How to Lessen Contributions to Crime

How to Lessen Contributions to Crime A Study for the M. I. A. Advanced Senior Classes Lesson VII— Poverty

The aim of this lesson is to show that poverty is one of the causes of crime; and to suggest ways of relieving it.

— Importance of the Subject. Economists and sociologists differ as to the cause and means of the prevention of poverty but they are united in the opinion that it is a gigantic factor in human misery. In addition to the suffering it produces, it is a serious impediment to social progress. Because it is a fundamental thing, and affects the race as a whole, universal effort should be focussed upon its prevention. — Meaning of the Term. Poverty is relative, but the term is used here to mean the abject type, "a standard of life below that which will provide for physical efficiency and social decency." When vast portions of America were in the pioneer stage of development, and public lands were still ob- tainable, there existed a higher type of poverty, which could be termed self- respecting poverty. This type proved to be a disciplinary and stimulating agent for character-building in the lives of such notables as the Prophet Joseph Smith, the emancipator Abraham Lincoln, the statesman James A. Garfield, the inventor Thomas A. Edison, and thousands of other successful men and women. — Poverty as a Contributor to Crime. Unequal distribution of wealth has always existed but during the last half century economic conditions in this country have changed greatly. In the congested centers of population pov- erty is becoming an insurmountable barrier to opportunity. It crushes self- respect and ambition. It exists side by side with enormous wealth. Neither extreme furnishes the conditions favorable to the development of happy, useful lives. "Crime begins in poverty" is an old proverb derived from China. Ignorance and lawlessness are often traceable to it. Prostitution is another of evil products. its Stealing, gambling, lying, drunkenness, family desertion are familiar accompaniments of indigency. The curse of destitutions falls still more heavily upon the young. "It starves, freezes, destroys child life." Penury and under nourishment go hand in hand. An educator in Chicago submitted this startling statement, "Five thousand children who attend the schools of Chicago are habitually hungry." The destructive effects of poverty are painfully apparent where child- labor is permitted. Deterioration is rapid mentally and physically. The child who is employed long hours away from home influence and parental restraint, in the company of vicious associates falls a prey to disease and temptation. Juvenile courts and reformatories are recruited from the poorer districts of large cities. Incorrigibles among children of the slums frequntly become degenerates among the adults. — Forces Back of this Evil. "Low wages, high rents, high prices, and bargains, are among the social forces behind poverty." Economic injustice is a prominent cause of destitution. Also widowhood, orphanage, sickness, unchecked contagion, unemployment, insufficient food. Other causes are p^rs^.nal shortcomings, as idleness, ignorance, inefficiency, mental and physical defects, the use of narcotics, drugs, and alcoholic beverages. Most of these things tabulated as causes are also the effects of poverty.

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Forces to be Marshalled Against this Evil.—Forces that may be mar- shalled to abolish poverty are economic reforms and legislative measures, not drastic but gradual so as to give time for necessary readjustment. Leg- islative enactment on prohibition, woman's suffrage, child labor, narcotics, drugs, venereal diseases, contagion, betting, and gambling may be depended upon to decrease destitution. Laws lose much of their effectiveness unless supported- by public opin- ion, therefore, the first step is the diffusion of knowledge which will direct public attention to industrial abuses and economic injustice. The percentage of poverty caused by preventable ill health could be diminished by proper food, free clinics with medical and surgical treat- ment, and training in personal hygiene. Other alleviative measures are: improved sanitation, checking of overcrowding in tenement districts, and the establishment of playgrounds and recreation centers. Ignorance of mothers iu the manual working class could be overcome by free instruction in the home and in community centers by government demonstrators. In "con- tinuation schools" free industrial training could be given to the unemployed which would make them more and more efficient and self respecting. — The Gospel Plan for Poverty Prevention. When the attention is turned from the general to the local economic condition there are many encourag- ing features. The restored gospel embraces potent factors for the preven- tion of destitution in the system known as the United Order, or Order of Enoch, a system of collective ownership or an industrial democracy, im- parted by revelation; also in such substitute measures as industrial co- operation, constructive relief society charities, fast offerings, and tithing. In pioneer days, the relief extended by Brigham Young to immigrants arriving in Salt Lake valley in the autumn without food for the winter, when he ordered such public works as the erection of the famous Social Hall, and the massive walls of defense around Salt Lake City to furnish employment to able bodied men who, otherwise, would be forced to eat the bitter bread of charity, is illustrative of the correct principle of poverty prevention. Reference books: Poverty and Social Progress, by Dr. Parmelee; The Prevention of Destitution, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

