1. What is the modern social program in respect to the care and training of the feeble-minded?2. What should fathers and mothers of the feeble-minded do to help realize that program?3. How far should social control compel the segregation or sterilization, or both, of those obviously unfit to become parents?4. What can be done by mental hygiene to lessen the numbers of the insane, the "queer," the weak-willed, and the slow-minded?5. The consensus of experts seems to indicate that the first need is to segregate in suitable institutions under permanent custodial care all the markedly inferior who cannot be self-supporting and who lack power of self-protection against the grossest forms of exploitation; the second need is to introduce new methods of supervisory control and humane protection and training in the care of those who are not normal but who, under favorable conditions of vocational guidance and direction and with a new home environment suited to their peculiar needs, may become wage-earners and fairly useful members of society. In the town for which you seek better conditions, which of these efforts is most needed at the present time? Is it to meet the needs for institutional care or for supervision adequate and well applied for those left either in their own homes or placed in colony-care?
1. What is the modern social program in respect to the care and training of the feeble-minded?
2. What should fathers and mothers of the feeble-minded do to help realize that program?
3. How far should social control compel the segregation or sterilization, or both, of those obviously unfit to become parents?
4. What can be done by mental hygiene to lessen the numbers of the insane, the "queer," the weak-willed, and the slow-minded?
5. The consensus of experts seems to indicate that the first need is to segregate in suitable institutions under permanent custodial care all the markedly inferior who cannot be self-supporting and who lack power of self-protection against the grossest forms of exploitation; the second need is to introduce new methods of supervisory control and humane protection and training in the care of those who are not normal but who, under favorable conditions of vocational guidance and direction and with a new home environment suited to their peculiar needs, may become wage-earners and fairly useful members of society. In the town for which you seek better conditions, which of these efforts is most needed at the present time? Is it to meet the needs for institutional care or for supervision adequate and well applied for those left either in their own homes or placed in colony-care?
[14]See "Mental Diseases in Twelve States," as reported in 1919 by Horatio M. Pollock, Ph.D., Statistician New York State Hospital Commission, and Edith M. Forbush, Statistician of National Committee for Mental Hygiene, published inMental Hygieneof April, 1921.
[14]See "Mental Diseases in Twelve States," as reported in 1919 by Horatio M. Pollock, Ph.D., Statistician New York State Hospital Commission, and Edith M. Forbush, Statistician of National Committee for Mental Hygiene, published inMental Hygieneof April, 1921.
"Because of fathers' sins the costIs counted in the children's blood;They starve where once they might have stoodContent and strong as bird or bee."—H.H.
"Because of fathers' sins the costIs counted in the children's blood;They starve where once they might have stoodContent and strong as bird or bee."—H.H.
"The primary function of social science is to interpret men's experience in passing from stage to stage in the evolution of human values."—Albion W. Small."Every wrong-doer should have his due. But what is his due? Can we measure it by his past alone, or is it due any one to regard him as a man having a future as well? As having possibilities for good as well as achievements in bad?"—John Dewey."Judge not, that ye be not judged. He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone."—Jesus."The Sage is ever the good Saviour of men; he rejects none. For the good men are the instructors of other good men and the bad men are the material for the good men to work upon. The good I would meet with goodness, the not-good I would meet with goodness also."—Lao-Tsze."The good man is apt to go right about pleasure and the bad man is apt to go wrong. It is only to the good man that the good presents itself as good, for vice perverts us and causes us to err about the principle of action."—Aristotle."I cannot but think that the extreme passion for getting rich, absorbing all the energies of life, predisposes to mental degeneracy, to moral defects, or to outbreaks of insanity in the offspring."—Maudesley."Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world or out of it which can be called good without qualification except a Good Will."—Kant."The object of moral principles is to supply standpoints and methods which will enable the individual to make for himself an analysis of the elements of good and evil in the particular situation in which he finds himself,"—John Dewey."I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to precise rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions."—Channing.
"The primary function of social science is to interpret men's experience in passing from stage to stage in the evolution of human values."—Albion W. Small.
"Every wrong-doer should have his due. But what is his due? Can we measure it by his past alone, or is it due any one to regard him as a man having a future as well? As having possibilities for good as well as achievements in bad?"—John Dewey.
"Judge not, that ye be not judged. He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone."—Jesus.
"The Sage is ever the good Saviour of men; he rejects none. For the good men are the instructors of other good men and the bad men are the material for the good men to work upon. The good I would meet with goodness, the not-good I would meet with goodness also."—Lao-Tsze.
"The good man is apt to go right about pleasure and the bad man is apt to go wrong. It is only to the good man that the good presents itself as good, for vice perverts us and causes us to err about the principle of action."—Aristotle.
"I cannot but think that the extreme passion for getting rich, absorbing all the energies of life, predisposes to mental degeneracy, to moral defects, or to outbreaks of insanity in the offspring."—Maudesley.
"Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world or out of it which can be called good without qualification except a Good Will."—Kant.
"The object of moral principles is to supply standpoints and methods which will enable the individual to make for himself an analysis of the elements of good and evil in the particular situation in which he finds himself,"—John Dewey.
"I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to precise rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions."—Channing.
Who Should Hear Sermons on the Prodigal Son?—A young woman deeply interested in social service was asked by the warden of a prison to address its fifteen hundred inmates on a Sunday morning when they should be all assembled in Chapel. Hesitating at undertaking such a difficult task, she asked the warden what he would think she should talk about. "Anything you like," he said, "except this: don't speak on the prodigal son, for the last fourteen ministers and speakers have read that parable and talked about it." "Indeed, no," answered the young woman, "that parable is not for them. They should be taught what is justice to the elder brother and preached to from the text, 'Work out your own salvation.'" It is really a bit difficult to find just the right audience for a preachment on that appealing parable. The harsh-natured fathers who most need its lesson are not likely to be in church when it is read and the tender fathers often need to be stiffened up to work with all the rest of society to make the prodigal behave better; and the elder brothers, the hard-working "sons of Martha," who have to save in order to pay the taxes for the institutions and agencies that take care of the prodigal, should not have the fact that their sacrifice and service are usually taken as a matter of course unduly emphasized when they meet their fellows.
