him who is credited with being the first to shed human blood, has been studiously followed in all succeeding ages by those who can look upon wrong and injustice and crime and yet ask, “Am I my brother's keeper?" Tell them that within the last decade the population of our jails and penitentiaries and reformatory institutions increased twice as rapidly as the population outside, and they reply with the utmost complacency, “Am I my brother's keeper?" Tell them that by the end of that decade there was one convicted criminal in every 728 of the inhabitants of this country, and the answer is still, “Am I my brother's keeper?" Point out to them the conditions in which so many criminals are bred, the foul tenement and the reeking slums; ask them to do something to make the conditions of human life more tolerable; ask them in the younger cities to do something to prevent the creation of such plague spots as afflict the older communities; and the answer is, “Am I my brother's keeper?" Call their attention to the temptations that beset all classes alike; the saloons and evil resorts and gambling houses that are openly run in defiance of law and too often by connivance with the authorities; show them that even those who are nearest and dearest to themselves are surrounded by and involved in the common danger; and yet they will ask in tones of unconcern, “Am I my brother's keeper?" And then when, at last, out of an atmosphere surcharged with lawlessness on the part of evil doers and with indifference on the part of sleeping respectability, the lightning-bolt of some awful tragedy smites their city, the word of the Lord God is heard through the dread silence that follows, "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground!"

There are certain tendencies and influences in society as it exists today that develop the germs of criminality in individuals and make crime more easy of commission. I do not forget that doctrine of personal responsibility which I do constantly preach. Every man must bear his own burden, must carry the blame of his own transgression, the guilt of his own misdoing. Temptation has no coercive power. It is not compulsion. Let this be clearly understood. On the other hand, the wrong-doing of the individual is often a sign of the temper of the community. A community may not realize its own drift, may not recognize the trend of its own thought and conduct until startled by some appalling deed. When crime runs rife in outbreaking acts, there is usually a background of lax public sentiment, a weakening of moral fiber in society. Blotches on the human face show something of the state of the blood. Irregularities on the face of society are indicative of irregularities that lie far deeper. Every individual criminal ought to be punished. On this point, let there be no mistake. At the same time, every such infliction of punishment ought to be an occasion of heartsearching to all the members of the society in which that criminal was produced. Each one ought to ask himself, “Have I, directly or indirectly, helped to create the climate in which such growth was possible?” Let us not put the matter off with the impudent answer of Cain, “Am I my brother's keeper?" for back from the lips of Jehovah will come the appalling indictment, "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground."

What are some of the tendencies of which I have spoken?-tendencies which do not characterize one class of society alone, but which run through the whole social fabric and are found in all its parts? I have suggested the risks that a city runs in permitting the formation of slums; but we must confess that our dangers do not all proceed from that direction. They come from above as well as from below. They come not alone from the ignorant but from the educated; not alone from the wrecks and remnants of humanity, but from antecedents of wealth and influence. Nothing is more clearly demonstrated than that education as we have it can not save us and that money can not save us and make of us what we should be. They can not furnish the essentials of character. The conscience and the human sympathies must be trained, and this is the great office of religion. The schools have often but sharpened the faculties of the rogue, and the assassin has sometimes come forth from the gates of the palace as well as from the secret dens of the abandoned districts. Society is one. We rise or sink together. We pull each other down or help each other up. We share alike the gain or loss, the glory or shame.

I.

There is a certain spirit of lawlessness, all too prevalent,— -a disregard of obligation, an impatience with the very suggestion of duty.

Everybody wants to do as he pleases, whether he interferes with others or not. Everybody clamors about rights,—his right to wealth or pleasure or anything else he wishes. Everyone wants to follow his own inclination, irrespective of consequences, intolerant of restraints. Whim and fancy are the untrustworthy guides, ease and enjoyment the ignoble goals. This is the very atmosphere in which violations of law are engendered; these are the very motives which actuate the public offender. Who, today, faces his conscience and asks, first of all, What is my duty? Who today, in the spirit of Paul upon the Damascus road, bares his head and heart in the light of heaven, and asks, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? Who today, instead, of asking, What can I get out of my fellow men? asks, What can I do to serve my fellow men? In this great world of abundant opportunity, in this world of crying needs, where it is possible to do so much, to make a noble career, how many of those who have the means and the furnishing are simply wasting themselves in idleness or wrecking themselves in dissipation! The question, How shall we save the children of misfortune and poverty? is being superceded by the question, How shall we save the children of wealth and privilege?

