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Editorial Mellon of fiearst’s Sunday American. Atlanta, may it, wt$.
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Thai Does Not Exist
rrca
Men for Ages Have Talked, Written About and Feared a Thing
Called “Crime” Which Actually IS NOT A REALITY. What We Call
Crime and Wickedness Is Force Misapplied,Ignorance, a Brain Malformed,
Opportunity Lacking,
7he Real Nature of Man Is Upright, Truthful and Good.
Crime in Its Different Branches Is Only Perversion, Misdirected
Force and Energy.
The Day Is Not So Far Distant When It Will Fade Away and Be
Forgotten, Existing Only in Memory and in History with Cannibalism,
Leprosy and the Other Diseases and Vices of Ignorance and Barbarism.
in every other way. A great French'
writer, observing the marked differences
between men in prison and out, said:
“Their ciL.ging and timid ways, the
mobility and cunning of their looks, a
something feline about them, something
cowardly, humble, suppliant and crushed,
make them a class apart. One would say,
dogs who had been whipped; hardly, here
and there a few energetic and brutal heads
of rebels.”
It is important for fathers and mothers
to remember that crime is a combination
of mental weakness and cruelty.
And cruelty is largely based on imitation.
A child that SEES cruelty is apt to be cruel.
The child that SEES kindness practises
kindness. *
Those that beat their children, and the
untaught fools that advocate the whipping
of children and other brutalities in schools,
should realize that the crimes committed
against children are the causes of crimes
committed by the children when grown.
One scientist found that cruelty practised
in childhood was a forerunner of criminal
ity later. He describes a child brutally
beaten by its parents that used to take
young birds, pull out their feathers and
burn them alive. “He was revenging him
self upon the birds for the punishment im
posed upon him by his parents.”
When that child grew up a criminal the
fault was not with him, but with the parents
that gave him a bad brain to start with, and
then made it worse by beating him. If your
brain is so poor that you can’t bring up your
children without a club, pity yourself and
them.
# * *
opyright, 1U1R, by the Htar Company. Great Britain Rights Reserved
OU can understand the
human race and contem
plate and study passing
events more clearly when
you reaii/.e that CRIME, of
which we hear so much, is
reailv not an important thing, not a PER
MANENT thing, and actually not a REAL
thing.
A man is born with certain attractions
' and passions and a certain amount of
power. And he has a brain which directs
and controls his forces and expresses his
emotions.
And when the machinery is out of order,
the brain badly formed, the nervous system
badly developed, the power of self-control
and guidance insufficient, the man is what
we call “a criminal.”
He is simply a human machine out of
order. And you may compare him justly
to an automobile out of order.
Nobody speaks of such a thing as “a
criminal automobile,” or a criminal flying
machine, or a criminal driving wheel.
Yet often the automobile, w hen the steer
ing gear breaks, kills more than any
criminal. And the flying machine, when
a rod snaps, or the engine gives out, kills
its freight. And the big driving wheel in
a factory, when it bursts, may kill hun
dreds.
The automobile, flying machine and
driving wheel are not “criminal.” They
are simply like the human being, organized
individuals, possessing certain forces,
obedient to certain attractions, gravitation,
centrifugal force, etc. Normally they
work harmoniously, usefully and safely,
like the well-constructed human being,
and they work harmfully and disastrously,
like the human “criminal,” when the
machinery is out of order.
* « #
This will be a better and a more intelli
gent world when human beings realize
that the criminal is a “machine out of or
der,” one to be repaired, to be pitied, to be
•protected against itself and against evil
doing if necessary, but never hated.
We shall be more nearly civilized as a
race w hen we cease to feel toward the crim
inal revenge, hatred or vindictiveness. We
have reached the stage in treating the in
sane which we shall soon reach in the treat
ment of criminals.
In the old days they put the insane man
or woman in a miserable stone cell, with
out any bedding, chained to the wall. And
when the poor, insane mind protested and
struggled and shrieked, the unhappy crea
ture was beaten into insensibility or ex
hausted with the pouring of ice cold water.
The history of crime and the horrible his
tory of insanity are told in a single page
w hich describes Jack Sheppard, the famous
English criminal, going to see his mother,
a crazy woman in the asylum.
He saw her naked, chained to the wall
with an iron band around her waist, lying
on a little heap of w et straw, pounding her
fists on the stone pavement, only to be j
whipped “for her bad behavior,” and not
long afterward Jack Sheppard, the son of
that crazy woman, was taken to be hanged
.* *in due course, while the mob howled its
hatred, a solemn judge having previously
told him how “wicked and criminal” he
was.
