Then the heart and mind of society is applied to the question, and
certain results are soon reached; others slowly worked toward.

First result. Some persons are so morally diseased that they must have
hospital treatment. The world's last prison will be simply a hospital
for moral incurables. They must by no means reproduce their kind,--that
can be attended to at once. Some are morally diseased, but may be
cured, and the best powers of society will be used to cure them. Some
are only morally diseased because of the conditions in which they are
born and reared, and here society can save millions at once.

An intelligent society will no more neglect its children than an
intelligent mother will neglect her children; and will see as clearly
that ill-fed, ill-dressed, ill-taught and vilely associated little ones
must grow up gravely injured.

As a matter of fact we make our crop of criminals, just as we make our
idiots, blind, crippled, and generally defective. Everyone is a baby
first, and a baby is not a criminal, unless we make it so. It never
would be,--in right conditions. Sometimes a pervert is born, as
sometimes a two-headed calf is born, but they are not common.

The older, simpler forms of crime we may prevent with case and despatch,
but how of the new ones?--big, terrible, far-reaching, wide-spread
crimes, for which we have as yet no names; and before which our old
system of anti-personal punishment falls helpless? What of the crimes
of poisoning a community with bad food; of defiling the water; of
blackening the air; of stealing whole forests? What of the crimes of
working little children; of building and renting tenements that produce
crime and physical disease as well? What of the crime of living on the