The fact is that the prodigal, like the genius, is often one who takes life's practical affairs so lightly that until he is really hungry in the far land whither he has taken himself for pleasures denied at home, he seldom considers how his behavior affects the rest of the family. Moreover, the prodigal is often such a charming and engaging creature that all is forgiven him many times more than is good for his soul, and who, therefore, has many fatted calves set before him in renewed festivals over his repeated home-comings.
Yet, when all is said in the way of caution against overindulgence of the wayward, the one thing about parental love that marks it as the supreme type of affection is the fact that it holds all its own in permanent bond whatever the character of the child or his return for devotion.
Distinction Between the Mentally Competent and Defective in Criminal Class.—The parent who has a prodigal son or daughter to-day has the benefit of much social wisdom and much educational treatment of the wayward, unknown in the past. In the first place, we are learning to sort out in the criminal and vicious classes those who are mentally responsible and those who may be supposed to be the helpless victims of their instincts and tendencies.[15]If it is true, as one has said, that "the test of sound moral character is that it possesses coherence under liberty and has learned those various arts of adaptation to ever-varying circumstance which make it a working quality, constant, rational, and automatic," we must perceive the intimate connection between mental power and moral competency. In point of fact, we now know that the overwhelming majority of criminals and constantly vicious persons, in ordinary times when no social hysteria of recent war gives a "crime wave," come from the mentally feeble or perverted types.
The draft examinations in the Great War gave a shock to all students of social conditions in their revelation of the widespread deficiencies, physical and mental, of young men of our country. Mr. Henry Wysham Lanier, writing on this topic, shows "that out of a total of fifty-four millions of men twenty-six millions were either in the Army or Navy or registered and ready for call," and that of these "three millions out of thirteen were unfit to serve their country as soldiers." Nearly three-quarters of a million had some mechanical incapacity, defects in bones, joints, etc. About one-half million had imperfections of sense organs and nearly as many serious troubles of the circulatory system. A third of amillion showed nervous and mental incapacity for the soldier's work. About 300,000 had tuberculosis or severe venereal disease. About the same number had skin or teeth ailments. Altogether, the first severe examinations weeded out as unfit for the service nearly one-third of those who were drafted.
In addition to the revelation of physical and mental defects in the average young manhood of our country, it was found by further examination that five and a half millions of our young men were illiterate. These facts show that in the mass of people from which criminals and vicious people are recruited, large numbers have defects of body, mind, or education, which handicap them in pursuit of an honest living or in the search for helpful pleasures. The step to be taken in order to help the family to deal justly and humanely, but with due response to social duty, with the prodigal sons and daughters, may be briefly outlined as follows:
First and foremost, the weeding out from every field of competitive life those manifestly incapable of holding their own in self-protection and self-support. The unemployable among the unemployed, the hopelessly criminal and vicious who cannot be rescued from their condition, the more permanently backward among the school pupils, the incompetent among parents, and the dead weight of the "born paupers," all these must somehow be socially carried with least expenditure of social force and at least cost to family stability and family well-being. We have not yet learned to do this, but in every field of social effort the primary need is to see what is the right thing to do. When the ideal is accepted we are already a long way toward learning the lesson of the method to be pursued to carry out the ideal.
Moral Invalids.—In the second place, when we have really ascertained who among criminals and the habitually vicious, and who among the recipients of "material relief" who are constantly returning for more aid, and who among the unmarried mothers, and who among the dependent children are really feeble-minded or morally imbecile, we must segregate these as fast as we are able to supply the right artificial environment for their weakness and treat them as incurable moral and mental invalids. We must cease to deal with such as with responsible human beings, who might do better if only they would. The "indeterminate sentence" is a steptoward such treatment, but it is often rendered wholly futile by being mixed with "reward of shortening term for good behavior in prison." Good behavior inside prison walls gives no proof of ability to take good care of one's self outside those walls; it may be only a proof that the moral weakling has to have an external conscience and a strict watch in order to be amenable to even simple rules. The parole system is also liable to great misunderstanding and serious social dangers when it is used without the most scientific knowledge of the mental power of the man or woman concerned, and without utmost care in selection of work-place and living conditions of the paroled prisoner. The essential thing in all social effort to do justice to the wayward is to find out about them and manage for them the essentials of environmental influence. If, as many think, after careful study of large groups of wayward and criminal, more than half, almost two-thirds of those who come before the law for punishment are of less mental capacity than normal children of twelve years of age, then we must take social care of them as we would undertake to do if they were really under twelve. And the parents of prodigal sons and daughters must help with all the might of their parental affection in inspiring and supporting a public opinion to that end.
Rehabilitation of the Competent.—In the third place, for the one-half to one-third of criminal and habitually vicious left after the mentally incompetent are given proper care, we must use all the rehabilitation methods that society has devised and be more ingenious than we have yet been in adding to them. When such methods as Thomas Mott Osborne used fail, they generally fail because they are applied to those whom we should put under perpetual care, those indicated above as incompetent to life's demands. To try and make over a nature too weak in fibre to have anything of will or determination to "stitch to" is to have a response only when under constant supervision, and inevitable backslidings follow as soon as self-control is called for.
It is true, however, that many who have gone far wrong make good and reach to a high attainment of character. They are the "occasional criminals," the "fallen" who met with extraordinary temptation, the too hardly used by fate, the too early exposed to evil influences, the wild natures too strictly curbed by mistakenmethods of control, the orphans without parental love and guidance, the victims of broken family life, the "under-dogs" that could not make a way out to successful vocation or to happy human companionship. These occasional criminals among men, and the women or girls leading to sex temptations, may be often saved if so as by fire, and live to help all others to a stronger and better life than they have known. As this book is written the news comes of the death of such a woman in Chinatown of New York slums, a girl who had descended to the depths of vice but who came up at the call of the Salvation Army and spent the life left to her in helping others, such as she had once been, to hear and obey that call. Some men show such power of moral recovery as to put to shame those never tempted to a fall. These prove that mental power and the raw material of character, even after many untoward experiences, may take a fresh start and enable men and women to "rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things."
