The Columbian. [volume] (Bloomsburg, Pa.) 1866-1910, 1886-03-05
DANGEROUS CLASSES.
some OF THE DISASTROUS EFFECTS
OF NEGLECT AND POVERTY

Young HUMANS of New York-The Great
Masses Of the Destitute and Criminal
Inherited Tendenciss-Iaw of Natural
seleotion-Hopefui outlook.
The dangerous classes" OF New York are
mainly American born, but the children Of
various classes Of Immigrant They are as
ignorant as London fashmen or coster-
mongers They are far more brutal than
the peasantry from whom they descend,
and they are much banded together in asso-
Citations. They are enfants perdus, grown
up to young manhood. They are ready for
any offense or crime, however degraded or
bloody
The young ruffians of New York are the
products of accident, ignorance and vice.
Among 2,OOO,0O people, such as compose the
population of this city and its suburbs, there
will always be great number Of misfortunes;
fathers die and leave their children unpro-
vided for; parents drink and abuse their little
Ones and they loat away on the currents OF
the street; stepmothers or stepfathers drive
out, by neglect and ill-treatment, q ir sons
from home. Thousands are the children Of
poor foreigners who have permitted them TO
grow up without school, education or religion
All the neglect and bad education and evil
example of poor class tend to form others,
who, they mature, swell the ranks OF
rufiians and criminals. So, at length, a great
multitude of ignorant, unframed, passionate,
irreligious boys and young men are formed,
who become the dangerous class Of our
city.
THE DESTITUTE, MISERABLE AND CRIMINAL
There are thousands on thousands in New
York who have no assignable home, and
AIT" from attic to attic and cellar to cellar;
there are other thousands more or less
connected with criminal enterprises, and still
other tens Of thousands poor, hard pressed
and depending for daily bread on the days
earnings, swarming in tenement houses, who
behold the glded rewards of toll all about
them but they are never permitted TO touch
them. All these great masses Of destitute,
miserable and criminal persons believe that
for ages the rich have bad all the good things
OF life, while to them have been left the evil
things. Capital to them is the tyrant Let
but law lift its hand from them for n season,
or let the civilizing influence of American life
fail to reach them, and, if the opportunity of.
fered, we should see an explosion from this
class which might leave this city in ashes and
blood.
or the number Of the distnctlvely home
less and vagrant youth in New York, it is
difficult to speak with precision. should be
inclined to estimate 1t, after long observation,
as fuctuating each year between $4,000 and
5000. But to these, as they mature, must
be ADDED in composition Of the dangerous
classes, all those who are professionally
criminal, and who have homes and lodging
places. Add again to these, portions of that
vast and ignorant multitude, who, in pros
porous times Just keep their heads above
water, who are pressed down by poverty or
misfortune, and who look with envy and
greed at the signs Of wealth and luxury all
around them, while they themselves have
nothing but hardship, penury and unceasing
drudgery.
Almost powerful and continual source of
crime with the young is interchangeable
transmitted tendencies and qualities of their
parents or Of several generations of ances-
tors 1t is well known to those familiar with
the criminal classes that certain appetites or
habits, if indulged abnormally and exces-
dvely through two or more generations come
to have an almost irresistible force, and no
doubt modify the brain so as to constitute an
almost insane condition. This is especially
true Of the appetite for liquor and of the
animal passions and sometimes of the peculiar
weakness dependence and laziness which
make confirmed paupers.
AN ENCOURAGING STATE OF THINGS
/ have watched great numbers of de-
graded families in New York, and exceed
ingly few of them have transmitted new
generations of paupers, criminals or vag-
rants. The causes OF this encouraging state
of things are not obscure. The action Of
the great law of natural selection" In re-
gard to the human race, is always toward
temperance and virtue. That is, vice and
extreme indulgence weaken the physical
impair the faculties by which man struggles
with adverse conditions and gets beyond the
reach of poverty and want The vicious and
sensual and drunken die earlier, or they have
fewer children, or their children are carried off
by disease more frequently or they themselves
ara unable to resist or prevent poverty and
suffering. Asa consequence, in the lowest
class, the more self-controlled and virtuous
tend constantly to survive and tO prevail in
"the struggles for existence" over the vicious
and uugoverncd. and to transmit their pro-
geny. The natural drift among the poor is
towards virtue. Probably no vicious organi-
zation with very extreme and abnormal
tendencies is transmitted beyond the fourth
generation; it ends in insanity or cretinsm or
the widest crime.
The result is then, with the worst-endowed
families, that the "gemmules,n or latent
not vicious generations, lie hid in their con-
stitutions. The immediate influences of
parents or grandparents are, Of course, the
strongest in inheritance; but these may be
overcome, and the latent tendencies TO good,
coming down from remote ancestors be
aroused and developed.
Thus IL explained the extraordinary im-
provement of the children of crime and pow
erty in our industrial schools; and the reforms
and happy changes seen in the boys and girls
of our dangerous classes when placed in kind
western homes. The change of circumstances,
the improved food the daily moral and mental
influences, the effects Of regular labor and
discipline, and above ALL the power Of re-
ligion, awaken these hidden tendencies 10
good, both those coming from many genera
tions OF comparative virtue and those in
herent in the soul, while they control and
weaken and cause to be forgotten those dis.
eased appetites or extreme passions which
these unfortunate creatures inherit directly,
and substitute higher moral sense for the
low moral instincts which they obtain from
their psrents-Joe Howard in Boston Globe