those who have had no experience in the courts and no knowledge of what is known as the "criminal class" have a general idea that a criminal is not like other men. the people they know are law-abiding, conventional believers in the state and the church and all social customs and relations; they have strict ideas of property rights, and regard the law as sacred. true they have no more acquaintance with law-makers and politicians in general than with the criminal class, which, of course, is one reason why they have such unbounded confidence in the law. such persons are surprised and shocked when some member of the family or some friend is entangled in the courts, and generally regard it as a catastrophe that has come upon him by accident or a terrible mistake. as a rule, they do all in their power to help him whether he is acquitted or convicted. they never think that he and everyone else they know is not materially different from the ordinary criminal. as a matter of fact, the potential criminal is in every man, and no one was ever so abandoned that some friend would not plead for him, or that some one who knew him would not testify to his good deeds.
the criminal is not hard to understand. he is one who, from inherited defects or from great misfortune or especially hard circumstances, is not able to make the necessary adjustments to fit him to his environment. seldom is he a man of average intelligence, unless he belongs to a certain class that will be discussed later. almost always he is below the normal of intelligence and in perhaps half of the cases very much below. nearly always he is a person of practically no education and no property. one who has given attention to the subject of crime knows exactly where the criminal comes from and how he will develop. the crimes of violence and murder, and the lesser crimes against property, practically all come from those who have been reared in the poor and congested districts of cities and large villages. the robbers, burglars, pickpockets and thieves are from these surroundings. in a broad sense, some criminals are born and some are made. nearly all of them are both born and made. this does not mean that criminality can be inherited, or even that there is a criminal type. it means that with certain physical and mental imperfections and with certain environment the criminal will be the result.
seldom does one begin a criminal life as a full-grown man. the origin of the typical criminal is an imperfect child, suffering from some defect. usually he was born with a weak intellect, or an unstable nervous system. he comes from poor parents. often one or both of these died or met misfortune while he was young. he comes from the crowded part of a poor district. he has had little chance to go to school and could not have been a scholar, no matter how regularly he attended school. some useful things he could have learned had society furnished the right teachers, surroundings and opportunities to make the most of an imperfect child. early in life he does some desultory work in casual occupations. this of course is not steady, but he picks up what he can and keeps the job for a short time, sometimes quitting work because he is discharged and sometimes because, like most boys and men, he does not like to work. his playground is the street, the railroad yards or vacant lots too small for real play, and fit only for a loafing place for boys like himself. these gather nightly and talk of the incidents that interest most people, mainly the abnormal things of life and generally the crimes that the newspapers make so prominent to satisfy the public demand. he learns to go into vacant buildings, steals the plumbing, and he early learns where to sell it. from this it is only a short step to visiting occupied buildings at night. in this way he learns to be a burglar as other boys learn to play baseball or golf.
naturally he has no strong sense of property rights. he has always had a hard time to get enough to eat and wear, and he has grown up unconsciously to see the inequality of distribution and to believe that it is not fair and that there is little or no justice in the world. as a child he learned to get things the best way he could, and to think nothing about it. in short, his life, like all other lives, moves along the lines of least resistance. he soon comes to feel that the police are his natural enemies and his chief business is to keep from getting caught. inevitably he is brought into the juvenile court. he may be reprimanded at first. he comes again and is placed on probation. the next time he goes to a juvenile prison where he can learn all the things he has not found out before. he is known to the police, known to the court, known to the neighbors. his status is fixed. when released from prison, he takes his old heredity back into his old environment. it is the easiest to him, for he has learned to make his adjustments to this environment. from fifteen to twenty-five years of age, he has the added burden of adolescence, the trying time in a boy's life when sex feelings are developing, when he is passing from childhood to manhood. this is a very difficult time at best to the type of boy from which a criminal grows; he meets it without preparation or instruction. what he knows he learns from others like himself. he gets weird, fantastic, neurotic ideas, which only add to his natural wonderment.
every person who has not inherited property must live by some trade or calling. very few people in jail or out choose their profession. even if one selects his profession it does not follow that he has chosen the calling for which he is best adapted. so far as a person can and does follow his desires, he generally means to choose the calling which will bring him the greatest amount of return for the least exertion. he may have strong inclinations in certain directions, as, for instance, to paint or to write or to investigate or to philosophize, but, as a rule, he does not make his living from following these ambitions. if he does, it is generally a poor living. but usually his aim is to make money at something else so that he can give free rein to his real ambitions.
most men start to make a living as boys from the ages of fifteen to eighteen. they have no idea of what they ought to do or even of what they want to do. usually, so far as they have an ambition, it is to do something more or less spectacular that seems to have an element of adventure and not too disagreeable or hard; something like the work of a policeman, a chauffeur, or an employee in a garage. still, first and last, most boys and most men have no opportunity for choosing an occupation. in fact, the boy is told that he is a man and must get a job long before he knows that he is a man or begins to feel responsibilities, while he still has all the emotions and dreams of a boy.
when he is told he must go to work he looks for a job. he does not wait until he can find the one that fits him. he cannot afford to wait and if he could, he does not know what job would fit. he takes automatically the first place he can get, hoping to find a better one, which generally means an easier one, before very long. it is hard for a boy to stick to work; too many things are calling him away. every instinct and emotion is urging him to play. new feelings and desires are coaxing him from work. his companions and the boy life in which he has a place urge him to leave his task. usually he keeps his job no longer than he can help and later looks for something else. the chances are great that he will never find what he wants; that he has not had the preparation or training for a successful workingman's career, whatever that might be. he is a doer of odd jobs and of poorly paid work all his life.
he must have some calling and takes the easiest one, which is often a life of crime. from this start comes the professional criminal so-called. he may make a business of picking pockets. if this comes to be his trade it is very hard for him to give it up. there is so strong an element of chance—he never knows what a pocket will contain—it gratifies a spirit of adventure. then it is easy. the wages are much greater than he could get in any other calling; the hours are short and it never interferes with his amusements. it is not so dangerous as being a burglar or a switchman, for he can find an excuse for jostling one in the street-cars or in a crowd and thus reaching into a pocket.
the burglar is not so apt to be a professional; his is a bolder and more hazardous trade; if he is caught he is taken from his occupation for a longer time. the great hazard involved in this trade and also the physical strength and fitness of those who follow it lead to its abandonment more frequently than is the case with a pickpocket or a petty thief. robbery is seldom a profession. it is usually the crime of the young and venturesome and almost surely leads to early disaster. murder, of course, is never a profession. in a broad way it is the result of accident or passion, or of relations which are too hard to endure.
in prison and out, i have talked with scores of these men and boys. i am sure they rarely tried to deceive me. i have very seldom seen one who felt that he had done wrong, or had any thought of what the world calls reformation. a very few have used the current language of those who talk of reform, but generally they were the weakest and most hopeless of the lot and usually adopted this attitude to deceive. in almost every instance where you meet any sign of intelligence, excuses and explanations are freely made, and these explanations fully justify their points of view. often too they tell you in sincerity that they believe their way of life is too hard and does not pay; that while they cannot see how they could have done any differently in the past, they believe their experience has taught them to stick by the rules of the game.
the boy delinquent grows naturally and almost inevitably into the man criminal. he has generally never learned a trade. no habits have been formed in his youth to keep him from crime. a life of crime is the only one open to him, and for this life he has had ample experience, inclination and opportunity. then too for this kind of young man the life of a criminal has a strong appeal. life without opportunity and without a gambler's chance to win a considerable prize is not attractive to anyone. the conventional man who devotes his life to business or to a profession always has before him the prizes of success—to some honor and glory, and to most of them wealth. imagine the number of lawyers, doctors and business men who could stick to a narrow path if they knew that life offered no opportunity but drudgery and poverty! nearly all of these look forward to the prizes of success. most of them expect success and many get it. for the man that i have described, a life of toil offers no chance of success. his capacity, education and environment deny him the gambler's chance of a prize. as an honest man, he may raise a family, always be in debt, live a life of poverty and hardship and see nothing ahead but drudgery and defeat. this is why so many mediocre men are found in the mountains and oil fields prospecting for hidden wealth. with the chance of a fortune just before them, and no other opportunity to win, they spend their lives without a family or home, urged on by the hope of luck.
the man grown from boyhood into ways of vice and crime sees this hope and this hope only to make a strike. he has no strong convictions and no well-settled habits to hold him back. the fear of the law only means greater caution, and after all he has nothing to lose. in his world arrest and conviction do not mean loss of caste; they mean only bad luck. with large numbers of men crime becomes a trade. it grows to be a business as naturally as any other calling comes to be a trade.
there are other criminals who do not come from the class i have described, but the habitual visitor to criminal courts knows that they are very few. of the others, some are born of parents who could care for them and have done their best and yet, in spite of this, they have repeatedly been entangled in the law; these are often the only ones of a large family who have not lived according to the rules of the game. they are different from the other members of the family. for the most part they have some specific congenital defect, or an unstable system that prevents the correct registration of the experiences that produce safe habits, or makes them unable to withstand temptation or suggestion.