The Right Use of Leisure Time.—In the fourth place, the agencies of social protection of child-life must coöperate with all parents, whether those parents are wise or foolish, strong or weak, in preventing occasional criminality and preventable vice.
The helpful use of leisure time is a vital factor in the prevention of vice and crime. The pioneer study of "Public Recreation Facilities" in theAnnals of the Academy of Political and Social Scienceof March, 1910, indicates lines of social service in this particular which have been followed to great social advantage.
The Moving Picture.—The influence of the "movies" is the strongest, the most all-compelling influence to which children have ever been subjected. There has never been an agency that so appealed to all the senses, especially to the eye with its supreme registry of impressions, and we have so far let it play upon child-life with little direction from the educative process. What it is right and helpful to read is not always right and helpful to put upon the stage, with the more vivid and popular appeal to eye and ear and with the lessened opportunity of the drama to explain and soften and balance the presentation of tragedy and evil. What the drama may safely give to the smaller and generally older audiences which it draws may not be suitable from any point of view, eitherof art or of moral influence, for the coarser and more pronounced representation of the moving picture. There is a place for film presentation that is unique and it may easily become the greatest educational agency in all recreational life. That place, however, seems self-limited to pictures of life that can be imitated without social harm, insofar as very young children are concerned.
Needed Supervision.—Although much will inevitably be given in the moving pictures which contains incidents that any wise person would not take part in for themselves, the main ideal and the outcome of the situations must be such as to leave a tendency toward good and not toward evil, if children and youth are safely to receive its strong impressions. This is understood by those who are "trying to elevate the moving picture," but too often the reformers and the educators are so far removed from the main sources of control of any business or art centre that they only brush the outskirts of the agencies that purvey to public amusement and fail to reach any citadel of real control. There is a general uneasiness, however, among many people of all classes, even those usually very easy-going about any social influence, as they read the tales of children testifying in the courts as to their "hold-ups" and their burglaries that they did them "like the movies" they had seen. It is surely true that the next thing we must do is to tame these "movies" and make them work in social harness for the better, and not the worse, in the lives of children and youth. What line of cleavage may be drawn between what the elders may see and what should not be allowed so vividly to impress the younger minds, no one can predict. The recent public announcement of a determination to cleanse and uplift the moving picture business from within its own management is a most hopeful sign. But surely no parent can throw all the blame of any evil influence of a film exhibit upon the managers of a theatre! Where are the parents, and what are they about, that they do not know what pictures their children see and how often they go to any place of amusement?
The Automobile and Its Influence.—The same thing is true of the automobile, that now so often takes the youth of the well-to-do classes too swiftly away from necessary social safeguarding. The inventors and makers of these machines are not responsible thatcriminals use them for unprecedented escape from arrest, and boys and girls go to destruction of honor and purity in a whirl of wind and dust. As in all the new inventions and discoveries, we have gained more control over material things than we have yet learned how to use for either our physical or moral good. We shall sober down, no doubt, and learn to wholly profit by the new wonders of motion and of recreation.
Parents Need Social Help in Moral Training of Children.—Meanwhile, the parents who are trying to make the right atmosphere and secure the right influences for their children have a more difficult task than in any previous time; for the young can so much more easily take on all the new appliances as a part of their daily life and can so swiftly change from old ways to the unaccustomed. Some of the most selfish and cruel of the prodigal sons and daughters of our time find it easy to escape from any parental appeal in the air or by the whirling wheels of the machine or in any of the various ways by which space and time are now annihilated. And "out of sight, out of mind" is true of their psychology. All of which makes it clear that to-day, as in no previous time, we must all stand or fall together. The old home privacy is for the most part gone, the old home isolation wholly departed. All recreation is more and more in the open and appeals at one and the same time to all youth. The standards have to be raised for all or they cannot be held firm for the favored few. Democracy, which aims to make all better, may work to make all cheaper in taste, more vulgar in language, less capable of fine expression of noble ideals, unless a social conscience and a social intelligence take command of the common life.
It is, therefore, to-day, not enough to call upon parents to try and keep their own sons and daughters from the prodigal life, it is a necessity, stronger than ever before, to make the influences which all must share what all careful and wise parents wish for their own children.
This is a mighty task, one that in the United States of America, with its cosmopolitan population, and its multitude of people with a smattering only of education or culture but with economic ability to gratify their undeveloped tastes, is more vast and more pressingthan any nation has yet tried to accomplish. While we are working at it we may well comfort ourselves by remembering that each generation has to meet new problems, and that somehow, even when the young start wrong or meet with overwhelming temptations or fail to get at the right time the impulse toward the best which they need, life has them in hand and teaches by experience much which helps them onward. The tendency of life is toward strength and health and goodness and idealistic aims and choice of the best each person knows. It is true, and the best thing in human experience, that what parents cannot do for those they love, life itself does for them, perhaps with needless suffering that the wise and loving parent would have saved them had they but heeded, but with a thoroughness which experience alone can give.
Parental Love for the Black Sheep.—The attitude of parents toward the black sheep who does not change his ways of evil and does not become a comfort but remains always a burden and sorrow, is one of the saddest and one of the noblest of human exhibits in sympathy and affection. A woman of the finest nature who as a girl was captured in imagination by a man of brilliant quality but of peculiar cruelty and wickedness of nature, and guilty, after their marriage, of many crimes, had two sons. One was like herself and became a man honored by all, and of the greatest help to his mother. The other seemed the image of his father in all ways, personal beauty, brilliant talent, and a naturally depraved character. He landed in prison, sentenced for many years for forgery and long-sustained robbery of a bank. His mother said with truth that she never had had a moment's relief from the most wearing anxiety until he was safely behind prison bars, where he could no longer torture his young wife or hurt anyone else by his wrong actions. Yet that mother, when he was breaking her heart by his actions and most willing to do it, never failed in love, in patience, in deep understanding of his moral twist and incapacity.
