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labor problem, which is its most conspicuous outgrowth: viz, the tendency of the human race to increase in its lower types more than in its higher, contrary to the rule of all other species in the animate kingdom. The danger of the final pressure of population upon the means of subsistence is merely a corollary of this problem, for it will probably be conceded that if all the human race could be assimilated in mental and moral character and physical type to the best specimens now in existence, this danger could be easily managed. At present, however, the strong tendencies away from such assimilation seem to be more significant than the strong tendencies toward it. The danger seems to be absolutely beyond the present power of the race to grapple with, and even intelligent discussion of it is rare, and mostly of a very preliminary nature. All consideration of it must lead back to the same conclusion arrived at above: that for the present, little is possible beyond ameliorating effort all along the line, which shall tend always to the same end-the improvement of the quality of the race; and it is not impossible that such efforts, increased in quantity, and more intelligently directed than heretofore, will prove sufficient to control the course of human evolution and decide the fate of society.

The number and variety of these special efforts to improve the race are, of course, vast. Many of them are exceedingly fatuous. Those which come under our review this month are all reasonable and intelligent. The monograph which bears most directly of those before us upon the problem of poverty is Public Relief and Private Charity, by Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell. This is an admirable tract, designed to urge the very doctrine we have indicated as the essential one in practical sociology: the need of improving the quality of men-or, rather, its converse, the danger of injuring their quality in the attempt to improve their condition. Mrs. Lowell says in her preface: "I have compiled this little book because I be

1 Public Relief and Private Charity. By Josephine

Shaw Lowell, New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1884.

lieve some such restatement of the principles upon which the modern methods of charity are based is needed"; and no reviewer can more justly describe the "little book" than she herself goes on to do: "There is not, perhaps, an original thought or suggestion in it; an important part of it is direct and verbal quotation; and to every student of the subject it will be apparent that almost the whole of it is taken from the writings of wise men and women who have lived during the past hundred years. Yet I do not apologize for offering it to my fellow-workers and the public, for there is nowhere a small book in which the principles underlying our science can be found clearly stated." The book— it is one of the Putnams' "Questions of the Day" series, and can be had in cloth or in cheap paper form-is divided into two parts, one of which treats of public relief, and the other of private charity.

Of course, the experience of England with her poor-laws must figure most largely in any investigation of the question of public relief, for any experience we have on the subject, in this country, is comparatively small. Following Mrs. Shaw's own principle, we can better give her views by a series of fragmentary and condensed quotations than in any other way: "About the end of the last century, the upper and middle classes of England came to the conclusion that every man ought to be able to make a living for himself and his family, and that, if he could not make it, it should be furnished him; and for about fifty years there was no man in England who, however idle, vicious, or even dangerous he might be, could not obtain from the "rates" the means of supporting himself and his family of six, ten, or twenty children and grandchildren." It will be observed that there is a startling analogy between this benevolent theory of the last century, and the most modern doctrine of socialism, as stated by Mr. Chamberlain and others—that it is society's business to see to it that every one is cared for. "Instead, however, of increased comfort and prosperity and of diminished suffering, the tide of poverty, most unac

