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history of several of our reformatories. At Elmira, particularly, industrial education has shown its potency in helping to establish character upon a healthy basis. If the adult man, mature in habit and addicted to vice, can be educated into integrity, what may not be accomplished with our youth if taken at the proper stage?

That the State of New York has framed a law empowering courts, under certain limitations, to pass indeterminate sentences on all criminals, means simply that the time is coming when a criminal will be released only as he gives evidence of reformation. In other words, he must be morally and industrially educated. What ought to have been done in the common school, under our compulsory laws, must now be done in the prison at vastly greater expense.

In several schools where negroes and Indians are educated, the results of combining manual and intellectual training are most sig nificant. It is freely acknowledged, by those who have studied the problem most thoroughly, that the only hope of elevating the Indian and the African lies in a sort of industrial reformation. Until recently Christian missions have been far less successful in Africa than the Mohammedan, mainly because the latter have introduced into the life of the savage a sort of industrialism that served as a civilizing factor. Evidence that the industrial and domestic arts as Christianizing forces are stronger even than preaching is bound to give color to missionary enterprise in the future. Have we not, then, abundant proof that this element, which operates so powerfully in the enlightenment of the heathen and the savage, and in the reformation of the vicious and defective, should be a constant and somewhat prominent factor in public education?

All this experience with criminals and with the savage races shows us that what science has taught concerning evolution and the development of species must be applied in education, as well as in the nurture of plant and animal life, before the evil nature will shake off the rudiments of barbarism which still cling to it. Selfactivity is the law of healthful life and growth in every organism. An unused muscle is a moral infirmity. Every morbid nerve is an invitation to crime. When the youth is bred to honest industry, there is no congestion, no bilious insurrection, but rather free circulation to every member of blood purified in God's air and sunshine. Every nerve-cell is full of healthy life. All new growth of tissue under these conditions tends to make Dr. Jekyll

stronger than Mr. Hyde, and to preserve a balance of power on the side of honest endeavor.

Finally, education will become a curative of crime only as all teaching is subordinated to the one central aim of developing and establishing character. The cultivation of the body, the intellect, and the will, must find a unity in the idea of moral completeness. All children must be reached. They must be reached early. Spontaneity and self-activity must be fostered at every step. Through drawing, designing, and construction, accuracy, integrity, and love of the beautiful are to be inculcated. The study of nature in all her wonderful forms, with countless lessons of God's creative skill and infinite love and care, is rapidly asserting its claims as the true subject-matter of teaching. In other words, less study of books and more of the world around us is needed to train the eye to see, the ear to hear, and to fit our youth for practical life.

Nor would I place small emphasis upon what may be called the moral atmosphere of the school. The Christian teacher, if wise and skilful, exerts a powerful influence for good. The clergyman who attempts to discredit the modern school as a moral force must remember that our teachers usually belong to the best working material in the churches. If they are wanting in what is true and righteous, it is likely that the churches themselves are at fault, and that preaching is vain.

Self-government is the corner-stone of this republic, and is destined to animate all mankind in the not distant future. The school must build character upon this foundation. The weak and defective are to acquire strength by self-control and patient endeavor.

While recognizing the unpleasant fact that education struggling with other moral agents has failed to cure crime, I have tried to show that it has created those moral and social conditions that are favorable to its restriction and suppression. Moreover, in view of the reform which is now affecting all educational methods, I do not hesitate to predict that, in the better future towards which we are hastening, we shall see these methods applied in universal and successful child-saving work.

For the application of what has been said, it is easily apparent that special legislation is necessary.

(1) Every unit of school organization, whether town, city, or district, should be compelled to provide for its children adequate and healthful school accommodations.

(2) Laws compelling attendance are lacking in many States. Only seventeen have passed compulsory statutes. Ten and a half millions of children in this country attend no school, and have none to attend.

(3) Children must be protected by law from the exactions of labor which interfere with school privileges until they are at least ten years of age. Between the ages of ten and fifteen years, a certain definite number of weeks of schooling should be assured to every child.

(4) The State should, in some way, undertake the care of neglected children, as early as at three years of age, either in kindergarten or home schools, like the Day Feeding Schools of Aberdeen, Scotland.

(5) The children of confirmed criminals should also be taken in charge, and placed where a long-continued and vigorous treatment, sufficient to counteract bad tendencies, could be applied.

(6) Manual training should be sanctioned by law as a feature of training in all grades of schools. It has already shown its potency as a corrective influence when applied in an educational way.

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4.

IMMIGRATION AND CRIME.

BY W. M. F. ROUND, OF NEW YORK,

SECRETARY OF THE NEW YORK PRISON ASSOCIATION.

(Read Sept. 5, 1889.)

The increase of immigration within the last quarter of a century, and the enormous increase of crime during the same time, are facts in our national history that I desire to place side by side for the reader's consideration. If there is any relation between these two factors of our national development, we should be able to discover it. If there are dangers apparent in a study of the facts brought forward, we must put our minds to the task of discovering a remedy. The questions under consideration have been regarded of sufficient importance to merit frequent and careful discussions in our national councils. From the very foundation of the governand before its foundation-law-makers have sought to reconcile the restriction of immigration with that dominant spirit of our national policy, the welcome of the oppressed of every land. The latest action of Congress in this matter was, in the year 1888, the appointment of a select committee of the House of Representatives to investigate at length the administration of the national laws regulating immigration, at the various ports of the country. This committee made its report in the last session of Congress, and proposed a bill designed to meet the dangers it had discovered. The bill failed to become a law. The present immigration law, though better than its predecessors, is far from being what it should be. It was passed in 1882. Speaking to this bill, in 1881, Senator Morrill, of Vermont, said:

The paramount question must be asked, whether or not there is visible cause for alarm, lest among the miscellaneous multitude of foreign immigrants annually landed on our shores, trained to widely different institutions, with a Babel confusion of tongues, including paupers, lunatics, idiots, and criminals, there may not be introduced many vicious and inconvertible elements, more dangerous to the individuality and deep-seated stamina of the American people, and more worthy of rigid quarantine, than even the most leprous diseases. I refer to those whose inherent deficiencies and iniquities are thoroughbred, and who are as incapable of evolution, whether in this generation or the next, as is the leopard to change his spots.

The language of this inquiry is of the strongest, and indicates plainly enough that the speaker had been roused to an enthusiasm of alarm by the facts discoverable in a study of the subject. What these facts are, the following figures will in a measure indicate. Let us give our attention, first, to the number of immigrants in relation to the volume of population.

ers.

Turning to the tables of the last census, we find that in 1880 the population of the country was 50,155,783, of which number 6,679,943 were of foreign birth; that is, 13.3 per cent. of our population have been emigrants. But we all know that, so far as political and social affiliation and action are concerned, the children of the foreign-born population must be reckoned with their parents, and that ordinarily, when we speak of the foreign population, we include in our thought foreigners and the direct families of foreignThis would make our foreign population amount to 14,995,996, or within a very small fraction of 30 per cent. The great cities, which are our great crime centres, are also the great centres of our foreign population. Of the population of Boston, 70 per cent., it has been computed, are of foreign birth or parentage; of that of New York, 80 per cent.; and of that of Chicago, 91 per cent. But these facts have little significance in their relation to the crime volume until we bring them alongside of another set of figures; namely, the statistics of our prisons. Turning once more to the census report of 1880, in figures stated to be under rather than above the actual facts, we find that we have a prison population of 59,255; and of this number 12,815 were of foreign birth. Thus we see that 13.3 per cent. of our population furnishes rather more than 21 per cent. of our prison population.

This general statement is borne out, of course, in the special statistical tables of the different States. In the admirable report of the Minnesota State Board of Corrections and Charities, the following comparisons are set forth. In Massachusetts, 24.9 per cent. of foreign-born inhabitants furnish 27.8 per cent. of the prison population. In Pennsylvania, 13.8 per cent. of foreign-born furnish 20 per cent. In Ohio, 11.8 per cent. of foreign-born furnish 15.5 per cent. In the table from which I have quoted, the State showing the largest percentage of foreign-born criminals namely, New York is omitted. It shows that 23.7 per cent. of the population of foreign birth furnish 35.9 per cent. of the prison population. A late report of the Commissioners of Charity and Correction of the city and county of New York shows that the

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