Take a single illustration of the spirit of lawlessness of which I have spoken. Authorities vary in their estimates of the percentage, but all agree that intemperance plays an important part in the annals of crime. And of this there can be no doubt. Now, I am not undertaking to say what a man, in his private capacity, shall do or shall not do; I am not prescribing what he shall eat and drink in his own house or at his own table; but I do say that the saloon as it exists today, the saloon as an institution, the saloon as the visible incarnation of the evils of alcoholism, the saloon as a public center, is a monumental evil. There more than anywhere else is crime

hatched. There are passions inflamed that break out in deeds of violence. It is the one institution that does not consider itself amenable to law; and in this position it is too often upheld by what we term the better element. The saloon dominates parties and dictates candidates. Business men bow down before it. Legislators sometimes try to remove the limits that bound its territories. Good men apologize for it. Everybody seems to think that it must be treated with the greatest deference. For every misdeed that originates in the saloon, or barroom, or every misdeed that is there fostered, the community that fails to stringently regulate that saloon by law and to see that the laws which regulate it are enforced, is guilty. If the laws say that a saloon shall not be open after twelve o'clock at night, or that it shall not be open on Sunday, or that it shall not sell to such and such classes of people,-the community that permits such laws to be violated, becomes a partner in the resultant crime. Every other establishment or business conducted contrary to law is quickly brought to book and no one apologizes. I do not see why the saloon or the barroom should be the single exception. But the guilt rests upon the community. The saloon exists because it is wanted. It is wanted not alone by the ignorant and vicious; but by those who are classified higher up in the scale. There are many of these institutions that exist by the patronage of people who would not be seen in an average groggery. The saloon defies law, because the patrons demand it and the community tolerates it. And then the time comes when the cry of "murder" cleaves the air over gilded ceiling as well as over grimy rookery; and the word of the Lord God says to that community, "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground!"

II.

There is also abroad a spirit that worships financial success in itself and irrespective of the means by which it has been gained.

Thus men are too often influenced to crimes which hold out the possibility of wealth. Too truly has it been said, “Every young man knows that if he succeeds, he will be forgiven. He knows that so far as society is concerned, the question of whether his crown is one of myrtle or of thorns, is not one of moral right and wrong. The only thing that society, in the long run, will not forgive is failure." And that which goes on at the top of society is bound to report itself at the bottom. The avarice that strains a point of conscience or of law to gain an extra thousand, is precisely the same kind of avarice that actuates the common thief or the housebreaker. And the avarice of the thief at the bottom justifies itself by the avarice of his brother, in the same profession, at the top.

III.

Still more serious is the spirit of indifference to the sanctity of human life.

Ex-President White, of Cornell,- -our present minister to Germany,—is authority for the statement that, in 1895, there were 10,500 murders committed in the United States. I may be wrong about it, but it does not seem as if this appalling showing could be possible, were there not too lax

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR CRIME.

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a sentiment concerning the value and sacredness of human life prevading society in general. There are some sections of this country where the murder of a Chinaman would awaken no comment, others where the killing of a negro would be taken as a matter of course, and still others where the killing of an Indian would attract no attention. Whatever the race, any sentiment that ignores violence for that race prepares violence for every other race. But go farther: "Men are cheaper than shingles," said the sweater, when his men asked him to stop a leak in the roof. "We do not care whether you live or die." The reluctance with which safeguards to life and limb have been introduced into the machinery of manufacture and transportation, has been extremely significant. On the other hand, the same spirit of indifference is shown in another way, by those who lionize the criminal; who devote pages of the public prints to his history and conversation, who place bouquets of fair flowers in the hands that are red with blood, and who express a maudlin sympathy for what they term his misfortune!

IV.

There is one thing more: The general breaking up of the sanctity of the home, the institution that is the very safeguard of all our highest in

terests.

