The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-12-07
EDUCATION AND CRIME.

thoughtlessness, that common school eduo7-5o-
when difused among the masses. would make for
dmuniton of crime and close many Of the jaiIs anil
penitentiaries in our country. The records n
these jails and penitentiaries confirmed us in o7-
delusion, for we learned from reading the ann,
reports of these institutions that by far the grea
proportion of the prisoners were unable to read -
write. We thought that if many of the inmates
of our prisons could read and wrie and had an o-.
binary education they would have cultivated asso.
Citations and ambitions which might have deferred
them from a criminal course. The pulpit the press
and the platform were a unit in insisting that g.
norance was the parent of crime and in support Of
their contention introduced an alarming and con,
vincing array of statistics The university profe-
sor emphatically indorsed, as was to be expected.
the dogma of the triple alliance and the Judge
from the bench pointed out in weighty senteusss
that most of the crime which came officially undr-
his notice unquestonaby due to lack of edu-
cation The odd Church of England clergyman
in an inland village or plodding parish-priest in
rural district who regarded the tendency to crime
as inherent in human nature and looked upon the
mere requirement of knowledge as likely not to
eradicate crime but only to change the methods Of
it's manifestation were pilloried as cranks and old
foggies.
Since those days common school and high
school education have become almost universal in
the United States and Canada. The man who can
not now read and write ELECTS the pity of his com
panions as man strangely out of harmony with
the spirit of the age The schoolmaster is abroad:
the newspaper reaches every home and book and
magazine are on the table of the mechanic and
the wage Garner. Education, fortunately is no
longer the privilege of the few but has opened ca
reers of usefulness and profit to many, and has
been solace. a recreation and delight to thou
sands But the prophesy that education would d.
minish crime has proved a mockery and delusion.
A member of the Pennsylvania legislature has been
studying the statistics of crime in his own state.
Between 1895 and 1905 the population increased
p per cent; schools, 81 per cent, and the number
of teachers % per cent, but pauperism and crime
increased in the same period Al per cent and crime
exclusive OF. pauperism, SO per cent. So that the
''little red school house, isn't all that it was
cracked up to be. The number of insane appears
to have increased 113 per cent, while there was
an increase of 10 per cent in the number Of crim-
mails who left school at an average age of IA, able
to read, write and cipher
Pennsylvania, it may be said in explanation, has
the result. The foreign element forms a very con-
venient dumping yard for our rascalties, scrap and
crime, but in this our cart breaks down at our
own front door. The state of Maine, for instance,
which boasts that it Guilds schoolhouses and
raises men," has been almost stationary in popu-
lation. Yet in ten years the number of commit
ments to the county jails of the "men raised" has
increased nearly 100 per cent. Other states large
ly rural and peopled almost entirely by natiys
Americans and with populations 95 per cent Of
which read and write show an increase Of
crime out of all proportion to the increase of their
populations in towns and rural districts
Are we then to conclude that the masses ought
not to be educatedl By no means Not to diFuse
education among all classes would be a calamity
On this one point the church and the state are in
accord But the church-we mean the Catholic
church-the church contends that the state stands
still when she invites it to accompany her up to the
pine-lands of the educational mount. She contends
that education, divorced from religion and moral
ity, is in eight cases out of ten curse and mis-
fortune, and that welded to religion and morality,
education is a blessing to a community and the sal
walton of the state. This is the churchs conten-
ton, and she holds the proofs that her position
unassailable
Many years ago. when we were an enthusiastic
advocate of secular education, we purchased and
read Lord Stanhope's ''Notes of Conversation
Stanhope was for secularising that is eliminating
the teaching of religion and morality from the
schools then under the control of the Church Of
England, or as we would say, the Episcopal church
and transferring their control to the state In
conversation he had with the great Duke of Wei
enlist the cooperation of Wellington in ais scheme
If secularization. "Take care what you are about
said the Duke, "for unless you base all this (edu-
,ation) on religion you are only making so many
clever devils" The Dukes prediction of sixty
,oorc aoro is Dovv rropbao1 P,,+ III h