One of the characteristics of our present education is that it makes children egoistic. It is to be expected. The organization of society obliges men to be egoistic, and “like father, like son.” An apparent morality is the consequence. Children are taught that they ought to do or leave undone this or that, not because it is needful to help their fellows or not to injure them, but because it will be advantageous to them to act morally, or because otherwise they will be punished. It is unnecessary to say that brought up in such a manner, the individual will not recoil from crime because of any moral restraint, when the opportunity presents itself of making a profit, or when the risk of being punished is not great.

As to education among the well-to-do classes, there it is especially egoistic. The children—speaking of course in a general way—are [484]brought up with the idea that they must succeed, no matter how; the aim of life is presented to them as getting money and shining in the world. Such principles are incompatible with a really moral education, and the education of this class aims only at an apparent morality instead of a real one.204

Whatever may be the defects of this education, it is at least an education; the children are watched, prevented from getting into bad society, etc. The consequence is that the children of the well-to-do almost never get into the courts. This sad monopoly is reserved for the children of the poor.205 This is not to say that the defects of education among the well-to-do classes are not among the causes of the criminality to be met with in the adults of these classes. When a poor devil appears in court it will often happen that his counsel in defending him will draw attention to the fact that the environment in which his client has grown up is one of the causes of his fall; but it does not often happen that the advocate makes a similar appeal when his client is from the well-to-do. It is generally believed that nothing is wanting in the moral education of one who has not known poverty, and has not been neglected; but this is a mistake. There can be no doubt that one of the factors of criminality among the bourgeoisie is bad education.

The figures of the following tables show that it is almost exclusively the children of the poor who are guilty of crime.

England and Scotland.

According to the English law the parents of children placed in a “Reformatory” or an “Industrial School” must, if they are able, contribute toward their children’s expenses. The following table shows the assessments due in 1882 (in shillings per week).206 [485]

A little less than 60% of the parents, then, were unable to make any contribution, 25 to 30% of them were able to pay less than two shillings, while the remaining 10 or 15% were working people not at all well-to-do.207

France.207

The French “statistique pénitentiaire” gives information with regard to the financial condition of the parents of the children received into the “Etablissements d’éducation correctionnelle.” The following figures covering the years 1878 to 1882208 will give a sufficiently accurate notion, as figures for a longer period would lead to the same results.

After 1882 the penitentiary statistics no longer mention the financial condition of the parents, but their occupation. The results confirm those that we have just cited. [486]

These figures show clearly that it is only an insignificant number of young criminals who come from the well-to-do classes.210

I have been able to procure only a few data from other countries; their results, however, are identical with those for England and France.

Italy.

Of the 2,000 young criminals examined by Ferriani, there were 1,758, or 87.9%, coming from families where a profound poverty reigned, and only 148 (7.4%) from families that had never known poverty.211

Prussia.

77.8% of the children received in the correctional educational institutions during the year 1901–02 came from very poor families.212 [487]

It is then the poorest classes that furnish the greatest number of juvenile criminals.

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We come now to education among the proletariat. Here we meet first, insufficiency of the pecuniary means which education requires; second, bad housing conditions, which oblige the children to pass a great part of the day in the street; third, the total absence of pedagogical ideas; fourth, the absence during the greater part of the day of the father of the family, and in many cases even of the mother. The number of married women who work away from home is continually increasing. In 1882 there were in Germany, for example, 507,784 married working-women, and by 1895 this figure had risen to 807,172—an increase of 299,388 (59%) in 13 years. In 1882 17.3% of the working-women were married; in 1895 21.5%.213 There are no official figures but Braun214 calculates that in Germany there are 500,000 children under 14 years of age, whose mothers are working-women. In Austria 44.6% of the working-women are married, and in France 20.6%.215 We have seen above (pp. 409 ff.) that juvenile criminality is increasing. This is explained in part by the increase in the labor of married women, from which it results that an increasing number of children are brought up without the proper care.

Among the working classes there is no question of education properly speaking. We can consider the children as fortunate if their parents do not set them a bad example, are not continually engaging in disputes, and are not given to alcohol. It is plain that all this does not make up a proper education; and yet how many children there are who do not have even so much of an education as this!216

In the lower proletariat the situation is naturally worse. Not only is there a total lack of care and surveillance, but children are even brought up to crime.

Up to this point we have supposed the parents to be living. From the present organization of society it follows that the condition of the children of the poor becomes very bad as soon as the parents or even [488]one of them dies. Often private or public charity intervenes, but generally the community does nothing for the orphan.

As a last consequence of the present system it must be noted that children born of illegitimate unions are in a still more precarious situation, since it is only the mother who has to protect them.

The community (in this case the state) concerns itself little with the education of children; it makes education compulsory (at least in some countries) and deprives parents of the charge of their children when they neglect them too much (this again in some countries only).

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Now we come to the facts. They prove that the surroundings in which many children live are an important factor in the etiology of crime. The figures at my disposal are not as numerous as I could wish, but official statistics are not yet as full as is desirable for sociological purposes.

In reading the statistics which follow we must not lose sight of the fact that when it is stated that a certain percentage of children were brought up in a bad environment, it does not follow that all the others had a good education. The figures record only the very grave cases, as, for example, where the parents have been convicted, or the children entirely abandoned, etc. It is easier to prove, in making an investigation into the condition of a family, that the children do not receive a good education than it is to prove the contrary. Raux says that 36% of the parents of the juvenile criminals whom he had examined had a good reputation. The author adds, however, that this figure is too high for the following reason: “For certain officials charged with furnishing information on this point, every man who, without being absolutely irreproachable, has not been complained against, is a person of good character. So we have been made to add to the list of those of good reputation certain families where the father, drunken, idle, and unchaste, sets a very bad example to his son.”217

Some readers will see in what follows only a tiresome mass of figures—quite wrongly, for those who know how to read the figures find in them a language much more convincing and more shocking than that which can be expressed in words.

Before beginning, the following remark must be made. We shall give, as far as possible, the percentages of criminals born of illegitimate unions together with the percentages of illegitimate births in general. We shall see that with some exceptions, even so, the percentage for criminals is much greater than that for the population in [489]general. However, to make the comparisons exact it is necessary to know the percentage of illegitimate persons among the population of an age to commit crime, and not among the newly born. This percentage is very much less, because, first, the mortality among illegitimate children is especially great, second, because a considerable number are legitimated. In general the percentage of illegitimate persons among the adult population is unknown. From researches by Neumann (“Die jugendlichen Berliner unehelicher Herkunft”) and Spann (“Untersuchungen über die uneheliche Bevölkerung in Frankfurt a/M.”), it appears that 3.6 times fewer illegitimate children in proportion, than legitimate, reach the age of 20 years!218

Austria, 1883–1889.219

The following figures have to do with illegitimacy among the criminals imprisoned in the years 1883 and 1884.

[490]

For the years 1896 and 1899 I have the following data, bearing upon the persons convicted of crime during those years.220

In order to be able to make a comparison we must have the figures for illegitimate births in the population in general. For Austria they are very high: in the period 1876–1880 13.84% of the children born living were illegitimate, and in the period 1887–1891 14.67%.221 During the period between 1883 and 1892 the general mortality of children under a year old was 24.9% as against 30.3% for illegitimate children.222

Baden, 1887–1891.223

In 1887 correctional education (Zwangserziehung) was introduced into the Grand Duchy of Baden. The family conditions of the children received between 1887 and 1891 were as follows:

England and Scotland, 1887–1899.

With regard to the children received into the “Industrial Schools” during the years 1887 to 1891 there are the following data: 5% were [491]illegitimate, while for the same period 4.52% of all children born living were illegitimate.224 Here we must take into consideration the greater mortality among illegitimate children. There are no recent data, but in England in 1875 this mortality was twice as great as that of legitimate children, and in some countries it is four times as great.

4% were full orphans; 34% half orphans, 20% being fatherless and 14% motherless; 6% had been abandoned by their parents; and 2% were the children of habitual criminals. 51%, therefore, were living under unfavorable conditions. For the pupils of the “Reformatories” in the same period this percentage was 53.225

The following figures indicate also the relative numbers for the two sexes:

It is interesting to note that with girls the influence of bad family surroundings is worse than it is with boys, more than two thirds living under abnormal circumstances.

However, confining ourselves to figures for the period 1887–1891, 49% and 47% of the children in the two classes of institutions respectively came from normal families. In what follows we see what their education was; different competent witnesses before the “Royal Commission on Reformatory and Industrial Schools” affirmed that the environment from which these children came was very unfavorable. The most important testimony was that of Mr. Macdonald, one of the officers who receive the contributions of the parents to the support of their children in the “Industrial Schools.” According [492]to him only 6% of the children came from homes favorable to their moral education. In Manchester 68% of the parents of children in the industrial schools had a bad reputation; 14.7% were of doubtful character; and only 17% conducted themselves well.227

Of 1,209 juvenile delinquents in the English prisons (1898–99) 90 (7.4%) had had no education; 512 (42.3%) had had very little; 496 (41%) a fair education; and of 111 (9.1%) only could it be said that their education was good. 211 (17.4%) were without father or mother; 183 (15.1%) had bad homes; 198 (16.3%) had none at all; and 30 (2.4%) slept in night-lodgings.228

If the environment in which the young criminals have lived is the cause of their fall, a considerable portion of them ought to return to the right way as a result of the education given in the schools in question. If this is not the case with all, this proves nothing against the influence of environment, for the impressions received by the child in the surroundings in which he has lived before his conviction are too strong to be effaced by a comparatively brief stay in an educational institution (even if these reform-schools were perfect). Finally, after they are set at liberty environment may once more contribute to recidivism. The following figures show the facts in the case:229

The percentage of those who conduct themselves well is considerable, therefore, and indicates how great the influence of an unfavorable environment upon these children has been.230

France, 1890–1895.231

The following important data concern the children in the “établissements d’éducation correctionnelle”: