Outdoor relief.
By outdoor relief is meant the giving of assistance to the poor in their own homes. Many years ago this was the more common plan of dealing with the problem; it still exists in many American communities. People who are in need apply to the overseers of the poor or to some other public authority from whom they receive, after proper investigation, such assistance in the form of food, clothing, fuel, or medicine as they may urgently require. Some of the larger cities have abandoned altogether the giving of outdoor relief at the public expense because they have found this system open to grave abuses. Unless administered with great care, it encourages shiftlessness and results in the expenditure of large amounts from the public funds. The tendency nowadays is to leave outdoor relief to be provided by private organizations although some communities still take care of the most urgent cases from the public funds. These private organizations are sometimes connected with the churches but more often they are entirely non-sectarian, made up of generous men and women who give both time and money to the work.
Private outdoor relief often leads to indiscriminate almsgiving, thus lending encouragement to wastefulness and imposture. People who are too lazy to earn an honest living apply to various organizations for help and sometimes obtain it from several of them. |The organization of relief agencies.| To eliminate this overlapping central bodies known as Charity Organization Societies, or Associated Charities, or Family Welfare Societies have been formed in many of the larger American communities. Their function is to serve as a clearing house of information concerning all applicants for assistance and in other ways to make the work of the individual organizations more efficient.
The Permanent Remedies.—The permanent solution of the problem of poverty must be sought in comprehensive measures of prevention. Some of these measures are already being taken in the more progressive states; others have been proposed and are steadily gaining public support. |Social insurance.| Insurance against sickness and accident, minimum wage laws, mothers’ pensions, are already doing their share in the prevention of poverty. Old age pensions have been established abroad and in time will doubtless be provided for the American worker. Insurance against unemployment may be inadvisable (see p. [418]) but the organization of industry can be so improved as to reduce the amount of unemployment now existing. |Other remedies.| The prohibition of the liquor traffic has marked an important step in the direction of reducing poverty. Vocational schools for the deaf, the blind, and the crippled, are now training these unfortunates in the art of earning their own living. The enforcement of laws relating to compulsory education will reduce illiteracy and thus decrease the class from which poverty secures most of its recruits. Present restrictions upon immigration, if they are continued, will render more easy the maintenance of American standards of living among those who toil with their hands. By the segregation of degenerates in public institutions, moreover, we can prevent the propagation of degeneracy.[[262]] Overcrowding and unsanitary conditions of living are being prevented by modern city planning and good housing laws.
Now it is doubtful whether all of these measures put together will avail to wipe out poverty entirely, but if they are vigorously applied the amount of poverty in the United States will certainly be much reduced. |The danger of too many remedies.| There is always a danger, of course, that laws and regulations designed to promote the well-being of the poor may over-reach themselves, and may result in placing additional burdens upon the wage-earning classes. Attempts to narrow the gulf between the rich and the poor by the levying of discriminatory taxes do not usually succeed; in the end they merely augment the hardships of the poor. It is customary for sociologists to speak of poverty as a “social disease” and to assure us that like any other disease it can be eradicated. That is all very true. But diseases are not eradicated by striking at the heads of healthy people in order that they may have a smaller advantage over the sick. Neither will the plague of poverty be cured by measures which strike at the well-to-do for the mere reason that they are so much better off than the poor. The poor can never be made rich by the simple expedient of making the rich poorer.
