Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-08-20


New York public into course to which
they are evidently infexibly opposed.
Here is a Society for the Prevention OF
Crime which has paid so little attention to
the genesis and growth of crime that it has
actually wasted twenty years and more in
an effort to achieve the impossible. 1t has
in that period done nothing to prevent
crime, and it does not even seem to realize
that it has been squandering its energies.
But though it is clearly impracticable in a
city like New York to enforce law for
bidding the sale of liquors except at regu-
lar hotels, it does not follow that it is
impracticable to do anything for the min
imitation of crime. The Society of which
DR.. Crosby is President must have worked
hitherto to very little purpose if it has
not discovered that the intemperance of
great cities is much more an effect than a
cause. Surface moralists are in the habit
of ascribing all or most crime to intemper-
ance, but this is a popular error. Intem-
perance itself, as regards a very large class
in all great cities, is a result of the envi-
ronment, and may be removed by changing
the environment. The resort to drink is
in these cases blind protest against the
intolerable conditions amid which the life
of the drinker is set. 1t is protest
against foul air, bad drainage, imperfect
ventilation, lack of pure water, sitting
heat, overcrowding, dirt, squalor, and all
the swarming miseries, great and little,
which beset the denizen of the tenement
house. 1t is a great mistake to suppose
that the poor drink solely because they
are viciously inclined. They drink be-
cause they are wretched, because they are
always more or less i'll, because they are
always depressed, because the liquor re.
lieves them for the time from their cares,
and gives them a taste of freedom.
But SO long as their environment is what
it is ; SO long as they are lodged like pigs,
fed like pigs, ill-clothed, ill-paid, and
ill-looked after in every way, they will
crave for liquor, and they will find the
means of procuring it. Nor would they be
the better for prohibition law under the
circumstances. a law which forbids a
man to sleep upon the rack would hardly
be called beneicent. Yet to millions of
the poor life is a prolonged pain, and the
only pleasure known is momentary OBJ
livion. For Society to say to these un-
fortunates, You shall be deprived of the
"relief of forgetfulness. Your eyelids
'shall be cut off to prevent you from
"shutting your eyes. You shall be COM
"pelled to face your misery without one
siustant's remission would not be kind.
The duty of Society is in our opinion a
very different one. What it is under OBJ
legation to do is to relieve the poor from
the burdens which Cypress them, and by
ameliorating their external condition free
them from the abnormal craving for drink
which is the effect Of their squalro, and
not OF their natural taste. And in so far
as Society refuses to do this it exhibits its
lack of intelligence For the refusal is
predicated solely upon selfshness. But in
countenancing the conditions which tend to
promote intemperance, Society is sanction
ing and permitting the production of
crime, and is consequently manufacturing
the intractable and dangerous elements
which it will eventually be compelled to
expend immense sums upon in the shape of
criminal administration.
There is nothing so shortsighted as com
munity seltishness, in fact. And there is
nothing so extravagant as the penurious
spirit which refuses to take any trouble
or cost for the extinction of the beginnings
OF evil. There is large percentage of
the discomfort which saturates the lives of
the poor which might be prevented. Model
lodging houses and public baths and wash
houses have been sufficiently tested to
make it certain that they are trustworthy
temperance agencies. Where the poor have
decent and well-appointed lodging, and
access to the means of personal cleanliness,
the rum holes languish and decay, and the
school houses begin to flourish. Human
nature is much the same everywhere. 1t
is the environment that makes the difference
between the criminal and law. abiding class
es always making due allowance for hered.
ity) Take the son of a millionaire, put him
in infancy in New York tenement-house
rear him amid filth and stencil and i'm
morality and poverty, and he will grow
up with the tendencies of tramp and
thief. Take your tenement.house brat,
transfer him to brown-stone mansion on
Murray Hill, rear him in luxury, educate
him at Harvard, and ten to one he will
prove as competent as any of his associates
to perpetrate swiRdles on Wall street, or
to put up wheat corners in Chicago. 1t
is a truism to say that men are the Great
GENTLY comprehended, however frequently
the expression may be used. 1t is possible
TO diminish the percentage of crime by
diminishing the percentage of avoidable
discomfort In society.
1t is entirely practicable for the COM
munity to determine, for instance. that no
more novels shall be built that no one
shall let lodgings save under certain condi.
tions, as, that they shall be ~ well cleaned,
(2) well ventilated, (3) contain so many
square feet of atmosphere, ~ be supplied
with sufficiency of pure, sweet water
and, again, that all streets and alleys shah
be Of snch ard sueh width; that all
sasbsge .,.--li se.4~sel ct brief stated in