Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/461

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NATURAL SELECTION AND CRIME.
435

under which they were brought into the world. For this purpose industrial schools, in all lines of work, should be established. The crying need in all trades to-day is for boys who will industrially continue their apprentice term. During this time the boy must be induced to live at home, caring to live there from the attractiveness of the surroundings. Music, lectures, thanksgiving dinners, flowers, etc.—the outflow of compassionate impulses, which make certain penal institutions so alluring to many criminals—will find a better destiny in making pleasanter the lives of deserving tenement dwellers. Cooking schools, training schools for nurses and servants, should be instituted for the girls. With such co-operating appliances, our charity committees, instead of the often despairing tramps through noisome regions, to be deceived by the wary, or horrified at the treachery and lies of others, will have a keen stimulus to seek out the deserving poor; to find those that are willing to work, knowing that, when once rescued and placed on firm ground, they are to remain there in many cases self-supporting. The response to appeals for aid will be more prompt and bountiful when it is known that worthy ones only are to be helped. The cost of such a project will be great. If private munificence will not do it, cities may.

In Boston, museums of art and of natural history, though free to the public, are, nevertheless, sustained by private help. In New York the State and city are repeatedly called upon for contributions to similar institutions. What municipality of any intelligence has hestitatedto spend millions for pure water-supply and sewer system, after it has been clearly demonstrated that local cesspools menace the health of the community by vitiating the local water-supply? It is possible that, when a community fully realizes the moral pollution that comes from the slums, an agitation may result that shall lead a city to construct tenement-houses as it now does its school-houses.[1] The question is sure to arise, What shall be done with the incompetent, though not necessarily vicious or intemperate? They must not be allowed to starve, surely not; but it is to be observed that, when such incompetents tumble overboard, they make strenuous efforts to save themselves, and if caught in a burning building they appear active, even boisterous, in their attempts to escape. The simplest manual labor is within their power, and for this they should be paid; their chances for quality of food, quantity of tobacco, etc., should depend upon their efforts to help themselves. If they will not work, and insist upon being vagabonds, they come under cognizance of the law, and


  1. The pauper, the imbecile, the lunatic, and in some cities those afflicted in other ways, are provided for in appropriate public institutions.