Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-07-06
THE LOWEST STRATUM.
A SOCIAL CLASS THAT IS HOPELESS, .. AM6lTloNLEss, LOST,

The Antecedents of the Professional
 Pauper-How an Army of Beggars Is
 Bred-seH Destructiveness of Moral
 and Physical Degeneration.
 lower strats of society in our larger cities we ment permanently degenerated It Is very seldom that member of this class rises to anything permanently worthy You must, however, consider society everywhere as con. kisting of three strata-the upper. which is cultured and yet very subject to degenera tive influences; the middle, which is less plastic, but on the whole moves under the in- huence of a better class of motives. and the lower, which is settled in habits of mendi cancy and unchastity, and is frequently ad dicted to crime Of course, by this lower class do not mean the poor, and not in variably the drunken; for the poor are often the victims of misfortune, and the drunken are not seldom recoverable But there is a class everywhere that is hopeless, ambition less, lost, and the only good thing about them is that they die early, and, under proper restraint. the stock easily dries up and perishes.
 have at hand the statistics of one city of about l00,0N inhabitants In this city it is ascertained that there are nearly 2,OO0 pro fessional paupers> Now yor would laugh at the idea that in America we have fixed castes but we certainly have one caste-that of mendicancy Very few ever rise out of it's ranks. Yesterday two children, very pretty, begged at my door, Their father is what l call a half caste, that is, he does work at ir terior, brainless jobs, but he retains. his in stincts Of beggary l have severe qualms against giving to these little, brown eyed creatures, because l set they, too, have this instinct. They do not blush at asking They can go from door to door without sensitive revulsion. The man is freak in bis class 1t is probable the family will not emerge But am sure that our habits of giving tc oeggars will prevent them from emerginp
 DESCENDANTS OF RRGGARS
 Of the 5000 reported from the city 1 have quoted, nearly all sprang from about thirty five families, that came tc the city twenty years ago as beggars They multiplied rapidly; some families having seventeen to twenty children. Of course this soor bred a small army Of beggars Marriages took place mostly within the limits of the caste. It IS said that one young man who left the ranks, and became a well to do business man of the middle ranks of society, was looked or as traitor, and attempts made on his life He Is the solitary exception in the history ot tPlse people, faI as known. Marriage laws have been wholly disregarded, and rela- tives have married and intermarried. until the relationship can hardly be traced In one case woman had married her owp son, after having lived with half dozen men The original thirty five families were. so far as known, not interrelated when they first made their appearance: but now they are EnOrODDhlv a rOnClHnnnrofo fo lu hohf have steadily degenerated them. until now they are barely above the brutes
 But 1t will not be possible tc stop at this point, or we should despair of civilization A happy law comes in to help US. The aver age life of the first generation of these people was about sixty years, but now, in the third generation, the average is about fifteen years This Is the fortunate end ot moral and physi- cal degeneration; it is self destructive 1t kills out vitality and so we are rid of them They will not work they will beg This is one distinctive definition of the degenerate They will not put forth any effort to rise Motive power is gone They move on the line of least resistance Shame is a lost faculty with them They cannot understand their own degradation
 ONE OF THE LOST TRIBE
 The following history of one of the tribe I
 
 They wander all over the country, living for months in hollow trees on creek bottoms. When cold weather drives them to shelter they will take any unoccupied premises they can find. From their beastly habits they are diseased, idiotic and deformed They are like half civilized animals, governed more by instinct than by knowledge The family numbers l37 persons. Several of the women have made themselves nearly blind by the use of acids to keep their eyes sore" Of an other family the record says: "They have eighteen dogs, and have been known to have as high as thirty Nearly every male member has served in the penitentiary, Recently a COW died in a pas ture near the city, and after nightfall the entire family, consisting of over twenty, went out and cut up the creature, and carried it home 10 eat" This illustration from a single city give at length, because it is an exact parallel of what occurs in every city of size in the land Besides, there are townships ln every state, outside of cities, where there is something so similar that the lesson is the same
 The first condition of degeneration is not reversion, but perversion. The evil man does not go back on the line of his animal heredity, but turns aside into paths that are neither human nor animal The human creature acts precisely like a degenerate ami mal or insect; he becomes parasitic and lives of his neighbors Some vegetable existences learned this trick long before man did it; and in doing so lost faculty and structural perfection The comparison is very striking: between human hanger on and parasitic plant that all its life clings to some other plant, sucking the life out of it You never saw such a person who had not lost self re-, spect, manly features, sound judgment and ability to use himself to advantage. -"E. F. F." in Globe-Democrat
 The Science of Baseball.