It is in the second chapter of his “France criminelle”, bearing the title of “Richesse et misère”, that the author gives his opinion of the connection between criminality and economic conditions.2

According to Joly, the opinion expressed by many persons that poverty is the great factor in criminality, appears to be true, at least at first sight; for the problem is, in fact, very complex and difficult.

In the first place a distinction must be made between voluntary and involuntary poverty. “With vagrants by profession, beggars from choice and speculation, drunkards, those who have made up their minds to live no matter how, gamblers who have systematically used up their capital and that of their family, workmen who have given up work only from rebellion against society, yes, with all these poverty leads to crime.”3 The second kind of poverty springs from disease, accidents, etc., i.e. from causes independent of the will of man.

“There are, then, evidently innocent poor people; and there are others so much the more pardonable as the consequences have been aggravated by the fault of others. Is it then in the intermediate region that we must seek for the influences that lead to evil? It may be. This region is not unknown to us. Let us seek here, without taking sides in any way, and examine the facts as well as we can.”4

In opposition to the continual increase of criminality the author shows that the national wealth has increased, although—and this should not be forgotten—real property, with the exception of small [200]holdings, has decreased; the condition of the rural workers, on the contrary, has improved.

In the second place Joly calls attention to the condition of working-men in the cities. According to him the question of whether it has grown worse must be answered in the negative, for the emigration from the country to the city always keeps up. Notwithstanding their higher wages men are no better off there, since they spend upon amusements their additional earnings. If criminality increases among them it is not, then, in involuntary poverty that the cause is to be found.

At the same time with the increase of wages the price of food must be noted. In most of the departments of France these prices have risen in the same proportion as wages. Consequently the working-man has not become better off. He has new needs, but when he has met these he has not enough left for the primary necessities. It is not economic factors, but moral factors, that come into play here.

The proportional increase of wages and the price of food, of which mention has been made above, in the different departments of France, is not met with in the departments of Morbihan, Vendée, Bouches-du-Rhône, and Hérault. In the first two, prices have risen much more than wages, while the contrary appears in the last two. As regards criminality, the first two take their place among those that show the lowest figures, the last two among those that show the highest. Joly draws from this the conclusion that social life is too complicated for us to be able to learn the morality of persons merely from the rise or fall of wages. In any case it is certain, according to him, that the increase of criminality that has been shown is not due to poverty, and that consequently we have not the right to say that poverty in general is one of the primary causes of crime.

However, it must not be lost sight of that in speaking of the increase of wealth and the rise in wages, we are speaking only of average figures, and that there are many individuals whose wages remain below this average. “Now, where do we see the greatest differences, and where are they most felt? Exactly in wealthy epochs and in wealthy surroundings. So it is in the poor departments that crimes against property develop the least. There are two reasons for this, psychological and social. What any man feels the most is not being or having absolutely; it is being or having more or less than those who surround him. What must drive men to crime chiefly, then, is the comparison of wealth with poverty.”5 [201]

Joly thinks he can produce further data upon the connection between crime and poverty by checking up the kind of articles that are most frequently stolen. Out of 1000 cases of theft (assizes, 1830–1860) there were 395 cases of theft of money, next came thefts of personal property, then clothing, etc., then successively, different kinds of merchandise, jewelry and table-ware, food, grain, etc., and living domestic animals. This information does not teach us much about the relationship in question. For the articles stolen can be sold, which prevents our discovering the motives of the crime.

The analysis of the value of the objects stolen also gives us little information. During a period of 25 years the cases of theft of 10 to 50 francs were the most numerous (about 30%), next those of 100 to 1000 francs, then those of less than 10 francs. Ten years later the most numerous were those of 100 to 1000 francs (33%).

However, on the strength of the statements of an old police officer, Joly thinks he can draw the conclusion that poverty enters only to a small extent into the etiology of crime. Nevertheless the established fact that a rise in the price of grain is associated with an increase of criminality, contradicts this. But according to Joly the contradiction is only apparent. “Famines are exceptional; theft is constant and while famines are always decreasing, theft is always increasing. Suppose that in ordinary years people did not steal or stole very little; the difficult moments would find them more patient, more resolute to have recourse to legal and permissible means; we should not see them so prompt to extricate themselves from their difficulties by simply taking the property of others. But what resistance can we count on from those who have long had the habit of stealing from fancy, cupidity, or a desire to gormandize? What resistance can be hoped for, especially when the habit has begun in youth? Now, we have seen that a third of the thefts are committed by minor children.”6

The weakness of the influence of economic conditions upon criminality is, according to Joly, further proved by the fact that times of prosperity are not accompanied by a decrease in the number but by a change in the kind of crime committed (as Prins and Garofalo have shown). Cheap wine makes most crimes against persons increase. But the low price of grain has the same effect, since the working-man, when his condition has improved even a little, spends his additional earnings in all kinds of amusements, which, in their turn, may be the source of crime. This is proved, for example, by the fact that in Marseilles suicides are most numerous on Sunday and Monday, and [202]fewest on Friday and Saturday, a fact explained by the pay-days of the working people. This is also applicable to crimes against persons.