countably, rose higher and higher, and the flood of pauperism seemed about to engulf not only the paupers themselves, but the whole population of England." The multitude of official and unofficial reports called out by this frightful increase of crime and pauperism all present "the same picture of unmitigated woe and deep and growing degradation." Parliamentary commissions report on the growing disinclination to save among the poor, and consequent increase of drunkenness; the recklessness in marriage, the loss of sense of obligation toward helpless relatives, and the great deterioration of character in every respect among the laboring classes. "It appears to the pauper that the government has undertaken to repeal in his favor the ordinary laws of nature; to enact that children shall not suffer for the misconduct of their parents; that no one shall lose the means of comfortable subsistence, whatever be his indolence, prodigality, or vice: in short, that the penalty which, after all, must be paid by some one for idleness and improvidence, is to fall not on the guilty person or his family, but on the proprietors of the lands. . . . Can we wonder if the uneducated are seduced into approving a system which aims its allurements at all the weakest parts of our nature, which offers marriage to the young, security to the anxious, ease to the lazy, and impunity to the profligate?" "When a parish has become pauperized, the laborers not only avoid accumulation, but even dispose of and waste in debauchery any small property which may have devolved on them." "It appears from the evidence that the great supporters of the beer-shops are the paupers. In Cholesbury, where, out of one hundred and thirty-nine individuals, only thirty-five, including the clergyman and his family, are supported by their own exertions, there are two public houses." Still more important: "The character and habits of the laborer have been completely changed. The poor man of twenty years ago who tried to earn his money and was thankful for it, is now converted into an insolent, discontented, surly, thoughtless pauper." "I can decidedly state as the

result of my experience, that when once a family has received relief, it is to be expected that their descendants for some generations will receive it also. The change made in the character and habits of the poor by once receiving parochial relief is quite remarkable; they are demoralized ever afterwards. If once a young lad gets a pair of shoes given him by the parish, he never afterward lays by sufficient to buy a pair. The disease is hereditary, and when once a family has applied for relief, they are pressed down forever. Whether in work or out of work, when they once become paupers, it can only be by a sort of miracle that they can be broken off. All the tricks and deceptions of which man is capable are resorted to; the vilest and most barefaced falsehoods are uttered." The effect of pauper relief in lowering the wages of those who continued industrious was found to be enormous. Nor did the belief that people's own sense of independence would make them prefer industry, prove well founded. Lord Brougham, summing up the evidence of the report, says: "We have a constant proof, in every part of the country, that able-bodied men prefer a small sum in idleness to a larger sum in wages " that must be earned. Even the once hardy Kentish sailors had taken to remaining ashore and living on the parish. Paupers considered themselves entitled to easy living, and complaint was made if they were asked to work as hard as outside laborThe connection between rioting, discontent, and hatred of the upper classes, and large expenditure in relief, was shown to be constant. Some amendments to the poor laws have modified their evils a little, but on the whole, they remain a dead weight on England's prosperity.

ers.

Again, Mr. Fano, "one of the highest authorities on matters relating to the condition of the poorer classes in Italy," says: "The growth of that misery in our country is largely due to those very institutions that were created for its suppression. The very profusion of charities is one of the principal causes of the spread of mendicity in our country. In Italy there are 1,355,341 in

digent persons, but no system of legal charity exists. But the multitude of charitable institutions and the improvident manner in which their funds are frequently applied, are vices which have for us the same effects as legal charity. I persist in thinking that in Italy mendicity is an imposture, and not produced by real destitution."

Swiss reports tell the same story, of the greatest misery, indolence, and poverty in the cantons where the most relief is given.

In the United States the system of public out-door relief has not progressed very far, but it exists "in many of our cities" (and Mrs. Lowell might have added, counties, as is the case in California, where the evil is becoming serious, constantly increasing claims being made on the supervisors, and granted with careless good nature and little investigation). The Massachusetts State Board of Charities, upon investigation, found the same evils following the system as in England, yet had not quite the courage to give it up; and the New York Superintendent of the Poor says: "I know of nothing which does so much to encourage pauperism and educate paupers for the next generation. There is nothing except intemperance which is more demoralizing to the head of a family, or more ruinous to children, than to become imbued with the idea that the public is bound to provide for them. If people could only realize when they recommend a family composed in part of bright children to the superintendent of the poor, and insist on aid being furnished, that such an act was almost sure to ruin those bright children, and educate them for paupers or criminals, it seems to me that such people should exhaust every other resource before incurring the fearful responsibility." The State Board of Charities and Reform of Wisconsin also reports: "All experience shows that the demand for poor relief grows with the supply, and that a large amount for poor relief does not indicate a large amount of suffering which needs to be relieved, but a large amount of laxity or corruption on the part of officers, and a large amount of willingness by able-bodied idlers to be fed at the public expense."

