better watched, and thus their committing a crime is often avoided. Born-criminals, in the sense of those who become criminals whatever the circumstances may be (the only meaning that can properly be given to the word “born” here), are doubtless very rare.
What, then, is the nature of this individual factor? It is especially the Italian school that has busied itself with this problem, and in doing so has rendered a service to science, although it has given an undue importance to this individual factor, attempting to discover it in all crimes. The first hypothesis given by Professor Lombroso was that of atavism, according to which the criminal was an individual in whom reappeared the characteristics of his remote ancestors, the desire to steal, kill, etc. It will not be far from the truth if we assert that almost no reputable scientist now accepts this hypothesis as correct. It has been attacked both from the side of sociology and from that of anthropology. Sociologists have proved that the facts contradict Professor Lombroso’s thesis, for primitive peoples are neither thieves nor murderers, and our ancestors, consequently, may be regarded as cleared of the same charge.
Anthropologists also are strongly opposed to this hypothesis. In his article, “De geboren misdadiger” (the born-criminal) Professor Jelgersma says that most of the anomalies observed in certain criminals have no atavistic character, such as unsymmetrical eyes and ears, abnormal growth of hair, etc. Dr. A. Baer makes the same remark in his “Der Verbrecher in anthropologischer Beziehung”, and goes on as follows: “The number of such abnormalities, which betray a disordered and an apparently genuine atavistic condition, is … so small and so accidental, that no force can be recognized in them that might serve for the explanation of criminality, or establish a causal connection with the criminal nature of an individual. Out of this mixture of stigmata of the most various origin and importance, to attempt to find the sole basis in their atavistic character is to do more than permissible violence to the facts.
After this beginning the Italian school put forth another explanation, to which it attached the more importance as the hypothesis of atavism fell into discredit: the criminal is either an epileptic or morally insane. Although the correctness of this hypothesis has not been proved any more than the other, the Italian school here found itself in a field recognized by criminal-anthropologists as its true one. At present one has even the right to say that the opinion in this regard is almost unanimous. The origin of the tendencies of part of the criminals is to be found in the pathological nature of the individuals themselves. These are disordered or degenerate, not, as some authors would have us believe, individuals differing more or less from the average, but persons who suffer from mental diseases, or whose nervous system is affected.
Among those disordered and degenerate, some individuals have tendencies not found in others (such as the desire to kill for the sake of killing), or their moral sentiments are excessively weak. It is to be noticed that we have met with degeneracy above, as it is to be named among the causes of alcoholism and prostitution also. In treating of economic crimes we saw that degenerates also run more danger than others of succumbing in the struggle for existence, and hence become criminals more easily. Thus we meet degeneracy both as a direct and as an indirect cause of crime.
We might leave the matter here, for we have come to a field other than that of sociology. However, one more question presents itself. To what extent are the economic system and its consequences the cause of these maladies? It is plain that this important question belongs in a work on sociology. We shall accordingly attempt to answer it briefly with the aid of competent authorities.
First of all, we note that heredity plays a great part in these maladies. The authors who have taken up the subject agree. It has been remarked that:
First, the inheritance of defects is not inevitable; degenerate parents may have sound children, though the chances are not very great.
Second, the disease of the parents is not always transmitted as such to the child, but the child may be predisposed to this same disease or one analogous. Dr. Féré expresses this as follows: “The diseases of the nervous system … make up a single family, indissolubly united by the laws of heredity … everyone (of those who have these diseases), if he is still fertile, can reproduce them all.”
In speaking of heredity we come to the first relation between the diseases in question and the social environment, since, in our present society, human reproduction is intimately bound up with the economic life. A person who is diseased but rich is often in a position to marry and procreate, while he would have had a smaller chance if sexual selection alone had been effective. On the other hand many well and strong individuals are prevented at present from establishing a family, since they lack the means to support it.
A second harmful kind of selection in our present society is found in the effect of militarism, which takes the strongest individuals, decimates them in time of war, or returns them to society weakened and diseased, while the weak have the greater chance to procreate.