A girl born of ordinarily intelligent and moral parents became a prodigy of sex perversion and the accomplice of thieves and murderers. She gave untold misery to all her family, but the father never gave up his search for her when she left the home and never failed to give her succor and the most tender care when she cameback worn and ill, and at last left all other interests in life to snatch her away from bad companions and try to establish her in a new place and a better surrounding.
The story of the prodigal son was taken from life itself; it is the moving story of the one greatest affection of the family bond, that for the bone of bone and the flesh of flesh, the child that needs most the tenderness of the parent, the child that has worn out all other patience and lost all other consideration and has only the claim of its deep need to insure its parent's service.
Children's Courts.—Society has lately become wise and humane enough to establish Children's Courts for Juvenile Delinquents. These, beginning merely in "Separate Hearings" in Boston Courts, and assuming definite and autonomous form in Chicago, have become more widespread and more inclusive in character. Now we are securing, as by a recent State Law in New York, the County Courts for children, in which the limitations of local sentiment and neighborhood reluctance to testify of family conditions are surmounted and yet the near-at-hand interest in the children is preserved.
All modern philanthropy tends toward dealing with wayward boys and girls as those who need and should have not punishment but education, necessary but kindly restraint, protection from bad surroundings and training toward self-support. To this we are adding Domestic Relations Courts dealing with juvenile delinquents not, as some one has said, "so as to punish parents for the wrong-doing of their children," but rather as indicating the recognition of the fact that one member of the family cannot be "saved" without an effort to save all the other members, and that in the family relationship there are permanent bonds that courts should recognize and seek to enforce and make more helpful to every individual concerned.
Domestic Relations Courts.—When the history of cases coming before either Children's Courts or Domestic Relations Courts is studied, certain facts of social condition stand out prominently as causes for juvenile delinquency. First of all, the broken family, one in which there has been separation of father and mother, is a cause of child-neglect and consequent wrong-doing. The death of either parent, also, is often the cause of such unhappiness orprivation in the home as to induce disobedience to law and bring the child before a court. The lack of employment by the father or his too low wages, which reduces the family income dangerously and makes the mother attempt to be both breadwinner and care-taker of the home, and hence lessens family comfort and sends the children on the streets for amusement, is also a cause often appearing as a reason for delinquency. The evils of housing congestion, too many families living in one building or in one neighborhood without chance for privacy, choice of companionship or household arrangements conservative of domestic virtue or happiness, these evils constitute a heavy indictment of society in the returns of Children's Courts. The complex problems which the immigrant faces, with his children early learning the language of the country to which he has come, while it is to him a sealed book, are responsible for much juvenile delinquency. Jacob Riis has told us, in compelling description, the story of the evolution of the "gang" and of the "tough" from the children of parents who, well-meaning and in their own ancestral land capable of parental control, here lose command of the family life because the children have to become the interpreters and representatives of the family in the new country to a degree that reverses the natural order of dependence and direction in the family life, and gives the children undue power of leadership in family affairs. As Professor Cooley wisely says, "It is freedom to be disciplined in as rational a manner as you are tit for." We might give the converse of this truth in the statement that it is not freedom but dangerous tendency toward anarchy and disaster to be called upon for rational decisions in advance of our intelligence and will-power, and a tragedy to lose the habit-drill of parental control in the period of life when that is a necessary foundation for wisdom in independent choice. The child of the immigrant often lands in the Children's Court not because he is bad or stupid or even mischievous by nature, but because he is too early forced by circumstances into a position of command and of unrestricted choice in action, due to the ease with which the young can learn new ways and the difficulty of the old in mastering strange language and manners.
Dangerous Rebound from Ancient Family Discipline.—Again, the Children's and the Domestic Relations Courts beartestimony to the fact that to-day we are in a rebound from inherited forms of discipline of children and youth which have given to all, immigrant and native-born alike, a feeling that society exists for their benefit and that they owe nothing to society in return. The very standardization of child-care by public demand, in matters of health and education, of free books and free recreation and free music and free parks and playgrounds and even free lunches in schools, and free baths and medical and nursing care—all that is increasingly called for and provided out of the public purse for the nurture and development of child-life—tend toward giving children and youth the idea that the world belongs to them.
The old crushing and often cruel pressure of older life upon the young is happily gone. The new ideals of education, within the school and the home, which emphasize the right of each human being to its own development into a unique, a free and a happy personality, are ideals that must grow in realization more and more if we are to have fit people for making democracy work toward the rule of the best. It is, however, profoundly true that we have gone farther in demand for and effort toward individual freedom than we have in any translation of the old social pressure upon the individual conscience and life to assume social obligations and bear them worthily and usefully. There is a dry rot at the core of any class or any nation which turns its inmost psychology toward what it can get from life without regard to what it should give back to life. Too many children and youth in conditions in which, happily, the old despotism of age is outgrown, have unhappily missed the old sense of obligation and old call to service which the earlier forms of family and school discipline implanted in all responsive natures.
Do Modern Youth Need New Community Disciplines?—There is abundant evidence that William James was profoundly right when he suggested a need in youth for some required devotion to "the collectivity that owns us," some "moral equivalent for war" and the military drill of older forms of civic order. When the Athenian youth took his oath of devotion to the city of his birth, he signalized his coming of age and expressed the ideal of service of each to all and all to each. This is not the place for detailed discussion of what is lacking in modern training of American Youthanalogous in spirit and effect to this classic custom. It must be insisted, however, as we discuss the conditions that make for juvenile delinquency, among the children and youth otherwise normal and capable of useful life, that we have not done all that democracy demands when we have made children healthy, sent them to tax-supported schools, prevented them from too early earning at "gainful occupations," and instituted all manner of recreative and stimulating provisions for their free use. We must also give them some sense of what Seneca meant when he said, "We are all members of one great body; remember that each was born for the good of all." We must also burn deep into the consciousness of youth in some fashion that shall be through our modern mechanisms as effective as were the old "Fraternities" of primitive life, and as are still the outworn but persistent forms of military discipline, that idea of subordination of private whim to public well-being which lies at the base of all true and ordered social advance. The Children's Courts are a response to the effort of society to give each child a fair chance in life. There are needed, also, devices of education and of compulsory social service and social obedience which may tend to give society a fair deal from every adult.