VOL VI.-35!

Mrs. Lowell accepts herself the doctrine that society is bound to save its members from starvation, but brings strong evidence to show that private charity is entirely adequate to do this, with a very little help from the public; but that neither public nor private help should take the form of alms-giving. Her admirable conclusions and practical suggestions are the most interesting parts of the book-although, as they would lose much of their weight apart from the data that lead up to them, we have preferred to quote from these, and to refer the reader to the book itself for the conclusions. We quote only a few of the most significant sentences: "Discipline and education should be inseparably associated with any system of public relief." "There is still another point to be insisted on: while . . . every person, born into a civilized community, has a right to live, yet the community has the right to say that incompetent and dangerous persons shall not, so far as can be helped, be born to acquire this right to live upon others. To prevent a constant and alarming increase of these two classes of persons, the only way is for the community to refuse to support any except those whom it can control. . . . It is certainly an anomaly for a man and woman, who have proved themselves incapable of supplying their own daily needs, to bring into the world other helpless beings, to be also maintained by a tax upon the community."

Our Penal Machinery and Its Victims goes a step farther down in the social scale -or perhaps a step higher--from paupers to criminals. The arrests made by the police of Chicago in 1882 numbered five per cent. of the population. This excludes the arrests made by State and Federal officials. Mr. Altgeld estimates the annual arrests in the whole country at two and a half million and the first arrests at one and a half million. These figures give some idea of the standing army of hostiles to society steadily in campaign among us. An analysis of their occupations from the reports of jails shows

2 Our Penal Machinery and Its Victims. By John P. Altgeld. Chicago: Jansen, McClurg & Co. 1884. For sale in San Francisco by A. L. Bancroft & Co.

that the great majority, men and women, came from humble life-laborers and servants contributing the largest number; that far more of them are between twenty and thirty years of age than at any other period of life; that a very large proportion had no homes, or bad ones; and a still larger, very limited schooling or none. Of five hundred convicts examined in one institution, over four-fifths were without home influence at eighteen years and under; two-fifths had never attended school, and another fifth had only the most imperfect education. "I have read every available thing on crime, its cause and cure; on prisons, their discipline, etc.," says Mr. Thompson, the chaplain of the Southern Illinois penitentiary. "I have talked freely with the convicts as to their early lives, . . . and I have come to the conclusion that there are two prime causes of crime--the want of proper home influence in childhood, and the lack of thorough, welldisciplined education in early life." Of those who did go to school, the truant and refractory pupils prove to be the material from which convicts are made. The multitude of convicts, then, are the young and ill-disciplined. Mr. Altgeld then considers, with much good sense and force, the sort of training they get out of the penal system, which should obviously be planned to meet and correct the defects of their early training. He now and then leans a little toward sentiment, but is, in the main, very practical. The two evils that he brings out most clearly are the perpetual, aimless repetition of useless punishments-as small fines, or terms of a few days, for drunkenness; and the inequality of sentences, and entire failure to proportion them to guilt. In the State prison of Michigan, for instance, eight prisoners were recently serving out terms for assault with intent to kill. There seems to have been no great difference in the character of the crimes, but the terms ranged from one year to forty-five. These inconsistencies pre

We

vent the convict from acquiring an idea of justice in connection with punishment. Mr. Altgeld urges a system of indeterminate punishments, whose principle shall be to keep the prisoner until he has been trained to reasonable probability of better things. have not space to speak of other suggestions, but must linger to mention the very wise one that prisoners should be not only allowed but made to earn money, from which the cost of their maintenance and care should be appropriated to the State, and the surplus should go to their families, or be laid up for their future use, as the case may be. The regular outside rates should be paid for labor to prevent clashing with free labor. The length of the indeterminate sentence could be decided by the amount of surplus earnings laid up-no one to be discharged before a certain amount had been earned. This would be an inducement which would persuade the laziest to acquire habits of work.