The mother was insane and was treated
with brutality.
’ And the son, with a badly formed brain,
born of an insane woman, was no more a
criminal, in intention, than the judge on
the bench.
He was a badly made machine, and that
was all.
Children should be taught to lose their
fear of criminals, taught never to speak of
criminals as a class apart, but rather to
look upon the criminal as a man sick, suffer
ing, almost invariably weak, and always to be
pitied.
The descriptions of the criminal foolishly
written in novels ma£e of him a marvel of in
telligence and of strength.
Almost without exception the criminal is dull,
stupid, addicted to drugs and extremely feeble
physically.
The writer of this article was invited by a
judge in a great city to watch the criminals pass
before him for sentence.
Ten criminals appeared, one after the other,
all guilty of burglary, or crimes of that nature.
And not one of them weighed one hundred and
forty pounds. Every one was a timid, shrink
ing, badly made, nervous, frightened creature.
And if one of them ever committed a murder
it would simply be because fear drove him to
killing a stronger, better man, w hom he dreaded.
* *- *
An experiment made by Lombroso, the great
Italian criminologist, proves distinctly two
things:
First, that the criminal is at first glance a
badly made machine, and second, that women,
and even young girls, possess an intuition which
protects them against the human being badly
constructed.
Lombroso asked .a school mistress to show
twenty portraits of thieves and twenty portraits
of great men to the girls in her class.
There were thirty-two of the young girls.
Eighty per cent of the girls, that is to say,
four-fifths of them, recognized immediately the
twenty thieves as the bad people and the twenty
great men as the good people—although they had
never seen portraits of either criminals or great
men.
Again Lombroso asked three doctors to exam
ine photographs of two hundred young men and
pick out the criminal type. All three of them
selected among the two hundred the youth that
was a criminal.
And a little girl twelve years old did exactly
the same thing, and picked out “the bad face”
among the two hundred.
Her instinct, the marvellous intuition with
winch Nature protects women against bad men,
made it possible for this child to identify the
badly made human face. What is the use of
calling that boy a criminal, of planning revenge
upon him, when it was clear to a child of twelve
that he could not help himself, and needed only
care and protection against himself?
* * ♦
You do not blame a lame man for not walking
evenly. You do not hate a one-armed man be
cause he has only one arm.
You have no right to blame or to hate those
that are called “criminals” because they have
not the brain, the nerves, the strength, the con
trol that would have made them what you think
they ought to be.
Criminals are weak physically, mentally and
It must be remembered that crime is
something apart from what we call hon
esty. The general supposition is that men
are naturally honest, and that civilization
h is made them dishonest.
As a matter of fact, primitive man was
naturally a thief, and civilization has made
many of him honest.
Savages are all dishonest except where
their own immediate family or tribe is con-
•erned.
The remote ancestors of everybody now
iving practised murder and theft, and con-
idered both hiirhlv honorable.
That had nothing to do with crime; it was
business, the wav of making a living.
Little by little men have outgrown dis
honesty and murder, and taken up other
kinds of business.
Once upon a time all killed those whom
they did not know. Tw o of the lowest type
of English laborers were talking together,
w hen a Frenchman asked one a question.
“What did he say?” asked the second la
borer. “I don’t know; he is a foreigner.”
“Then,” said the second laborer, “why
didn’t you ’it ’im?”
A Maori chief, a very high type of the
savage, expressed very simply to a ques
tioner the moral view which once prevailed
with every one of us—before we had ac
quired our little coating of civilization.
Said he:
“If I go out for a morning walk with my
spear, and 1 see a man, and I push my spear
through him, that isn’t murder—that is
•killing.’ Hut if I invite him to my home,
give him food, tell him to sleep, and then
kill him, that is ‘murder’.”
This savage had reached the stage when
it was ail right to push his spear through
a man whom he didn’t know, but wrong to
kill a man after pretending to be his friend.
# * *
Such ancient methods of collecting prop
erty, getting rid of strangers /ad enjoying
life were common among all of us when we
were savages in the different countries
where our races began.
That has nothing to do with what we now call
crime.
We call crime now that which the policemen
watch, that which the judges punish, and that
which the prisons punish and greatly increase.
It is simply weak, misdirected energy, badly
formed brains, defective education, poverty,
that starves the body and stunts the mind.
The race as a whole is healthy, hopeful, means
well, abhors crime and cruelty.
And that little percentage of so-called “crim
inals” which attracts so much attention will dis
appear entirely when the bigger, stronger and
better men shall have realized that they should
nity. help and protect. NOT HATE, their unfor
tunate, weaker, misdirected brothers.