Prodigal sons and daughters, therefore, who are abnormal, weak, morally invalid, must be cared for in the way easiest and best for the social whole. Parents must help and not hinder in that task.
Prodigal sons and daughters who are normal save for some accidental divergence from legal or actual right-doing must be helped to come back into the line of social usefulness. And, above all, the facts of juvenile delinquency should give us impetus, strong and intelligent, toward a social and family discipline that shall make freedom and happiness of childhood a way to social order and never a pathway toward social degeneracy or personal wrong-doing.
1. What has been the general trend of social ideal and practice in the treatment of the criminal and the vicious?2. What part has the family played in restraint of evil tendency or in responsibility before the law for offences against social order?3. What part should the family now play in these vital social matters?4. What is "sentimentality" and what is "justice" in dealing with the prodigal?5. What can be done through physical and mental examinations, by experts, of all children, to prevent development of criminality, vice, and waywardness?6. In 1724 the English law held any one legally responsible for action subversive of law and order unless he was "totally deprived of his understanding and memory and doth not know what he is doing, no more than an infant, than a brute or a wild beast." Since 1843, the criterion of responsibility under the law is "knowledge of what is right or wrong in the particular case." Following the same line of change, our statutes now ask, in addition, if the person on trial is generally competent to understand and to obey social rules of conduct. Is this trend toward the lessening or toward the increase of crime and vice?7. What does social well-being require shall be done for and with those proved incapable of social habits?8. Head "The Socially Inadequate; How Shall We Designate and Sort Them?" by Harry H. Laughlin, Carnegie Institution, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, inAmerican Journal of Sociology, July, 1921. This is an attempt to introduce a blanket term under which feeble-minded; insane; criminalistic, including delinquent and wayward; epileptic; inebriate, including drug habitues; diseased, including tuberculous, lepers, and others with chronic infectious diseases; blind, including all of seriously impaired vision; deaf, including those with seriously impaired hearing; deformed, including the crippled; and dependent, including orphans, old folks, soldiers and sailors in "homes," chronic charity-aided folk, paupers, and ne'er-do-wells, may be listed. This article attempts to make a classification inclusive, yet subject to minute subheading, which may make reports more definite in listing human beings.Is such an attempt wise, and if so, how would each member of this group classify the "socially inadequate?"
1. What has been the general trend of social ideal and practice in the treatment of the criminal and the vicious?
2. What part has the family played in restraint of evil tendency or in responsibility before the law for offences against social order?
3. What part should the family now play in these vital social matters?
4. What is "sentimentality" and what is "justice" in dealing with the prodigal?
5. What can be done through physical and mental examinations, by experts, of all children, to prevent development of criminality, vice, and waywardness?
6. In 1724 the English law held any one legally responsible for action subversive of law and order unless he was "totally deprived of his understanding and memory and doth not know what he is doing, no more than an infant, than a brute or a wild beast." Since 1843, the criterion of responsibility under the law is "knowledge of what is right or wrong in the particular case." Following the same line of change, our statutes now ask, in addition, if the person on trial is generally competent to understand and to obey social rules of conduct. Is this trend toward the lessening or toward the increase of crime and vice?
7. What does social well-being require shall be done for and with those proved incapable of social habits?
8. Head "The Socially Inadequate; How Shall We Designate and Sort Them?" by Harry H. Laughlin, Carnegie Institution, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, inAmerican Journal of Sociology, July, 1921. This is an attempt to introduce a blanket term under which feeble-minded; insane; criminalistic, including delinquent and wayward; epileptic; inebriate, including drug habitues; diseased, including tuberculous, lepers, and others with chronic infectious diseases; blind, including all of seriously impaired vision; deaf, including those with seriously impaired hearing; deformed, including the crippled; and dependent, including orphans, old folks, soldiers and sailors in "homes," chronic charity-aided folk, paupers, and ne'er-do-wells, may be listed. This article attempts to make a classification inclusive, yet subject to minute subheading, which may make reports more definite in listing human beings.
Is such an attempt wise, and if so, how would each member of this group classify the "socially inadequate?"
[15]See a valuable study by Dr. Bernard Glueck, Director Psychiatric Clinic at Sing Sing Prison, entitled, "Concerning Prisoners," and published inMental Hygienefor April, 1918, showing the need for mental examination of all convicted persons as an indispensable basis for right understanding and treatment of prisoners.
[15]See a valuable study by Dr. Bernard Glueck, Director Psychiatric Clinic at Sing Sing Prison, entitled, "Concerning Prisoners," and published inMental Hygienefor April, 1918, showing the need for mental examination of all convicted persons as an indispensable basis for right understanding and treatment of prisoners.
"Every social ill involves the enslavement of individuals. Freedom is that phase of the social ideal which emphasizes individuality.—All mankind acknowledges kindness as the law of right intercourse within a social group.—The ideal of service goes with the sense of unity.—A likeness of spirit and principle is essential to moral unity. The creation of a moral order on an ever-growing scale is the great historical task of mankind, and the magnitude of it explains all shortcomings."—Charles H. Cooley, inSocial Organization.
"Every social ill involves the enslavement of individuals. Freedom is that phase of the social ideal which emphasizes individuality.—All mankind acknowledges kindness as the law of right intercourse within a social group.—The ideal of service goes with the sense of unity.—A likeness of spirit and principle is essential to moral unity. The creation of a moral order on an ever-growing scale is the great historical task of mankind, and the magnitude of it explains all shortcomings."—Charles H. Cooley, inSocial Organization.
"The sanctity of oathsLies not in lightning that avenges them,But in the injury wrought by broken bondsAnd in the garnered good of human trust.'Tis a compulsion of the higher sort,Whose fetters are the net invisibleThat holds all life together.'Tis faithfulness that makes the life we chooseBreathe high and see a full-arched firmament.We may see illBut over all belief is faithfulnessWhich fulfils vision with obedience.No good is certain, but the steadfast mind,The undivided will to seek the good;'Tis that compels the elements, and wringsA human music from the indifferent air."—George Eliot.