Coming into the field of political corruption, we have Defective and Corrupt Legislation,' again in the Putnams' "Questions of the Day" series. We have scarcely left ourself space from the more directly sociological subjects to say much of this. It brings out strongly the great evil which all our States suffer from the flood of private bills, many of them corrupt, which our legislatures grind out, to the neglect of legitimate business and the injury of every class in society; and propounds what would seem to be a very sensible remedy, in "A division of local and special laws from general laws, treating the former as private petitions, to be tried before enactment," at the petitioner's risk, as regards expense. The plan is explained in detail, and seems simple and effective, and more just than the total prohibition of private bills as in this State.

1 Defective and Corrupt Legislation: The Cause and the Remedy. By Simon Sterne. New York and Lon

don: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1885.

RECENT FICTION.

THERE is a tacit understanding between publishers and the public that the light nov. els shall be reserved for the summer and the heavy ones for the winter. We do not know that it follows that all the melancholy ones belong to the winter class; for tragic novels may be as sprightly and as easy reading as the most cheerful ones; and one would suppose it was better to be depressed in summer, with long days and sunshine in which to recover, than in the dull weather and early darkness of winter. This winter's novels, however, present a harrowing collection of tragedy—madness, and murder, and heart break, and despair-in quite an unusual proportion to the cheerful stories. There are four or five new editions of old American bocks, a translation from Balzac, some halfdozen reprints of English current novels, and then a considerable number of new American novels-not a large number compared to the flood of stories that issue steadily from English presses, but still one that shows a continual increase in novel-writing among us. It is gratifying to observe that the authors of these last almost invariably respect their art and treat it as a serious one. By this sincere art-intention, American novelwriting, whatever its crudities, appears very advantageously in contrast with the present sort of English work. The English stories are sometimes well-told and sometimes illtold; but there are scarcely half a dozen writers among the whole English corps who write with the art conscience and direct reference to nature as a model that never fails to appear in every month's issue of American novels, quite successfully in many, but present at least as a blundering attempt in almost every one.

None of the exceptional, "scarcely half a dozen writers," appears among the English reprints now before us, and the difference between them and the American novels would almost dispose one to think that

fiction is becoming as distinctly an American art as engraving. One or two of them have qualities that give them some hold on the memory; but the rest are scarcely to be distinguished one from another after reading. Of these latter, two are by the same author, The Parson o' Dumford1 and Sweet Mace. They are not as inane as a good many novels that get printed, and bear no marks of illiteracy about them, as some do; but it is hard to imagine why any intelligent person should care about reading them as long as he can get better. If novels were to be classed with precision from first-rate to fifth-rate, these would be set down as fourth rate. The "Parson o' Dumford" is an athletic young man, who poses rather of fensively in the hail-fellow fashion, even to the beer-drinking, in order to make friends with his rough factory parish, and spends the rest of his time rescuing from mobs and other scrapes the vicious young factory owner, his successful rival in love. The author has been unable to observe any economy of bad traits in fitting out this wicked youth, making him coward or bravo, passionate or calculating, just as the exigency of the story demands. He would have been intolerable to any woman, but in the story has the affections of both the heroines, till the novel has been dragged on to the due length, when the girls revert to their deserving lovers. Sweet Mace has rather more invention about it; its action takes place in the reign of James 1., but the author does not trouble himself much about historic color. There is a fair daughter of a choleric powder and cannon manufacturer, competed for by a buccaneer captain and a court gal

1 The Parson o' Dumford. By George Manville Fenn. London, Paris, and New York: Cassell, Petter,

Galpin, & Co. For sale in San Francisco by A. L. Bancroft & Co.

Paris, and New York: Cassell, Petter, Galpin, & Co. 2 Sweet Mace. By George Manville Fenn. London, For sale in San Francisco by A. L. Bancroft & Co.

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