this subject would scarcely have been noted a few years ago. true, there was in the past a small mixture of children in the grist ground out in the criminal courts. usually they received some leniency, and were viewed with more curiosity than alarm. the juvenile criminal was regarded as a prodigy with a capacity for crimes far beyond his years. something of the attitude obtained in regard to him which attaches to the child chess player or the child mathematician. the child criminal is now common, and for the most part is a product of the city.
all crime is doubtless much more common in the city than the country, and the young criminal especially is a product of the crowded community. to those who look for natural causes for all phenomena the reason is not far to seek. the city itself is an abnormal thing. primitive man and his ancestors were never huddled together in great multitudes, as are the dwellers in cities today. to a degree almost all animals are gregarious, but the units of organization are much smaller with them than with man, excepting possibly in the case of the ant and the bee, insects which seem specially adapted to live a highly automatic and cooperative life, such as human beings cannot possibly reach. but primitive men and their direct ancestors lived in small groups. they could not have preserved their life in any other way. they lived by fishing and hunting and by gathering roots, berries and herbs. later they tended their flocks and cultivated the fields in a simple way.
with the introduction of the modern machine, the factory system and the railroads, in the last century, our great modern cities were evolved. as they grew more complicated, new problems arose. the life of the crowded city is most difficult even for normal men and women. the adjustments are too numerous and too complex for an animal made with simple tastes and for a pastoral life. but, if it is hard for men, it is almost hopeless for children, especially the children of the poor who fill our prisons, asylums and almshouses.
every child needs the open air and the open life of the country. he needs, first of all, exercise which should be in the form of outdoor play. no healthy boy wants to live indoors, even though his home may be a convenient city "flat." the woods, the fields, the streams, the lakes, the wide common with plenty of room, have always made their natural appeal to the young. and as sunlight kills most of the deadly germs, so outdoor life with exercise and play takes care of most of the unhealthy thoughts, habits and ideas of child-life. in the past, our schools both in the city and country have done little to help the young. for the most part healthy children have always looked on them more or less as prisons. here they have been confined and kept from exercise and play, to study useless and unrelated facts and to commit to memory dry rules which are forgotten as soon as their minds are ready to retain anything worth while.
schools should be made to fit the needs of children, and not children to fit schools. the school that does not provide work and play for the child which he is glad to do, has learned little of the psychology and needs of youth. botany, zoölogy, geology and even chemistry can be taught to children before they learn to read, and taught so that it will seem like play, and through this the pupil will acquire a natural taste for books. it is only within the last few years that the modern school has really begun to educate the child. it has been a hard fight that scientific teachers have waged with conventional education for the right of the child. what has been done is too recent and scattering to show material results.
nothing is so important to the child as education. the early life is the time that character is formed, habits are made, rules of conduct taught, and it is almost impossible to up-root old habits and inhibitions and implant new ones in later years.
it is true that "the child is father to the man," and he is the father of the criminal as well as the useful citizen. outside of the hopelessly defective, or those who have very imperfect nervous or physical systems, there is no reason why a child who has had proper mental and physical training and any fair opportunity in life should ever be a criminal. even most of the mentally defective and those suffering from imperfect nervous systems could be useful to society in a sheltered environment. poor as the country schools have always been, the outdoor life of the country child is still so great an influence that he generally escapes disaster. he is not sent to a factory, but lives in a small community where he has fresh air and exercise.
of course here as everywhere we must allow for the defective, the imperfect, the subnormals and the children of the very poor. these unfortunates furnish a large percentage of the inmates of prison, and most of the victims for the scaffold which civilization so fondly preserves.
the growth of the big cities has produced the child criminal. he is clearly marked and well defined. he is often subnormal even down to idiocy. in most cases he is the result of heredity. many times he may have fair intelligence, but this is usually attached to an unstable, defective nervous system that cannot do its proper work, and he has had no expert treatment and attention. he is always poor. generally he has lost one or both parents in youth and has lived in the crowded districts where the home was congested. he has no adequate playground and he runs the streets or vacant, waste places. he associates and combines with others of his kind. he cannot or does not go to school. if he goes to school, he dreads to go and cannot learn the lessons in the books. he likes to loaf, just as all children like to play. he is often set to work. he has no trade and little capacity for skilled work that brings good wages and steady employment. he works no more than he needs to work. every night and all the days that he can get are spent in idleness on the street with his "gang." he seldom reads books. he lacks the taste for books, and such teachers as he knew had not the wit to cultivate a taste for good reading. such books as he gets only add to his unhealthy thoughts.
many writers have classified the crimes that the boy commits. it is scarcely worth the while. he learns to steal or becomes a burglar largely for the love of adventure; he robs because it is exciting and may bring large returns. in his excursions to pilfer property he may kill, and then for the first time the state discovers that there is such a boy and sets in action the machinery to take his life. the city quite probably has given him a casual notice by arresting him a number of times and sending him to a juvenile prison, but it has rarely extended a hand to help him. any man or woman who has fairly normal faculties, and can reason from cause to effect, knows that the crimes of children are really the crimes of the state and society which by neglect and active participation have made him what he is. when it is remembered that the man is the child grown up, it is equally easy to understand the adult prisoner.