"The sanctity of oathsLies not in lightning that avenges them,But in the injury wrought by broken bondsAnd in the garnered good of human trust.'Tis a compulsion of the higher sort,Whose fetters are the net invisibleThat holds all life together.'Tis faithfulness that makes the life we chooseBreathe high and see a full-arched firmament.We may see illBut over all belief is faithfulnessWhich fulfils vision with obedience.No good is certain, but the steadfast mind,The undivided will to seek the good;'Tis that compels the elements, and wringsA human music from the indifferent air."—George Eliot.
"Genuine government is but the expression of a nationGood or less good; even as all societyIs but the expression of men's single lives—The loud sum of the silent units."—E.B. Browning.
"Genuine government is but the expression of a nationGood or less good; even as all societyIs but the expression of men's single lives—The loud sum of the silent units."—E.B. Browning.
"There is no other genuine enthusiasm than one which has travelledthe common highway—the life of the good man and woman, the good neighbor, the good citizen."—Thomas Green Hill.
"There is no other genuine enthusiasm than one which has travelledthe common highway—the life of the good man and woman, the good neighbor, the good citizen."—Thomas Green Hill.
"Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove:O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;It is the star to every wandering bark,Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeksWithin his bending sickle's compass come;Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,But bears it out even to the edge of doom."—Shakespeare.
"Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove:O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;It is the star to every wandering bark,Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeksWithin his bending sickle's compass come;Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,But bears it out even to the edge of doom."—Shakespeare.
The Problems of Divorce.—Having treated in some detail the subject of "Problems of Marriage and Divorce" in a former book,Woman's Share in Social Culture, and also in articles published inThe International Journal of Ethics,The Harvard Theological Review,Harper's Weekly, and other magazines, this chapter, to avoid repetition, will simply rehearse in brief outline the points of view previously expressed.
In the valuable and suggestive treatment of the family by Professor Ellwood in his book,Sociology and Modern Social Problems, he says that "divorce is but a symptom of more serious evils that in certain classes of American society have apparently undermined the very virtues upon which the family life subsists." If that be so, then no tinkering with the laws which aim at preventing divorces will reach the seat of the difficulty. The treatment must be more radical, and the character of individuals be made more noble and strong, if the family is to be made more stable and marriage more successful.
Frequency of Divorce in the United States.—The first point to be noted in any discussion of the broken family is the frequency of that social tragedy in the United States. The pioneer study by Professor W.P. Willcox, made in 1885 and reported in his volume entitledThe Divorce Problem, showed the fact that wehad in this country at that time more divorces per year than were recorded in all the other so-called Christian countries put together. For 1905, statistics show nearly 68,000 divorces in the United States as against the highest number from Germany, which is only a trifle above 11,000, and from France, 10,860, and running down rapidly to the number of 33 in Canada. In England, in 1905, there was but one divorce to 400 marriages. In the United States, in the same year, one divorce to every 12 marriages. Since that count was taken, there has been no evidence of a halt in the tendency of the United States to lead the rest of the Christian world in this matter of separation of those once joined together by marriage vows. In some of the States, the showing is more pronounced on the side of free divorce than in other States, since in Washington, Oregon, and Montana one divorce to every five marriages is reported, in Colorado and Indiana one to every six, and in Oklahoma, California, and Maine one to every seven marriages. We need not accept the doleful suggestion of Professor Willcox that if we go on this way, "by 1950 one-fourth of all marriages will be terminated by divorce, and by 1990 one-half so terminated," for it is not necessary or likely that we shall "go on" in this particular. Already, movements toward the strengthening of family ties and the better training of youth to responsibility, movements that tend to make marriage less brittle, are inaugurated.
Cannot Now Make Family an Autocracy.—There are several points that all must agree upon if we are to stay the rush to the divorce courts and yet not attempt the futile task of turning the family order back to the patriarchal or the monarchical types. In those types there was little or no legal divorce, it is true, but in them inhered social evils that often killed the spirit of marriage, and doomed the children of enforced unions to physical weakness, mental defectiveness, moral taint, and affectional suffering.
First of all, it should be noted that, although the divorce statistics are serious indictments of American life and bode ill to American society, they are not wholly a testimony to bad conditions. They are also a testimony that he who runs may read, to the determination of men, and especially of women, to exact a higher reality of mutual love, mutual respect, mutual service, and mutual coöperation within the marriage bond.
New Standards of Marriage Success.—When it was decided to investigate the causes for the backwardness of school children, why so many "failed to pass" and were "retarded" in the march from grade to grade in the elementary classes, the first inquiry took no note of the exactions of the grade standards. All who failed to move on at the scheduled moment for "promotion," in any school examined, were listed as "backward." Later, it occurred to the investigators, that the first thing to find out was whether or not a given grade standard was one that true pedagogy would approve, and second, whether there was a serious discrepancy in that grade standard between the different schools from which the children came for examination.
In much the same way the first inquiries as to the evil of frequent divorce seemed to take for granted that all who sought divorce were in circumstances that might have been socially and usefully continued within the marriage bond. We know better now. We know that the first question to ask about a broken family is: What was its condition before the break? Did justice, and a fair estimate of the quality of the union and its effects upon the man and the woman involved, and their children, demand that the family hold or be held together, or was there a condition that made society more interested in the ending than in the continuance of that union?
If, as is beginning to be understood, it is not for the interest of society that men and women should marry who are so physically diseased, or mentally defective, or morally perverted as to make them injurious members of a family circle, is it not as clear that in many cases such persons when married are not helpful members of any family; and if so, again, is it not clear that there is justification in social need itself for the removal of such persons from the family circle they have already polluted or injured in vital ways, to prevent their doing more harm to family life?