In the third place, the ignorance of the harmful effects for humanity of the reproduction of degenerates is one of the principal reasons why degeneracy is so frequently present. This ignorance is great in the well-to-do classes, and naturally greater still among the poor. It is often repeated, and with truth, that man takes great care to improve his live stock by selection but takes none whatever in the matter of his own race; the weak and the diseased continue to reproduce themselves to the detriment of all society. The lack of all feeling of responsibility, natural to our intensely individualistic society, also contributes its share toward bringing to birth so many unhappy creatures for whom it would have been better if they had never existed.
If we ask how it happens that one individual or another is degenerate, we must answer that very often this degeneracy is due to heredity, either in part or altogether. But if we enquire into the causes of degeneracy in general heredity ceases to be a cause. As Professor Dallemagne says: “Heredity creates nothing; from heredity to heredity we must still go back to the cause.”
What are at present the principal characteristics of the relation between degeneracy and the present economic system with its consequences? Some authors in treating of the etiology of degeneracy express themselves only in general terms, and point out no other cause than “unfavorable circumstances.” Professor Jelgersma, for example, says: “The simple psychoses, melancholia, mania, etc. are caused by unfavorable circumstances. The cause of the psychoses of degeneracy is deeper; the unfavorable circumstances have exercised their influence from generation to generation, and thus an individual is born who is abnormal from birth.”
These unfavorable circumstances must be more precisely defined, therefore. We shall divide them into four great groups.
First. The material condition of the poor classes. “To be well,” says Dr. Toulouse, “one must be sufficiently fed, must clothe himself according to the season, be clean, not work beyond one’s strength, and be more or less exempt from care.” This is a simple truth of which all the world is convinced when it is a question of themselves or of their families, but which the physicians forget only too often when they are speaking of the social causes of diseases.
In the first place the poor classes are badly and insufficiently fed, and as a consequence grow weak, and the children born to them are inferior physically and mentally. The insufficient nourishment of the mother during her pregnancy, and the insufficient nourishment of the child during the first years of his life, are especially fatal to him. Then those who are badly fed are predisposed to tuberculosis, scrofula, and rickets, which, in their turn, may be the causes of degeneracy. Rickety women often have a contraction of the pelvis, which hinders child-birth, and may cause a lesion to the infant’s brain. Note, for example, the opinion of Dr. Näcke, who says: “The social misery, bad hygiene and food … often enough beget a miserable generation and must already have injured the germ. The same causes, however, on the other hand easily produce feeble women with qualitatively and quantitatively insufficient milk, and most of all with a narrow pelvis, through which births take place with difficulty and to the detriment of the brain of the child. If now the above named factors come in later to affect the child, the derangement of nutrition will be further increased, and it is no wonder if all kinds of rickety and scrofulous symptoms appear in the body, and all kinds of children’s ailments injure both body and mind.”
In the second place, unsanitary dwellings and insufficient clothing are the cause of all sorts of diseases, especially tuberculosis, which in their turn may lead to degeneracy. The density of population in the great cities exercises its influence in the same direction.
In the third place, the long duration and intensity of the work forced upon the proletariat also contribute to degeneracy. For each individual there is a fixed measure of labor that he cannot pass without experiencing harmful consequences in body and mind. Dr. Lewy describes them as follows: “The consequences of immoderately long hours of labor are, a certain overexcitement of the nervous system, which later gives place to a permanent debility, with which may be associated a dull headache as well as an inability to think clearly. If the overwork continues for a longer time, soon all the systems of the body are affected, the heart and larger arteries as well are injured in structure and function, disturbances of the regular circulation appear, manifested partly in swellings in various parts of the body, especially in the feet, and partly through hemorrhages. The brain ceases to function regularly, and so-called brain-symptoms appear, such as vertigo, ringing in the ears, deafness, defective vision, paralysis, and apoplexy. In the same way the liver, kidneys, and the digestive tract may be drawn into the general weakening process. The muscles become weak and slack, the body disposed to epidemic diseases, but especially prepared to vocational diseases, to which persons in a run-down condition most easily fall victim. If, then, the end of the worker is not brought about prematurely by some intercurrent disease like typhus, under the immoderate strain he uses up his existing forces faster than he is in a position to replace them, and wastes away with tuberculosis of the lungs, so much the quicker, of course, the weaker he is constitutionally, and the younger he was when he had to submit to excessive labor.”
