2.—Aggravation of Social Extremes.
In present-day life the struggle for existence is becoming increasingly difficult. The war of all against all is raging and is waged relentlessly, often without any discrimination in the methods employed. The French saying: “Ote-toi de la, que je m’y mette” (get out of there that I may take your place), is practiced in actual life. The weak must make way for the strong. If the material force of money, of property, does not suffice, the meanest methods are resorted to that a desired aim may be attained. Lies, fraud and deception, forgery and perjury, the worst crimes are committed for this end. As one individual is arrayed against another in this warfare, thus we find class against class, sex against sex, age against age. Advantage is the only arbiter of human relations; every other consideration is set aside. As soon as advantage requires it, thousands upon thousands of workingmen and women are cast out into the street, and become public charges or enforced vagabonds. In masses workers wander from place to place through the length and breadth of the land, and society fears and despises them more and more as the duration of their unemployment makes their external appearance more shabby, and, eventually, also demoralizes their character. Respectable society does not know what it means to do without the simplest requirements of order and cleanliness for months, to wander about with an empty stomach, and to reap nothing but ill-disguised disgust and contempt from those who are the upholders of this system. The families of these unfortunates suffer the hardest privations and become dependent on public charity. Sometimes despair drives parents to awful crimes against their children and themselves, to murder and suicide. Especially during hard times these deeds of despair increase to an appalling degree. But the ruling classes are not perturbed by such occurrences. The same editions of the daily papers that report such deeds, caused by poverty and despair, also contain reports of festive revelries and glittering official pageants, as if there were joy and abundance everywhere.
The general need and the increasingly difficult struggle for existence drive more and more women and girls into lives of degradation and ruin. Demoralization, brutality and crime increase, while the prisons, the penitentiaries and the so-called reformatories can hardly contain the mass of their inmates.
Crime is closely connected with social conditions. Society does not wish to admit this fact. Like the ostrich, that conceals its head in the sand not to see approaching danger, we deceive ourselves in regard to these conditions that should lead to self-accusation. We try to persuade ourselves that it is all due to laziness, love of pleasure and lack of piety on the part of the workingmen. This is self-delusion and hypocrisy of the worst kind. As social conditions grow more unfavorable for a majority of the population, crimes become more numerous and more severe. The struggle for existence assumes its most cruel and violent form and creates a condition in which men regard one another as mortal enemies. Social bonds are severed and human beings treat each other with hostility.[189]
The ruling classes who do not see, nor wish to see, to the bottom of things, seek to remedy these evils in their own way. When poverty and need increase, and, as a result, demoralization and crime increase likewise, the source of the evil is not sought out in order to plug up this source, but the products of these conditions are punished. As the evils grow and the number of evil-doers increases, persecutions and penalties are made more severe. The belief seems to be that the devil can be driven out by Satan. Even Professor Haeckel deems it justifiable to punish crime with severe penalties and to resort to capital punishment.[190] On this point he is fully agreed with reactionaries of all shades who otherwise are his mortal enemies. Haeckel holds the opinion that incorrigible criminals and wrong-doers should be exterminated like weeds that rob the plants of air, light and the soil to grow in. If Haeckel had devoted himself partly to the study of social sciences instead of devoting himself to the natural sciences exclusively, he would know that these criminals could be transformed into useful members of human society, if society would offer them the needful conditions of existence. He would know that the extermination of individual criminals would no more prevent the perpetuation of new crimes, than weeds could be prevented from growing while their roots or their seeds remained. Man will never be able to prevent absolutely the formation of harmful organisms in nature. But he will be able so to improve the social order that he himself has created, that the conditions of existence shall be favorable to all, that each individual shall be enabled to develop freely, and shall no longer be compelled to satisfy his hunger, his desire for possessions, or his ambitions, at the expense of others.[191]
They who seek to remove crime by removing its causes cannot favor violent methods of repression. They cannot prevent society from protecting itself in its own way against criminals whom it can, of course, not give free scope, but they demand all the more urgently a transformation of society that would mean a removal of the causes of crime.
The connection between social conditions and misdemeanors and crimes has frequently been shown by statisticians and political economists.[192] One of the most frequent misdemeanors, that is regarded as a misdemeanor by our society, in spite of all its Christian teachings about charity—is mendicancy. In connection with this subject the statistics of the Kingdom of Saxony teach us that the increase of the great crisis that began in Germany in 1890 and attained its height from 1892 to 1893, the number of persons punished for mendicancy increased likewise. During 1890 the number of persons punished for this misdemeanor was 8,815; during 1891, 10,075, and during 1892, 13,120. Similar facts were observed in Austria, where, during 1891, 90,926 persons were convicted of mendicancy and vagrancy, and 98,998 persons during 1892.[193] This is a considerable increase.
Pauperization of the masses on the one hand and increasing wealth on the other is the stamp of our period. The trend of present-day development may be well judged from the fact that in the United States five men—John D. Rockefeller, the late Harriman, J. Pierpont Morgan, W. K. Vanderbilt, and G. J. Gould—in the year 1900, owned together over 800,000,000 dollars, and that they possessed sufficient influence to control the economic life of the United States and partly also that of Europe. In all civilized countries the large combinations of capitalists form the most noteworthy phenomenon of the recent period and are constantly gaining more social and political importance.
[189] Plato already recognized the results of such conditions. He wrote: “A state in which classes exist is not one single state but two. The poor form one, and the rich form the other. Both dwell together, but always way-lay one another. Finally the ruling class becomes unable to wage a war, for then it depends upon the masses whom, when armed, it fears more than the enemy.”—Plato, The State. Aristotle says: “Widespread poverty is an evil, for it can hardly be prevented that such persons become promoters of disorder.”
[190] Natural History of the Creation.
[191] A similar thought is expressed by Plato in his “State”: “Crimes are caused by ignorance, by bad education and institutions of the state.” Plato was better acquainted with the nature of society than many of his learned followers two thousand and three hundred years later. That is not very encouraging.
[192] M. Sursky—New facts concerning the economic causes of crime. “New Era.”
[193] H. Herz—Crime and Criminals in Austria. The author says: “The prevailing economic status must be taken into consideration in the judgment of crime. The organization of production and consumption and the distribution of wealth has a marked influence on crime in many ways.”