The Problem of the Mentally Defective.—There are various forms of mental defectiveness, ranging from feeble-mindedness to violent insanity. The total number of mentally defective persons in the United States is estimated to exceed half a million. Until relatively recent years no careful distinction was made between persons afflicted with different forms of mental trouble; all were treated in much the same way. |Old and new methods of dealing with the insane.| The usual plan was to bring them together in large asylums where the violently insane were kept under close restraint while the “harmless” inmates were given somewhat greater freedom. This crude method of dealing with unfortunates who needed medical treatment far more than they needed restraint and confinement has now been almost everywhere abandoned, and the treatment of mental defectiveness is being carried on in accordance with more scientific methods. These scientific methods involve the careful study and diagnosis of each particular case and the substitution of medical care for mechanical restraint. In response to this treatment a considerable proportion of the cases have proved capable of marked improvement, and sometimes entire recovery. It should be mentioned, however, that some forms of insanity are not curable by any known form of scientific treatment. A permanent reduction in the number of mentally-defective persons can best be achieved by preventing the transmission of hereditary defects, by the proper treatment of mental ailments as soon as the first symptoms appear, and by the removal of two things which have contributed greatly to the spread of insanity in the past, namely, alcoholism and the drug habit.
The Problem of Crime.—A crime is an offence against society. In early days all offences were regarded as having been committed against individuals. The person who stole something was looked upon as having wronged the owner, and the owner was entitled to secure his own redress. But with the development of organized society there grew up the idea that the whole community had an interest in the prevention of wrong-doing, and that wrongs which were ostensibly directed against single individuals were in reality committed against the whole people. |Evolution of the criminal law.| So society took upon itself the responsibility for making laws to protect the rights of individuals, and for the imposition of punishment whenever these laws are violated. A crime is an offence against society because it involves some violation of a law which has been made in the interest of all. An act may constitute a crime, therefore, without being morally wrong. It is not morally wrong to park an automobile alongside a hydrant, but it is in most cities a violation of the law to do so, and punishable in the courts. The courts enforce the law whatever it is.
The Classification of Crimes.—It was formerly the custom to classify all crimes as treasons, felonies, or misdemeanors. A treason was an attempt to overthrow the state by rebellion or otherwise; a felony was a serious offence against persons or property, such as murder or burglary; while the term misdemeanor was used to include all the less serious violations of the law, such as selling milk without a license or disregarding a sign to keep off the grass in the public parks. Nowadays, however, a more elaborate grouping of crimes is usually made. |The various types of offences.| This grouping usually includes (a) offences against the public peace and order, such as treason, rioting, and any obstruction of the officers of the law; (b) offences against the public health and morals, such as bigamy, gambling, the sale of intoxicants, or the pollution of public water supplies; (c) offences against the person, such as murder, manslaughter, or assault; and (d) offences against property, including burglary, theft, fraud, and so on. This list of offences does not include such things as breaches of contract, libel, and failure to pay debts, for these are not crimes but torts or civil wrongs. They are still regarded as offences against individuals and not against society. The aggrieved individual brings his own suit in the courts, and the courts merely act as arbiters to see that justice is done between man and man.
The Causes of Crime.—The causes of crime, like those of poverty, are both individual and social. |1. Individual causes of crime.| Men sometimes take to wrongdoing because they are mentally or morally defective, having inherited traits of degeneracy. Handicapped by these defects in making an honest living they often resort to crime at an early age. Bad training in the home, habits of truancy acquired during school age, and aversion to work are all individual causes which promote criminality. |2. Social causes of crime.| The social causes include poverty, the influence of bad companions, the lack of efficiency on the part of police in cities, the undue leniency of the courts in some cases, and the difficulty which even honest men sometimes encounter in obeying the host of laws which our lawmakers are turning out every year. It is significant that crimes against property, such as burglary and theft become less frequent when the country is prosperous and more numerous in times of depression when so many persons are out of employment. Among illiterates the proportion of offenders against the law is very high, so that the failure to enforce rigidly the laws relating to school attendance must also be set down as one of the social causes of criminality.
The Extent of Crime in the United States.—More than half a million persons are sent to jails or reformatories in the United States every year. The number of those who are let off with the payment of fines is much larger. Even these two figures put together do not give us the number of crimes committed, however, for it is probable that the majority of crimes do not result in the detection of the guilty person, and many minor crimes are not reported to the police at all. The cost of maintaining police systems for the prevention of crime, courts for the trial of accused persons, and prisons for the incarceration of the convicted, is about a billion dollars per year, or about as much as the country spends upon education.