In respect that a man is an alien he might reasonably be required to show that he is not living off the proceeds of crime, as a condition of his being allowed to remain in the country. He may be refused permission to land if his character is known; but these people know how to get past the immigration authority. Why they should then be free to transgress until they trip and are caught it is difficult to see. If an alien seeks citizenship here he must satisfy the authorities that he has lived for at least five years in the country and during that period has been a reputable citizen. The onus of proof is on him, and it is not assumed that because he has never been convicted he should be naturalised. The examination to which he voluntarily submits in order that he may become a British subject he need not undergo if all he wants is the protection of our laws while he is living by breaking them. I suggest that just as some aliens have to submit to examination before being allowed to land, those who have given the authorities occasion to suspect that they are living by illegal means should be cited to appear before and satisfy a court that their conduct is such as to justify their being permitted to remain in the country; and failing their appearance, or their being able to do so, that they should be arrested and deported.
CHAPTER IV
SOCIAL CONDITIONS AND CRIME
The millionaire and the pauper—Ill-feeling and misunderstanding—Social ambitions—Case of embezzlement—Preaching and practice—Gambling—The desire to “get on”—The need to deal with those who profit by the helplessness of others—Political action—Its difficulty—Legislation and administration—The official and the public—Personal aid—Fellowship.
Our social inequalities are the cause of much serious crime. That such inequalities always have existed is undeniable, and that they may continue to exist is at least likely; at any rate, there is no immediate prospect of their abolition; but the form and degree they take are variable. Within recent times the gulf between the wealthy and the poor has been widened. The pauper is an old inhabitant, but the millionaire is a new portent. The rich man of our grandfathers’ day was a local magnate who might be capricious, but who could be personally approached. His successor is cosmopolitan. The poor in those days were not so well informed as they are now that the ends of the earth have been brought together, and the mechanical inventions that have brought wealth to many have enabled the multitude to get a wider outlook on the world. A rich man may be courted for his riches, but they do not now gain him reverence from the poor.
If free education has not educated the masses any more than the expensive kind has educated many of the rich, it has enabled them to read. They know more than they did, and with the access of knowledge discontent with their condition has increased. For good or ill many of them have lost the fear of hell, but the fear of the poorhouse is still with them as with many who are better off. The desire to make money dominates all sorts of people, and in the effort men are marred. Each sees the greed of his neighbour, but fails to see that he shares the vices of those he condemns. The man who is “successful” is critical of the faults of those less fortunate; and they in turn are often too ready to attribute his position to his absence of scruple rather than to any ability he may possess. There is envy on the one side and distrust on the other; but out of, and in spite of, it all there is steadily growing an effort towards co-operation and mutual help.
In the welter of conflicting interests there is much done that every man would disapprove if he saw it done by his neighbour. Yet those whose conduct is most shady are often not conscious of the enormity of it, being too much engrossed in the end they seek to be particular as to the means; and that end is not always an ignoble one. They mean to do great things and kind when their ships come home; and they do not see that the question for each of us is not, What would we do if we had what we desire? but, What are we doing, being what we are and where we are?
In the thirst for wealth dishonest practices are condoned in business, and within the law robbery is allowed. There is a disposition to take more account of what a man has than of what he is; and this cannot fail to have a vicious effect. X 19 was a young man who held a position of trust and received a small salary. He had no showy vices and, so far as could be ascertained, not many others. He was strong in the negative virtues; being an abstainer from drink, tobacco, and such things as are affected by pleasure-seekers and cost money. His employers were quite satisfied that they had in him a model servant; but they found their mistake, and were as unreasonably indignant as they had been unreasonably pleased; for he had been conducting a very ingenious system of fraud upon them. With the money he had abstracted he had been speculating in shares, and he had been successful up to a point. If his last venture had turned out well he would have been able to resign his situation and live virtuously ever after, first paying back to them their money. This is what he calculated would take place, and if his expectations had been realised nobody would have known of his misfeasance; but he lost on his venture and there was a crash. He pleaded guilty to embezzlement and was sent to prison for a long period. He had disposed of a considerable sum of money, but the curious thing about it was that he claimed that he was simply doing what his employers lived by doing—using other people’s money without consulting them as to details; though he admitted that in their case they were in a position to meet claims, and their clients knew that their money was not lying in a safe. He took his sentence quite philosophically, with the remark that he had observed that people who had defrauded certain kinds of commercial corporations, such as banks, always got longer terms of imprisonment than those who merely robbed poor people; and as the firm that employed him was a big concern he would have to be made an example of. He was shrewd in his observations, however wrong-headed they were in some respects, and he is not the only young man who has taken the risk in the attempt to acquire riches and who has argued in the same way. The number of those who are tempted to do so will diminish when it is shown that the successfully dishonest person is as much condemned by the opinion of those whose society he seeks as the failure is condemned by the law.