everyone knows how easy it is, especially for children, to react to suggestion. the whole life of a child is a response to suggestion. this is about all there is to education. even older men constantly and readily yield to suggestion. the results gained by quack doctors, lightning-rod agents, promoters and dealers in oil stocks, mining stocks and an endless number of other stocks, show that the right kind of suggestion is bound to produce results. the dressing of the windows of department stores and the writing of catchy advertisements are a constant recognition of the power of suggestion. so well known is this weakness of human character that schools of salesmanship are regularly organized and promoted to teach the art of getting victims to part with money for things they do not want or need.
every right-feeling person does everything in his power to educate the child. he is ever watchful through the child's youth and early manhood to equip him with the capacity to make a living. he seeks to build up around him and within him the strongest kind of habits and beliefs. he carefully teaches the child that the only way to live is to observe all the rules laid down by experience and custom, so that he may not react to the temptations that life holds out at every step. every wise person feels almost certain that if his children are reared without education, without discipline, without training or opportunities, they will almost inevitably swell the ranks of the criminal classes. and it is especially certain that if one of his children is defective or has an unstable nervous system, such a child should never be left without protection and care.
there are professional criminals of a different grade, like the forger and the confidence man. both of these have generally had some education and a fair degree of intelligence, and have had some advantages in life. the forger, as a rule, is a bookkeeper or an accountant who grows expert with the pen. he works for a small salary and sees nothing better. he grows familiar with signatures. sometimes he is a clerk in a bank and has the opportunity to study signatures; he begins to imitate them, often with no thought of forging paper. he does it because it is an art and probably the only thing he can do well. perhaps some hard luck or an unfortunate venture on the board of trade, or in a faro bank, makes him write a check or note. he easily convinces himself that he is not getting the salary he earns and that less worthy men prosper while he is poor. then too his business calls for better clothes and better surroundings than those of the workingman, and gives him many glimpses of easy lives. for a time he may escape. if the amount is not too large it is often passed by without an effort to detect. sometimes it escapes notice altogether. some business men write so many checks that they take no pains at the end of the month to figure up their account and examine every check, and never notice it unless the balance given by the bank is so far out of the way that it attracts attention. after a forger grows to be an expert, he can move from town to town. if he is taken and put in prison and finally released, he is hard to cure. forgery is too easy and he knows of no other trade so good. a large percentage of these men never would have forged, had their wages been higher. many others are the victims of the get-rich-quick disease; they haunt the gambling houses, brokers' offices and the like. often when they begin they expect to make the check good; generally, they would have made good if the right card had only turned up in the faro bank, or the right quotation on the stock exchange.
there is another class of forgers, generally bankers, who speculate with trust funds. to cover up the shortage they sign notes expecting that they will never be presented and will deceive no one but the bank examiner. if luck goes against them too long, the bank fails and the forgery is discovered. these are really not forgers, as they never intend to get money on the note. it is only a part of a means to cover up the use of trust funds. of course, these men are never professional forgers, and are much more apt to die from suicide or a broken heart than to repeat.
but with few exceptions, the criminal comes from the walks of the poor and has no education or next to none. for this society is much to blame. sometimes he is obliged to go to work too soon, but often he cannot learn at school. this is not entirely the fault of the boy's heredity; it is largely the fault of the school. a certain course of study has been laid out. with only slight changes this course has come down from the past and is fixed and formal. much of it might be of value to a professional man, but most of it is of no value to the man in other walks of life. because a boy cannot learn arithmetic, grammar or geography, or not even learn to read and write, it does not follow that he cannot learn at all. he may possibly have marked mechanical ability; he may have more than the ordinary powers of adaptation to many kinds of work. these he could be taught to do and often to do well. under proper instruction he might become greatly interested in some kind of work, and in the study to prepare him for the work. then too it is more or less misleading to say that an uneducated man commits crime because he is uneducated. often his lack of education as well as his crime comes from poverty. crime and poverty may come from something else. all come because he had a poor make-up or an insufficient chance.
after all, the great majority of men must do some kind of manual labor. until the time shall come when this kind of work is as easy and as well paid as other employment, no one will do manual labor if he can do any other kind. perhaps the time may come when the hardest and most disagreeable work will be the best paid. there are too many unskilled workers in proportion to the population to make this seem very near. in the meantime—and that is doubtless a long time—some one must do this work. much of it is done under supervision and requires no great skill and need not be very disagreeable or hard. in a complex civilization there is room for everyone to contribute to the whole. if our schools are some day what they should be, a large part of their time, in some cases all of it, will be devoted to manual training and will be given to producing skilled workmen. this sort of school work can be made attractive to thousands of boys who can do nothing else. and if easier conditions of life under fairer social surroundings could be added to this kind of education, most boys who now drift into crime would doubtless find the conventional life more profitable and attractive.
