The inherited effects of insanity, alcoholism, and other pathological
conditions, make self-control far more difficult for some unfortunates.
Such baneful inheritances will some day be minimized by eugenic laws;
and individuals whose abnormal mental condition makes them dangerous
to society will be kept under permanent restraint. The causes of crime
are, however, to a far greater degree environmental. Undernutrition,
overwork, worry, and various other sources of poor health, create a
condition of lowered resistance to impulse. The herding of the poor
into crowded tenements, the inability to find work, the lack of
wholesome interests and excitements to provide a normal outlet for
energy of body and mind, the daily sight of the luxury of the rich
and the bitterness of its contrast with their own need, awaken dangerous
passions and reckless defiance of law. The lack of education, contact
with absorption of law-defying philosophies of life, tend to make crime
appear natural and justified. All of these unhealthy conditions are
being attacked under the spur of our new social conscience; and with
every step in social alleviation crime diminishes. Criminals are, in
general, just such men and women as we; in like situations we too
should be tempted to crime. We might all repeat with Bunyan: "There,
but for the grace of God, go I!" Give every man and woman a fair chance
for happiness in normal ways, and the lure of crime will largely
vanish.[Footnote: Cf. An Open Letter to Society from Convict 1776 (F.
H. Revell Co.).] Yet human nature in its most favorable circumstances
and in its most favored individuals has its twists and its anti-social
impulses. For the potential criminal-and that means for every one of
us-there must be elaborated also a system of moral or religious
training which shall seek to develop the better nature that is in every
man and enchain the brute. With such a discipline imposed upon each
generation there would be a far greater hope for the repression of
evil tendencies, whether due to temperamental perversion or provocative