Some statistics on the subject of divorce presented by Prof. Peabody are startling in the extreme. He shows that in all Europe, Canada, and Australia, in 1889 the total number of divorces granted was 20,111; in the United States, in this same year, it was 23,472. In 1867, there were granted in the United States 9,937 divorces; in 1886 there were granted 29,535. The increase of population in those twenty years was 60 per cent; the increase of divorces was 156 per cent. The total of married couples living in the United States to one couple divorced was, in 1870, 664 and and in 1880, 481. The ratio of marriages celebrated to one couple divorced was: in Massachusetts, in 1867 forty-five to one, and in 1886 thirty-one "It may even be computed," Prof. Peabody adds, "that if the present ratio of increase in population and in separation be maintained, the number of separations of marriage by death would be, at the end of the twentieth century, less than the number of separations by divorce." Destroy the home and the last bulwark of society is gone.

to one.

V.

Thus we must realize the fact that the question of crime and criminality is not merely a black patch upon the social fabric, but, that it is woven into the warp and woof of the entire piece.

Society itself must be made better, and this bettering process concerns

us all.

The redemption of the masses is largely in the hands of the intelligent, the cultivated, the privileged, and the wealthy. It is a vital and personal question. The man at the top too often says, "The laws are made for the ignorant and vicious; I do not need them." But the eyes of the ignorant and vicious are upon him, and the ignorant and vicious see no reason why

to produce results of greater value now unobtainable; and I will only briefly add just what the colony system does for the epileptic and his disease at Sonyea:

First: It effects cures in a larger proportion of cases than can be effected under any other form of treatment, notwithstanding the fact that few cases are sent to the colony before the disease is essentially chronic.

Second: It brings about a reduction in the frequency and severity of attacks in the majority of all cases, a large per cent being sufficiently improved to permit them to go into the outside world to earn a living.

Third: It provides special education for a class in the special manner they require it to make them self-helpful, this being something they cannot get outside of the colony.

Fourth: It promotes individual happiness in a large proportion of cases, due to the patients living in an atmosphere of congeniality, an atmosphere saturated with a fellow feeling and desire to help each other.

Fifth: It provides skilled forms of treatment by those who do no work but this, and the opportunity for scientific research that can nowhere else be found and that should be here done for the benefit of all who suffer in this terrible way.

Sixth, and lastly: Segregating epileptics in this way has a decided economic value, for so long as they are kept in proper seclusion, that seclusion being at the same time most beneficial to the epileptic, it shuts off absolutely the probability of that epileptic handing down a defective or an epileptic progeny, something that all epileptics are much too prone to do. The presence of an epileptic in the marriageable world is like a bank account at compound interest, that keeps increasing its kind.

DISCUSSION.

THE PRESIDENT: This paper from Dr. Spratling was not a voluntary contribution, but comes in response to a request which I made that he contribute something of his knowledge on the subject for the edification of this Conference. He was not able to be present here, but we have with us a man who met him at the Indiana Conference and heard him address the meeting, the Hon. Amos W. Butler, and so I am going to call on him in order that he may tell us something of the impressions that Dr. Spratling created there.

MR. BUTLER: Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is a pleasure to look into your faces and to say how do you do to the friends who are interested in its many phases, in the great work of public charities in Minnesota. We have heard so much of Minnesota's progress in these lines, and have learned so much from her, that it is a great pleasure to meet with you in this your annual Conference. We had the pleasure of having Dr. Spratling speak before our body and give us an illustrated lecture on the village care of the epileptic, as we call it. This was illustrated by 68 views of the buildings, farm and city, inmates and methods of work at Craig Colony. In this great institution they have about 850 epileptics. I had the pleasure of visiting it twice, and I know of nothing that has impressed me more with hope for the unfortunate epileptics than to see that institution, planned as it is, doing work so as to round out the ideas which Dr. Spratling and Dr. Peterson and our old friend, William P. Letchworth, who, among others, have devoted their lives to the interest of these people, who live in small cottages in a great village, on 1900 acres of land, which is divided into two equal parts by a river, on one side of which are the women and on the other the men. By women