The harmful consequences of long working hours make themselves felt especially in the trades which are already dangerous to health, like those where there is a great deal of dust produced, or those which use poisons like lead, mercury, etc. Monotony of work joined with long hours is also a cause of physical and intellectual deterioration. Professor Vogt says: “The less variety work presents, the more fatiguing is it, since it is only the same part of the muscles that are continually called upon, while the rest of the muscular system, in accordance with a well-known physiological law, degenerates from misuse and wastes away. To a still higher degree the uniformity of work has a deteriorating effect upon the mental powers; these become weakened much more quickly in the case of long continued fatigue than the muscles, while the unexercised mental faculties at the same time become stunted.”
The present economic system has also led to the work of women and children, and consequently to an important cause of the degeneration of the race. The number of women forced to take part in trades for which they are ill-fitted by nature is very great. The fear of being discharged, and the impossibility of doing without their wages make women with child continue to work up to the last moment of their pregnancy, and recommence shortly after childbirth, leading to very harmful results both for them and for their children. Then child labor prevents the normal development of the children and ages them prematurely.
Further, the cares and restlessness consequent upon the uncertainty of life may be causes of the weakening of the nervous system and the origin of a neurosis.
Finally, when an individual of this class falls sick his restoration to health may be hindered by the lack of care and medical assistance and the necessity of recommencing work too soon.
Second. The condition of the well-to-do classes. Most of the causes producing degeneracy in the poor classes do not appear among the well-to-do. With the latter there can be no question of insufficient food or clothing, or of bad housing. Yet in the well-to-do classes the idle, from their manner of living and this lack of regular exercise, are led to excesses of all kinds, which may make them too, in another way, subject to degeneracy.
In the active part of the bourgeoisie, among the manufacturers, merchants, etc., the case is different. They are constantly absorbed in the question of how to increase their wealth, or, if they are unfortunate, they live in fear of losing the position gained. They are in a state of agitation, of permanent overexcitement. So there are numbers in the bourgeois class who overtax their minds, with the resulting chance of neurasthenia, even where the individual is not predisposed to it. All this applies also to the liberal professions, though in a smaller degree; there also the great competition has harmful consequences for the nerves. In “La famille névropathique” Dr. Féré thus describes the consequences of overdriving: “… excessive cerebral labor, intellectual and, still more, moral overwork, the continual preoccupations of the struggle for existence are conditions eminently fit to bring on functional troubles in the nervous system. Neurasthenia, like hysteria, may be considered as a chronic fatigue. The fatigue, to be sure, gives place to a number of troubles peculiar to neurasthenia. And these troubles, even if only temporary, cannot fail to have the most harmful effect upon children conceived under these conditions.”
The opinion of the celebrated alienist Maudsley is also very interesting; he says: “Perhaps one, and certainly not the least, of the ill effects which spring from some of the conditions of our present civilization, is seen in the general dread and disdain of poverty, in the eager passion to become rich. The practical gospel of the age, testified everywhere by faith and works, is that of money-getting; men are estimated mainly by the amount of their wealth, take social rank accordingly, and consequently bend all their energies to acquire that which gains them esteem and influence. The result is that in the higher departments of trade and commerce speculations of all sorts are eagerly entered on, and that many people are kept in a continued state of excitement and anxiety by the fluctuations of the money market. In the lower branches of trade there is the same eager desire for petty gains; and the continued absorption of the mind in these small acquisitions generates a littleness of mind and meanness of spirit, where it does not lead to actual dishonesty, which are nowhere displayed in a more pitiable form than by certain petty tradesmen. The occupation which a man is entirely engaged in does not fail to modify his character, and the reaction upon the individual’s nature of a life which is being spent with the sole aim of becoming rich, is most baneful. It is not that the fluctuations of excitement unhinge the merchant’s mind and lead to maniacal outbreaks, although that does sometimes happen; it is not that failure in the paroxysm of some crisis prostrates his energies and makes him melancholic, although that also is occasionally witnessed; but it is that exclusiveness of his life-aim and occupation too often saps the moral or altruistic element in his nature, makes him become egoistic, formal, and unsympathetic, and in his person deteriorates the nature of humanity. What is the consequence? If one conviction has been fixed in my mind more distinctly than another by observation of instances, it is that it is extremely unlikely such a man will beget healthy children; on the contrary, it is extremely likely that the deterioration of nature which he has acquired will be transmitted as an evil heritage to his children. In several instances in which the father has toiled upwards from poverty to vast wealth, with the aim and hope of founding a family, I have witnessed the results in a degeneracy, mental and physical, of his offspring, which has sometimes gone as far as extinction of the family in the third or fourth generation. When the evil is not so extreme as madness or ruinous vice, the savour of a mother’s influence having been present, it may still be manifest in an instinctive cunning and duplicity, and an extreme selfishness of nature—a nature not having the capacity of a true moral conception or altruistic feeling. Whatever opinion other more experienced observers may hold, I cannot but think, after what I have seen, that the extreme passion for getting rich, absorbing the whole energies of life, does predispose to mental degeneration in the offspring—either to moral defect, or to moral and intellectual deficiency, or to outbreaks of positive insanity under the conditions of life.”