Questions and Problems for Discussion

1. What crimes in your community if any are traceable to poverty? 2. What seems to be the cause of poverty in your community? What remedies would you suggest? 3. Suggest effective measures for lessening destitution generally. 4. Statistics prove that a large percentage of paupers and criminals are feeble-minded. Do you favor segregation of the feeble-minded in schools under state control? How would this tend to decrease poverty? 5. Show how sanitation, medical care, and education will increase the productivity of the laboring classes. 6. Is vagrancy a cause or an effect of poverty? 7. Do you believe this: "Assistance rendered to the lazy and indolent without compensation through labor is a crime"? 8. If laws are passed for the alleviation of poverty, how may the worthy be segregated from the unworthy poor? 9. How does the Doctrine and Covenants provide for the abolishing of poverty? (See Doc. and Cov. 42:42; 68:30,31; 75:29.)

Lesson 8 —Luxury — Definition. Many economic writers have attempted to determine what is luxury, but with only partial success. All luxury that is normal must arise

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out of surplus income. But temporary luxury might arise out of recklessness in the use of credit or inherited fortune, or greed, or a criminal life. Such income so expended is in itself abnormal, and its nature is to breed abnor- mality for whatever it is expended. Normal surplus is the basis of all civilized progress. A stable prosperity is impossible without it but is also dependent upon the wisdom employed in its expenditure. Wisdom in expenditure is measured by the growth of re- source and culture and the ever increasing power to conserve and enjoy these social values. Normal Culture.—Normal culture expresses itself in the various forms of strength, beauty, morality — and knowledge beautiful and well ordered homes, magnificent public buildings, parks, streets and highways; advance- ment in education, art, science and literature; advancement in commerce, in- dustry, government, agriculture, engineering; general religious, moral, intel- lectual, and physical power and refinement. All these and more count in the catalog of human luxuries, and none are essentially contributors to crime. — Excessive W ealth. Crime in all of its phases is an abnormality and has its origin in personal and social malformations. Some are born degenerate, and wealth, in their hands, becomes the seed of moral contagion as long as it lasts. Some are made degenerate by the abnormal luxury of their home and social environment, and with them the sense of social accountability has not developed; life expresses itself in idleness, gluttony, riotous and sensu- ous amusement, excessive and unmanly sport, superficial ideas of chivalry, crude notions of property rights, crude and vulgar habits in their relations with the opposite sex, utterly inadequate conceptions of the principle of marriage, and its personal and social obligations; selfish, indiscriminating and, when in difficulty, criminal ways of gratifying their personal desires and avoiding the consequences. Some achieve wealth so far in excess of their normal capacities that the perplexity of inventing ways to consume it transforms them into social monsters. Such men invariably undertake to buy social and other prefer- ment with their check books. The wives and daughters of such families, under the handicap of their impoverished culture, strive for distinction through the vulgar display and waste of their wealth, decorating their per- sons with costly fabrics, emblazoning their carriages with fictitious heraldry, surrounding themselves with princely equipments and a swarm of foreign flunkies, and in other foolish ways squandering their time and wealth in a vain effort to vanquish the ennui of nothing to do. The sons, in the mean- time, are likely to have no higher ideals than to spend their fahter's money without stint for whatever their diseased appetites may crave, thus enervat- ing and degrading themselves, debauching their associates and not infre- quently transforming a whole community living upon their extravagant ex- penditures into degenerates and criminals. — An Illustration. A New York man made $100,000,000 profits a few years ago from the sale of town lots. He died, leaving to his son and daugh- ter about $40,000,000 each. The daughter married a titled person from Europe as a social investment, and is reported to have divorced him as a slacker in the present war. The son was reported to have married a wealthy Philadelphia woman who had been divorced from a man who had been divoced from a woman who had been divorced. The last in the series, the heir to the $40,000,000, was himself in the divorce court only a year or two after he was married. A shor time previous to his marriage he was brought into court to testify against another of his class who had personated him in a matrimonial venture. As it was reported in the press, the court, out of curiosity, asked him how much he owned. "I do not know, sir," was the answer. Not quite satisfied, the court sought to reach him from another angle. "How much do you spend in a year?" "I do not have any idea, sir, how much I spend in a year." But the court was still curious and hopeful,

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"What is the nature of your property?" "Really, sir, I do not know any- thing about my property. All that I concern myself with in such matters is that when I want money and I represent the fact to my lawyer, he hands me a check." The surplus from American labor and industry has created thousands of families similar to this one. The amount that goes o\er seas to pay for titled marriages alone was estimated before the war to be about $200,000,000 annually. — The Remedy. Abnormal luxury has been the twin companion of greed to worry and distract civilization ever since the institution of property be- came effective. What can be seriously proposed now as a remedy? The thing that up to now has been the greatest stimulus to false luxury is the hereditary aristocracy of Europe. The war is going to prove whether that is to persist in any effective form. Another powerful factor which is to come into the problem as an effect of the war must for the present be passed in silence for the best of reasons. Property legislation such as has been pro- posed by Roosevelt and others, and measures that may be suggested by our war experiences will undoubtedly come up for examination when peace re- turns, but until then cannot consistently be discussed. But there are some forces that can be engaged in such a service at any time. One is the simple remedy proposed by Sir Matthew Arnold as a cure for war, namely, "Get a little more culture." Whenever a body of influ- ential families determine to apply their wealth and express their good for- tune in terms of a higher culture and a progressive utility, rather than in ostentation and the various displays of affluence common in this country, they will be doing the greatest thing that any one can do in this line. If, as has been suggested in the case of Greed and churches, the schools, the clubs and the homes would enter upon a systematic campaign for the making of an atmosphere antagonistic to false luxury and its products, no one can foretell what might be accomplished by it. It is a perfectly normal thing to seek distinction among our fellow men, and if by any means it can be made more popular to express our rights to be noticed and honored in a pure, effective culture and an ability and disposition to serve, rather than a mere display of wealth and the disposition to waste, the former is what will be done by normal people.

Problems and Questions 1. What is culture? Show that extravagant expenditures for personal 2. gratifications tend to weaken accountability. 3. Show that the absence of

economic incentive to labor is a moral handicap. 4. Discuss the problem of money allowances to non-producing members in a wealthy family. 5. Com- pare the moral effects of unearned luxurious private allowances and inher- itances, with unearned benefits from state, for instance, free education and free health. 6. Discuss the effect of sensuous indulgence upon the will to conform to social restrictions. 7. Discuss the effects of conspicuous lux- incessantly ury, idleness and waste upon the morals of the family that labors for the bare necessities of life. . References

Readings, Ezekiel, on Luxury in Tyre; Amos and Jeremiah, on Luxury Brooks Adams, Fall Civilization and Decay; Macaulay s among the jews; of chapters on the Restoration, in the History of England; Deblen, Theory of the Leisure Class. Lesson IX —Greed What is Greed?— Covetousness, on the part of one who is not in need,

for things needed by others is greed. To crave more than a just proportion of things needed by others is

greed.

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A craving for power over wealth or human beings with no purpose to use it in legitimate human service is greed. An inordinate craving for distinction among men is greed. (This is not intended to apply in any sense to the love of moral approbation.) — The Greedy Man. The bargain driver craves an unfair share of the re- wards of trade, and employs dishonest means to get it. He does it because he is greedy. In early days there lived in one of our southern counties a rank ex- ample of the bargain driver. He had an unusual amount of money with no disposition to use it except to loan it to people in distress from whom he was able to exact twenty-five cents on the dollar per year for its use. He was known throughout the country as "Old Twenty-five Percent." He was greedy. A few years ago a certain manufacturer, though enjoying great pros- perity, reduced the wages of his men whose wages were already below the normal family standard. The strike that followed came near plunging his state into a civil war. Many lives were sacrificed and millions of wealth were destroyed. "When asked by an investigating commission why he did it, the manufacturer made answer that he could get all the workmen he wanted for the reduced price and was not in business for charity. He was greedy. When war was declared against Germany the food administrator urged a general planting of potatoes to insure our allies against hunger. War profiteers cornered the potato supply and required those who sought to respond to the country's call to pay $5 a bushel for their seed. The profiteers when they came to think about it must have realized that they were greedy. The genius of Napoleon Bonaparte without his greed might have made him one of the greatest benefactors of the race. His greed turned all Europe into a battle field, and caused him to be branded as an enemy of the race. When this world war was started, with a wickedness of spirit which God alone can fully comprehend, it was because a whole nation had been rendered insane by a wholesale propaganda of greed. The reason that Lenine and Trotzky, who are detested and counted among the greatest scoundrels of the war, betrayed their country while pre- tending to be its deliverers, and are now fortifying their infamy by the assassination of thousands of their own people, is that Lenine and Trotzky were greedy. Fifty percent of all the crimes of the world, it is said, are caused by greed. The Resources of Greed.— Where animal propensities dominate, greed prospers. Indulgence of carnal appetites, undue love of amusement, vanitv, false pride, unregulated ambition, misfortune, ignorance of the principles of progress and universal right, unwise laws, all these contribute to the re- wards of greed. A successful manipulator of railway stock was once asked by an inves- tigating cnmmittee how he got his fortune of one hundred millions. His naive reply was, 'T got it by employing the best New York lawyers to ex- ploit the imperfections of the law.'* And he was asked, "Who put those imperfections into the laws?" "Oh!" said the witness, "in some cases I suppose those same New York lawyers had something to do with it." The railroad man was greedy, the lawyers were greedy, and the legislators who were thus corrupted were greedy.

What can he Done About if?—President Wilson was once asked by the loyal women of America, "What shall we do with our hyphenated Amer- icans?" The answer was, "Create an ail-American atmosphere to which hyphenism is intolerable and in which that detestable culture is impossi-

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bie." This principle is easily applicable to the commoner forms of greed. A twin companion of greed is extravagance. This is especially true of obedience rendered to superior fortune and a vulgar display of the capacity to spend and waste that which the majority of the human race is in want of. Propagate in our schools, colleges, church organizations, theatres, clubs, and popular resorts, ideas and feelings such that this trait will be met with aversion rather than with a species of admiration. We talk much of a return to "the simple life." Let all be informed that the simple life so greatly to be desired is not the crude arts and raw livelihood of the savage, but just a hearty and thorough-going conformity to a Christian, humane, and Latter- day Saint life. Questions and Problems for Discussion 1. What should be said of a controlling desire to possess without due compensation wealth produced by the labor of others? 2. What distinction should be made between the man who takes the property of others in violation of law and the one who engages in "making money" by consciously exploiting the imperfections of the law? 3. What are the causes of the prevalence of money worship? 4. Discuss the uses and abuses of exploitation. 5. Discuss the economic sources of human satisfaction and show that the greatest of such satisfactions comes from the service which wealth enables one to render to others. 6. Show wherein greed is opposed to the above principle and is the result of ignorance. 7. Discuss the principle of the brotherhood i man as presented in the .

New Testament, and apply it to modern social behavior. Good reading: Dickens, Scrouge, and Old Curiosity Shop; Mark Twain, Gilded Age; Count de Cheverell, Account of Black Friday, Account of the Coal Strike of 1902, Pullman Car Strike of 1894, Investigation of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railway; Investigation of the Chicago and Alton Railway.

Benjamin H. Cooke, who was the son of B. F. Cooke and Mary J. Cooke, died in St. Anthony, Idaho, May 4, 1918, from cancer. He was born April 23, 1862, in Tooele, Utah, and was a diligent worker in the Church! He did active work for the Improvement Era, and for Mutual Improvement associations wherever he la- bored. He was set apart as secretary and treasurer of the Y. M. M. I. A. of Yellow- stone stake, November 13, 1909, in which capacity he served until his death. He was a High Priest, and a most faithful worker in all Church lines. On March 10, 1886, he marrkl \nnie Hobbs, who died March 25, 1911. He married again, Ingeborg Alstrop, on June 10, 1915 He continued his work up to the last moment, having filled an M. I. A. appointment in one of the wards of the Yellowstone stake on the day before he was compelled to take to his bed. Elder George H. Howe, superintendent of the Y. M. M. I. A. of that stake says that "Brother Cooke was never asked to perform a duty but what he did it, and his records were always kept in a very complete and neat way. His death was a serious loss to our stake."

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