Whatever may be thought by many who view all divorce with horror, there is a tendency within that movement toward free divorce, toward the freeing of the currents of generative life from evil influence, from despotism, from degenerative tendencies, and from the worst forms of social wrong-doing. There is, also, of course, in that movement, a testimony which should makeall earnest lovers of their kind learn how to urge socially therapeutic treatment, a testimony to human weakness, to a lack of the sense of responsibility, to a love of personal pleasure at any cost to moral obligation, and to a need for social control of the whole family relation.
The causes, in our country, for which more than 90 per cent, of the divorces are granted, are the serious ones of adultery, cruelty, imprisonment for crime, habitual drunkenness, desertion, and neglect to provide for the family. This indicates that in most cases there has been a failure on the score of basic family requirements from husbands and wives, and from fathers and mothers, before the court was called in to break the legal bond. Does this also indicate that such failure of character has increased among our people to the extent of its increased legal recognition in divorce? We can not think so. There are special reasons why all bonds of intimate association are strained in modern life, with its separate industrial, social, and educational affiliations for each individual. But that all of us are going downward, or most of us, is not a provable contention and should not be an undemonstrated inference.
Dangers of Extreme Individualism in Marriage.—The primary fact is that we have allowed individualism in marriage to go beyond limits which are socially safe, just as in the economic order and in the administration of political affairs, we have supposed that the "let-alone-policy" would work social good. No other civilization has been able to secure successful family life without some support, supervision, control, and aid to the married couple and their children, from without. We cannot return to the collective family of other days. We must learn how to make society in general work toward the ends of stability and social order in the family, as in other social institutions, and by methods that reverence and secure personal freedom and fit well into a democratic state.
Free Love Not Admissible.—Professor Ellwood says that "while material civilization is mainly a control of the food process, moral civilization involves a control of the reproductive process, that is, over the birth and rearing of children." He argues from this that social organization "precludes anything like the toleration of promiscuity or even of free love." Most students of social historywill agree with this statement. We may, therefore, say that the attitude of law, of custom, and of social standards, must be that of demanding legalization of permitted sex-relationship, and the effort to make legal sex-relationship permanent where possible without sacrifice of the substance of family life to its outward form.
Must Work Toward Desired Permanency in Marriage.—This means a quite new approach to the problems of marriage and divorce. It means the inauguration of legal and educational mechanisms in the interest of making people want to stay married, rather than toward an effort to make people stay wedded when they wish to separate. In this, more, even than in any other field of social effort, we should take heed to and obey the advice of Dr. Lester Ward "to use attractive rather than compulsory methods of reform."
Needed Changes in Legal and Social Approach to Divorce.—What are the main points of change in our legal and social approach to the divorce situation, which the modern need for social control through democratic measures demands most clearly and strongly? They are, first, a longer period of delay between reception and granting of the request of a man and a woman for a license to marry. Several State legislatures are now considering statutes which require an "interval of three days" between the application for and the granting of marriage licenses. This is certainly a short enough time in which to find out if either of the parties is likely to commit bigamy if the license is granted, if both of the parties are really of adult age claimed, if either of the parties is afflicted with an infectious disease that would make marriage dangerous to the other party, if either of the parties has been a resident of a criminal or pauper institution, if either or both of the parties are competent to financial support of the twain, if there is any "just cause or impediment" against the legal union. We may find it wise to return to the old "three weeks publishing of the banns" in order to know what the state is about in granting and what two people are about in demanding a marriage license. In the second place, there are limits outside of which society should not allow legal marriage to receive its sanction. During the legal interval required there may develop knowledge of facts that make it a social crime for one or the other or both parties to be allowedto start a new family. This is matter for serious and long-continued study, and the experimentation of our different Commonwealths in determining the useful or necessary restrictions upon legal marriage is not without value. The main thing, however, is for society to recognize that there are just restrictions upon marriage and that this is proved by the actual social burden which unfit persons place upon their fellows when marrying and bringing forth after their kind. The third point, which must be emphasized more strongly than has been the case heretofore, is the need of making the state, through its courts, the ally, not the enemy, of marriage permanency. As it is now, the Divorce Court exists to secure divorces. Its very existence invites to its use. The court procedure in all cases of marital unhappiness which has become acute enough for legal freedom to be sought should be a court procedure that aims at arbitration, at "trying again," at winning harmony by just concessions from either or both the parties, a court procedure consciously and definitely set to the task of making more marriages successful even when they have developed difficulty of adjustment, rather than one allowed to act as a means of easy separation of even fickle, selfish, and childish people on grounds of superficial difference.
Prohibition of Paid Attorneys in Divorce.—The absolute abolition of any paid service of any attorney in the interest of getting anyone a divorce, is a primary social demand.The establishment of a "Divorce Proctor" service in a Domestic Relations Court, with sole jurisdiction over applications for divorce, is a second vital social demand. Some form of legal provision which would make judges of a special and honored class the paid representatives of society's demand for marriage to be as permanent as individual justice will allow is essential to any genuine divorce reform. The often highly-feed advocate of personal wish of two dissatisfied people, the agent that deals with divorce problems as a lucrative trade, is one cause of the prevalence of divorce among the idle and pampered rich. Those who have greater social opportunity than they have brains or conscience to use them aright, and who can pay lawyers so extravagantly, give us a heavy total of marital separations and of remarriage of divorced persons in the United States.
Judges, the best and the wisest, must sit on all cases where the breaking up of a family is the issue, and all privately paid attorneys (in other kinds of social arrangement and difficulty also a hindrance rather than an aid to justice) must be banished from every divorce court and from every divorce proceeding, both of the richer and of the poorer classes.
Divorce Proceedings Should be Heard in Secret.—Newspapers should not be tempted or allowed to gain advantage from the weakness, the folly, or the vice of any member of any family which may be revealed in such divorce proceedings. The fact of whether or not a divorce applied for is granted, the fact of whether one or the other party or both have received freedom, the fact of whether one or another was pronounced guilty of treason to the marriage bond—these are all subjects for news. The reasons for these decisions of wise and good judges should not be given to the public in detail. The main objections to the present publicity of divorce proceedings is, first, that publicity is generally in proportion to the wealth of the parties, as is also the prolongation of the proceedings; and second, that such reports are generally of a demoralizing nature for the public to read; and third, and not least, that few if any couples seeking a divorce are without fathers or mothers or relatives, children, or near friends, to whom the public revelation of the marital unhappiness or the personal wrong-doing of the parties involved is a pain and a shame.