We could cite a number of other competent authorities to prove that the present economic system exacts from those who direct production also, intellectual efforts such as the nervous system cannot endure indefinitely.
Third. Syphilis. Aside from the fact that this malady is very probably the cause of general paralysis, it takes its place among the important factors of degeneracy to this extent, that the children of syphilitics are often degenerates. This fact being generally recognized we shall not dwell on it. The celebrated German specialist in syphilis, Blaschko, says of it: “Syphilis leads to the birth of children who are mentally and physically stunted, and often crippled and imbecile.”
This would not be the time to speak of syphilis as a cause of degeneracy, if the extension of this malady were not intimately bound up with prostitution, which is, in its turn, determined by the economic environment. Dr. Blaschko says of it: “The principal source of venereal infection of course is, and remains, sexual intercourse outside of wedlock, especially prostitution.”
As a social cause of the great extension of syphilis it is well to point out the profound ignorance of the extent and the danger of venereal diseases, to which less attention is paid than to others (hospitals not receiving patients affected by them, relief funds not aiding those having syphilis, etc.). Like other diseases these have the most harmful consequences for those who live under bad conditions.
Fourth. Alcoholism. Alcoholism undoubtedly belongs to the very important causes of degeneracy. There are few questions upon which competent authors are as unanimous as they are upon this. There is a wealth of material for quotation but we will limit ourselves to the words of Professor Dallemagne, who, after quoting the opinion of such authorities as Morel, Magnan, and others concludes by saying: “Alcohol is an essential factor of degeneracy. It can by itself create all the degenerate and unbalanced states, and this question appears definitely decided.” Dr. Legrain gives the following figures upon the consequences of chronic alcoholism of the parents upon the children. Out of 215 families of alcoholics in four generations (814 individuals) there were found: 42% of alcoholics, 60.9% of degenerates, 13.9% morally insane, 22.7% had had convulsions, 20% were hysterical or epileptic, and 19% were insane. These are striking figures, and banish all doubt of the harmful influence of alcohol!
It must still further be observed, that the very frequent adulteration of alcohol leads to especially harmful consequences; and that alcohol exerts an especially harmful effect upon the ill-nourished.
We have come now to the end of our remarks upon the social and economic causes of degeneracy. Although they are plainly not the only ones, yet it is certain that their part in the etiology of degeneracy is very important, and even preponderating.
Chapter VII.
Conclusions.
What are the conclusions to be drawn from what has gone before? When we sum up the results that we have obtained it becomes plain that economic conditions occupy a much more important place in the etiology of crime than most authors have given them.
First we have seen that the present economic system and its consequences weaken the social feelings. The basis of the economic system of our day being exchange, the economic interests of men are necessarily found to be in opposition. This is a trait that capitalism has in common with other modes of production. But its principal characteristic is that the means of production are in the hands of a few, and most men are altogether deprived of them. Consequently, persons who do not possess the means of production are forced to sell their labor to those who do, and these, in consequence of their economic preponderance, force them to make the exchange for the mere necessaries of life, and to work as much as their strength permits.
This state of things especially stifles men’s social instincts; it develops, on the part of those with power, the spirit of domination, and of insensibility to the ills of others, while it awakens jealousy and servility on the part of those who depend upon them. Further the contrary interests of those who have property, and the idle and luxurious life of some of them, also contribute to the weakening of the social instincts.
The material condition, and consequently the intellectual condition, of the proletariat are also a reason why the moral plane of that class is not high. The work of children brings them into contact with persons to associate with whom is fatal to their morals. Long working hours and monotonous labor brutalize those who are forced into them; bad housing conditions contribute also to debase the moral sense, as do the uncertainty of existence, and finally absolute poverty, the frequent consequence of sickness and unemployment. Ignorance and lack of training of any kind also contribute their quota. Most demoralizing of all is the status of the lower proletariat.
The economic position of woman contributes also to the weakening of the social instincts.
The present organization of the family has great importance as regards criminality. It charges the legitimate parents with the care of the education of the child; the community concerns itself with the matter very little. It follows that a great number of children are brought up by persons who are totally incapable of doing it properly. As regards the children of the proletariat, there can be no question of the education properly so-called, on account of the lack of means and the forced absence of one or both of the parents. The school tends to remedy this state of things, but the results do not go far enough. The harmful consequences of the present organization of the family make themselves felt especially in the case of the children of the lower proletariat, orphans, and illegitimate children. For these the community does but little, though their need of adequate help is the greatest.
Prostitution, alcoholism, and militarism, which result, in the last analysis, from the present social order, are phenomena that have demoralizing consequences.
As to the different kinds of crime, we have shown that the very important group of economic criminality finds its origin on the one side in the absolute poverty and the cupidity brought about by the present economic environment, and on the other in the moral abandonment and bad education of the children of the poorer classes. Then, professional criminals are principally recruited from the class of occasional criminals, who, finding themselves rejected everywhere after their liberation, fall lower and lower. The last group of economic crimes (fraudulent bankruptcy, etc.) is so intimately connected with our present mode of production, that it would not be possible to commit it under another.
The relation between sexual crimes and economic conditions is less direct; nevertheless these also give evidence of the decisive influence of these conditions. We have called attention to the four following points.
First, there is a direct connection between the crime of adultery and the present organization of society, which requires that the legal dissolution of a marriage should be impossible or very difficult.
Second, sexual crimes upon adults are committed especially by unmarried men; and since the number of marriages depends in its turn upon the economic situation, the connection is clear; and those who commit these crimes are further almost exclusively illiterate, coarse, raised in an environment almost without sexual morality, and regard the sexual life from the wholly animal side.
Third, the causes of sexual crime upon children are partly the same as those of which we have been speaking, with the addition of prostitution.
Fourth, alcoholism greatly encourages sexual assaults.
As to the relation between crimes of vengeance and the present constitution of society, we have noted that it produces conflicts without number; statistics have shown that those who commit them are almost without exception poor and uncivilized, and that alcoholism is among the most important causes of these crimes.
Infanticide is caused in part by poverty, and in part by the opprobrium incurred by the unmarried mother (an opprobrium resulting from the social utility of marriage).
Political criminality comes solely from the economic system and its consequences.
Finally, economic and social conditions are also important factors in the etiology of degeneracy, which is in its turn a cause of crime.
Upon the basis of what has gone before, we have a right to say that the part played by economic conditions in criminality is preponderant, even decisive.
This conclusion is of the highest importance for the prevention of crime. If it were principally the consequence of innate human qualities (atavism, for example), the pessimistic conclusion that crime is a phenomenon inseparably bound up with the social life would be well founded. But the facts show that it is rather the optimistic conclusion that we must draw, that where crime is the consequence of economic and social conditions, we can combat it by changing those conditions.
However important crime may be as a social phenomenon, however terrible may be the injuries and the evil that it brings upon humanity, the development of society will not depend upon the question as to what are the conditions which could restrain crime or make it disappear, if possible; the evolution of society will proceed independently of this question.
What is the direction that society will take under these continual modifications? This is not the place to treat fully of this subject. In my opinion the facts indicate quite clearly what the direction will be. The productivity of labor has increased to an unheard of degree, and will assuredly increase in the future. The concentration of the means of production into the hands of a few progresses continually; in many branches it has reached such a degree that the fundamental principle of the present economic system, competition, is excluded, and has been replaced by monopoly. On the other hand the working class is becoming more and more organized, and the opinion is very generally held among working-men that the causes of material and intellectual poverty can be eliminated only by having the means of production held in common.
Supposing that this were actually realized, what would be the consequences as regards criminality? Let us take up this question for a moment. Although we can give only personal opinions as to the details of such a society, the general outlines can be traced with certainty.
The chief difference between a society based upon the community of the means of production and our own is that material poverty would be no longer known. Thus one great part of economic criminality (as also one part of infanticide) would be rendered impossible, and one of the greatest demoralizing forces of our present society would be eliminated. And then, in this way those social phenomena so productive of crime, prostitution and alcoholism, would lose one of their principal factors. Child labor and overdriving would no longer take place, and bad housing, the source of much physical and moral evil, would no longer exist.
With material poverty there would disappear also that intellectual poverty which weighs so heavily upon the proletariat; culture would no longer be the privilege of some, but a possession common to all. The consequences of this upon criminality would be very important, for we have seen that even in our present society with its numerous conflicts, the members of the propertied classes, who have often but a veneer of civilization, are almost never guilty of crimes of vengeance. There is the more reason to admit that in a society where interests were not opposed, and where civilization was universal, these crimes would be no longer present, especially since alcoholism also proceeds in large part from the intellectual poverty of the poorer classes. And what is true of crimes of vengeance, is equally true of sexual crimes in so far as they have the same etiology.
A large part of the economic criminality (and also prostitution to a certain extent) has its origin in the cupidity excited by the present economic environment. In a society based upon the community of the means of production, great contrasts of fortune would, like commercial capital, be lacking, and thus cupidity would find no food. These crimes will not totally disappear so long as there has not been a redistribution of property according to the maxim, “to each according to his needs”, something that will probably be realized, but not in the immediate future.
The changes in the position of woman which are taking place in our present society, will lead, under this future mode of production, to her economic independence, and consequently to her social independence as well. It is accordingly probable that the criminality of woman will increase in comparison with that of man during the transition period. But the final result will be the disappearance of the harmful effects of the economic and social preponderance of man.
As to the education of children under these new conditions it is difficult to be definite. However, it is certain that the community will concern itself seriously with their welfare. It will see to it that the children whose parents cannot or will not be responsible for them, are well cared for. By acting in this way it will remove one of the most important causes of crime. There is no doubt that the community will exercise also a strict control over the education of children; it cannot be affirmed, however, that the time will come when the children of a number of parents will be brought up together by capable persons; this will depend principally upon the intensity that the social sentiments may attain.
As soon as the interests of all are no longer opposed to each other, as they are in our present society, there will no longer be a question either of politics (“a fortiori” of political crimes) or of militarism.
Such a society will not only remove the causes which now make men egoistic, but will awaken, on the contrary, a strong feeling of altruism. We have seen that this was already the case with the primitive peoples, where their economic interests were not in opposition. In a larger measure this will be realized under a mode of production in common, the interests of all being the same.
In such a society there can be no question of crime properly so called. The eminent criminologist, Manouvrier, in treating of the prevention of crime expresses himself thus: “The maxim to apply is, act so that every man shall always have more interest in being useful to his fellows than in harming them.” It is precisely in a society where the community of the means of production has been realized that this maxim will obtain its complete application. There will be crimes committed by pathological individuals, but this will come rather within the sphere of the physician than that of the judge. And then we may even reach a state where these cases will decrease in large measure, since the social causes of degeneracy will disappear, and procreation by degenerates be checked through the increased knowledge of the laws of heredity and the increasing sense of moral responsibility.
“It is society that prepares the crime”, says the true adage of Quetelet. For all those who have reached this conclusion, and are not insensible to the sufferings of humanity, this statement is sad, but contains a ground of hope. It is sad, because society punishes severely those who commit the crime which she has herself prepared. It contains a ground of hope, since it promises to humanity the possibility of some day delivering itself from one of its most terrible scourges.