To prove his thesis the author reminds us of the fact that domestics, although not subject to privations, furnish a large percentage of the thefts; that the percentage of thefts committed by unmarried persons continually increases; and finally, that the investigation (of 107 cases tried in 10 years before the assizes at Rheims), made by a magistrate (Ch. Vuébat), has proved that economic factors have little importance for criminality, and moral factors much. “To sum up, it is not the increase of poverty that is the cause of the increase of crime; it is not property in general that leads to crime against property. This is not saying that poverty, and innocent poverty, does not exist, nor that it is not a bad counselor, nor that it is not the duty of the upper classes and of the government to concern themselves with the lot of the poor. It does mean that a man is less led into evil-doing by the faults of others or by the fault of destiny than by his personal faults.”7

—If one considers the study of the question by Joly from a critical point of view, the thing that most strikes the attention is this; that he puts economic causes by the side of the moral causes of criminality. As I have already more than once remarked, this is not sound. Every crime finds its origin in moral causes, or better, in the lack of moral ideas dominant at a certain period. But one of the principal questions to be answered is this; how far do these moral ideas find their origin in definite economic conditions? Joly, being a spiritualist, has not succeeded in formulating this problem well, still less in solving it.

His entire treatment of the relation between criminality and economic conditions is characterized by a striking narrowness. He speaks of poverty and wealth as if they were the most natural things in the world, and had no need to be explained. Then he makes a distinction between voluntary and involuntary poverty, and excludes the former from the discussion as having nothing to do with the problem in question. This manner of reasoning has rather the air of a penitential sermon than of a scientific investigation. “Voluntary poverty”8 [203]is a contradiction in terms. For a man tries as far as possible to spare himself suffering and to gain happiness. There can never be any such thing then as voluntary poverty.

Though his terms are unhappily chosen, Joly only wishes to point out that poverty may originate in circumstances or in the person himself. But in treating this problem he should not have been silent on a very important, and very difficult point, namely how far these individual causes of poverty are based upon the present economic system.

If the question treated by Joly is incomplete, what he says neither has any great value, nor does it prove at all his statement that the influence of economic conditions is small. He gives but a few pages to the very difficult question of whether the standard of living of the working class has been raised. He brings out the universally observed fact that the wants of all classes have increased, but he seems not to have noted that this is intimately bound up with the present mode of production. He cites the testimony of an old police officer, and the investigations of a magistrate (investigations, it may be said in passing, that reached the colossal number of 107 cases) in order to prove that most crimes are not committed as a consequence of immediate privations—as if this were enough to solve the question of how far economic conditions enter into the causes of crime.—9

In his ninth chapter, entitled “Le crime et la misère,” this author gives some pages to our subject. It is incontestable, according to him, that poverty exerts an influence upon criminality. The number of crimes increases in the years of poor crops, or when there is a lack of work owing to industrial or agricultural crises. Thus, criminality reached high figures in 1840, 1847, and 1854, when the price of grain was high.

In consequence of this and of his personal experience (the author is a magistrate) he thinks the opinion of Garofalo is incorrect, that poverty only gives crime its form and is not a cause of it. For indigence not only puts morality in danger by depriving some persons of the bare necessities, but it also causes the children of the poor in the great cities to be brought up in a pitiable manner. [204]

Although the author is of this opinion, however, he does not subscribe to the view that “the poor man is dedicated to crime.” On the contrary, a great proportion of the poor are as honest as possible, and have honorable toil as their only means of support. Judicial statistics show that the rich are as guilty of crime as the poor.

“We see, then, that even if all the citizens had means and education, there would always be criminals; the number of them would be a little less, but not much. There would always be traders practising deception with regard to the quantity and quality of their goods, merchants adulterating food, employes abusing the confidence of their employers, notaries embezzling the funds entrusted to them; there would always be wives poisoning their husbands, and husbands killing their wives, and teachers of lay and denominational schools committing sexual crimes.”11

Most crimes are not committed to escape from want, but rather to procure luxury and pleasure. Hence the rich as well as the poor commit them. “To sum up, I do not believe that the rich are less tempted to take the property of others than the poor. The more wealth one has the more he wants; further, the more wealth increases, the more factitious wants increase, and if one’s wealth becomes insufficient to satisfy these wants, the thought of increasing it by any means is not slow in coming. Admitting that some day all men may be rich and educated, though that seems to me to be an impossible dream, cupidity will always make thieves, rogues, and forgers; hatred and revenge will always inspire homicide, murder, and arson; debauchery will always lead to sexual crimes. Material and intellectual progress will never suppress the passions and will not free men from the struggle that must be maintained against them. It will always be necessary to repress anger and sensuality, to put a bridle upon cupidity, and, in a word, to set the soul free from its passions. The increase of well-being and education will never make the police and the penal code unnecessary.”12

—It will be superfluous to give a criticism of this discussion. We have already met several authors who took this point of view. Proal is like the others who do not even know how to put the question of the influence of economic conditions clearly, who do not comprehend that poverty and riches are both the inevitable consequences of the same system.— [205]

“It is an incontestable fact that the influence of poverty upon criminality is immense.” It is thus that the author expresses himself in the introduction to his work. I shall set forth his manner of defending this thesis in the following lines.

The most disastrous consequence of poverty is the temptation to procure illicitly what is needed for one’s well-being. We can see this in the crimes of crowds as well as in individual crimes. At the 3d Congress of Criminal Anthropology, Professor H. Denis gave certain facts with regard to the correlation between crime and the economic status.14 During the years from 1845 to 1849 the curve of criminality coincides exactly with that of the price of wheat. But at the close of 1850 the two curves diverge, when the curve of wheat is replaced by that of staple foods in general. If we follow the trend of wages attentively we shall note that they also are higher in the last years. The increase of criminality is no longer to be explained, therefore, by this rise. To what, then, is it due?

In the author’s opinion we must note, first, that forced unemployment is increasing; second, that poverty and wealth have force only by comparison.

The well-being of the working man has increased, but that of men in general much more so. This explains only a part of the phenomena given above. The rest of his explanation is as follows: “There are, in fact, other elements, which may neutralize the influence of the environment. To all the solicitations of vice and crime man can offer resistance, finding his refuge and support in moral force.

“Now, go to the poor and unhappy, and ask them what prevents them from quickly slipping downhill into crime, and you will find in their mouths the expression, naïve, but strong, of the idea of duty; and this idea of duty you will find precisely and clearly only in that of submission to an absolute, incontestable, unconditioned authority, that of God. A man whom no one would suspect of any extraordinary good-will toward religion, M. Jules Simon, said a few months ago, ‘The peoples must be brought to God if we want justice and order to reign.’

“Must not even those who do not themselves believe, recognize in [206]this idea of duty, of law imposed by a God, the creator, an ‘idée-force,’ a source in itself of energy and activity against evil and for good?

“It is in the diminution of this energy, in the efforts that have been made to tear out of the hearts of the poor this root, whose flower is hope, and whose fruit is virtue, that I am inclined to see one of the causes of the frightful increase of crime, which all concede, some with surprise and all with dismay.”15

In the second part of his discussion the author brings up the degenerating influence of poverty. Although a man has a free will at his disposal, it is necessary that he should also have an organism capable of putting the will into action. Hence it is that degeneracy makes its effect felt upon man.

“Now, misery is just the totality of the most imperious desires remaining unsatisfied; it is the love of life, the love of well-being left without gratification; it is the suffering of the wife one would like to see happy, the hunger of the children to whom one would like to give bread. And if crime can give this bread that one cannot find, if crime can satisfy all these appetites, all these desires, it will present itself with the most powerful attractions, with the charm of fascination. Will the unfortunate man have the supreme energy to prefer duty to enjoyment?”16

Poverty is a bad preparatory school for this contest; a weakened organism will succumb more easily to temptation. And generally this is accompanied by a lack of education and of the development of the higher faculties.

In following the course of life of a proletarian we see that the child of the proletariat carries, often from his birth, the signs of degeneracy, since his mother was forced to work hard during her pregnancy. From his childhood he is ill nourished, and grows up in an unhealthful environment. There can hardly be any question of education, for his father and mother work in the shop, which prevents any family life. The child is not attached to the dwelling of his parents and wanders in the street, where he picks up bad habits. Arrived at adolescence, he enters the factory to pass the greater part of his time in monotonous occupations. And once full grown, life for him consists only in routine labor, monotonous and without end. “However, this man has a soul, he has a mind! But it slumbers in a perpetual inertia. Nothing in his life has awakened what is grand, noble, and divine in this reasonable being. How can we hope to have the moral energy and the sublime ambition for good survive in him?”17 [207]

However unhappy this manner of life may be, there is still lacking the greatest misfortune that can befall the proletarian; forced inaction. This is one of the chief causes that can drive him to commit crime! And then there is another scourge of the working class, alcoholism. “Source of poverty without any doubt, but fruit of poverty incontestably.” Finally, of all the proletarians the most unhappy are the women. Low wages and the monotony of tiresome work too often make prostitutes of them.

To all these criminogenous causes the Christian must oppose the moral sentiments which are drawn from his religion. His motto must be, “rather death than dishonor.” But for that he must have heroic courage, which most people lack. Perhaps before God these sinners will find grace.

But all this cannot be a reason for society to allow to exist these scandalous conditions, which, in a few words, are as follows: “Insufficiency of the means of subsistence; work too long continued, as measured by the exhaustion resulting from it; work demanded of mothers of families; excessive and unsuitable labor expected of children; improper conditions in certain industries.”18

This must be changed, and it is possible to do so. Not, however, with the aid of the state, for then industry would lose the elasticity so necessary to it. But the change must be brought about by association of the proletarians. “In the forced individualism of the laborers is to be found the cause of their ruin; the salvation must be found in association.” The author closes by referring to the encyclical, “Rerum novarum”, in which it is said that Christian workmen must band together, and by encouraging the rich to help their less privileged brothers.19