Earlier and Better Use of Domestic Relations Court.—Another way by which society should undertake to supply in newer and more democratic forms the supervision, the control, and the support to the individual married couple and their children, which the older collective family organization sought to supply, is an earlier and a better use of the Domestic Relations Court, or of some advisory agency to prevent the breaking up of families. There should be something analogous to the old "family council," some body of advisers well known and well equipped for actual service, to help the bewildered and the unhappy. The religious ministry should be able to supply such help. It often does do so. The circle of friends may sometimes contain those of wisdom and understanding who give needed aid toward a resumption of brokenrelations on a higher and more enduring plane. There is needed, however, something between the court to which people go for relief from bonds, and the solitary struggle with difficulties before that relief is sought, something which, if related officially to the Domestic Relations Court, would be of a more flexible and private nature than most of its proceedings. We need more an aid to avoidance of marital rocks than a rescue, as from a life-boat, after the shipwreck.
There are many forms of advice and help which the teachers and medical practitioners in mental hygiene are now developing and offering which may be used later on, when we are wiser, in this work of preventing families from breaking up. Regularly constituted "social doctoring" for the prevention, even more than for the treatment of social disease as it manifests itself in family life, is surely called for.
The Children to be Affected Society's Chief Care.—Above all, we must place the children affected by any decision that gives society a broken family in the front rank of interest and of protective care. If the paid attorney were eliminated, divorces would certainly be lessened in number. If publicity were avoided in all divorce proceedings, much of the harm to children arising from separation of married couples would be avoided. If, in addition, there were advisory aid to the confused and unhappy, many now drifting to complete division of interest and affection would be enabled to start on again toward better realization of married opportunity. If, in further addition, the Domestic Relations Courts were changed with the supervisory care of all children whose parents were legally separated, and the well-being of those children made the chief legal concern even if it required the complete separation from both father and mother, more fathers and mothers would hesitate to place themselves where their parental control and their parental influence would be so minimized. Yet who doubts that among the rich as well as among the poor such judicial protection and care of the children, whom the broken family leaves without true parental care, is needed? To give children into the hands of either parent alone is in many such cases no fitting substitute for the normal home influence. In any case, there should be an externalconscience and an external solicitude enlisted in the interest of every child whose parents have made such a failure of marriage and the home that the divorce court is the only refuge.
This does not ignore the fact that many couples separate to the advantage of the children, that many parents are quite innocent of any cause for the broken family, that many times there is a rehabilitation of the family life on other lines that means full nurture and development for the children. The fact remains, however, that the average child of divorced parents has to meet difficulties and face disadvantages in life which the child of permanently united fathers and mothers does not suffer, and, for such, some exterior protection and supervision should be provided.
A Uniform or Federal Divorce Law.—Many persons deeply interested in lessening the number of divorces in the United States place much dependence upon a "Uniform Divorce Law" for the whole country, as giving a basis for wise legislation. Recently, Senator Jones, of the State of Washington, introduced in the Senate a resolution proposing a new amendment to the Federal Constitution by which, if it passed, Congress would have power "to establish and enforce by appropriate legislation uniform laws as to marriage and divorce." The fact that a couple may be legally married in one state of our Union and illegally practicing bigamy or adultery in another state gives a plausible reason for such a Constitutional Amendment. And perhaps the searching investigation and discussion which would precede such a definite change in our national law, if such change were made, would be of great use in clarifying the public mind, and securing a consensus of opinion as to what should and what should not be allowed in this matter. Yet it is doubtful if such a law would, in itself, bring down the number of divorces, now estimated by those advocating the law as "one in every eight to ten marriages," or prevent the ratio of increase in divorces to increase in population (now estimated "as increase in population in a given period, 60 per cent., and increase in divorces in the same period, 160 per cent."), or really mend our family ills. The dependency upon Constitutional amendments and upon legislation of every kind has, many believe, reached the utmost limit of social serviceability in this country.The deeper question in all such propositions is this: What, under the Constitution as first affirmed and later amended, is proper subject for Federal legislation, and what should be left to state and local action? We have not reached a political unity as to the basic elements of just and effective political method in the division of social control between the nation and the various states. The habit of rushing to the National Congress for Federal legislation with no plan or logical aim in relation to such division, is one that may well be curbed.
Education Our Chief Reliance.—Meanwhile, all must insist that education, character-training for strong, unselfish, noble personalities, is our main dependence, and must ever be in the effort to make family life more stable, and more socially helpful. Men and women must be made competent to self-control, and steadied with a sense of obligation to others, and animated by an ideal of faithfulness to contract, and of devotion to securing mutual rights in a mutual plan of life together. Such education for character, must be our chief dependence in efforts to lessen divorces, as in the effort to do away with all social evils. There is no magic in marriage, there is no magic even in parenthood, to make weak, and selfish and superficial and ignorant and stupid and despotic people into guardians of the best interests of home. A man or a woman is successful in the family order, only on the same basis as is demanded in all other relations of life, the basis of justice, good sense, right feeling, and an honest effort to realize high ideals.
Helps Toward Family Unity.—What remains for society to do, after general moral training has worked its full service of individual preparation for good intent and wise choices and competent mastery of family arrangements, must be done or attempted on the basis rather of helps toward permanence, than of prohibition of release from marriage mistakes and wrongs.
We have left undone much we should have done to make it easier for young people to find their true mates, to start right in married life, and to bear the burdens of parenthood without stumbling on the way. Let us not add mistakenly to the duties left undone the attempt to do things we should not, namely, to overbear instead of aiding the personal life.
There is nothing that works more tragedy of suffering than broken vows in marriage, whether the fact of the actual separation be publicly acknowledged or not. How many a disillusioned man or woman has felt with the poet: