Crime, Its Cause and Treatment

This subject would scarcely have been noted a few years ago. True, there was in the past a small mixture of children in the grist ground out in the criminal courts. Usually they received some leniency, and were viewed with more curiosity than alarm. The juvenile criminal was regarded as a prodigy with a capacity for crimes far beyond his years. Something of the attitude obtained in regard to him which attaches to the child chess player or the child mathematician. The child criminal is now common, and for the most part is a product of the city.

All crime is doubtless much more common in the city than the country, and the young criminal especially is a product of the crowded community. To those who look for natural causes for all phenomena the reason is not far to seek. The city itself is an abnormal thing. Primitive man and his ancestors were never huddled together in great multitudes, as are the dwellers in cities today. To a degree almost all animals are gregarious, but the units of organization are much smaller with them than with man, excepting possibly in the case of the ant and the bee, insects which seem specially adapted to live a highly automatic and cooperative life, such as human beings cannot possibly reach. But primitive men and their direct ancestors lived in small groups. They could not have preserved their life in any other way. They lived by fishing and hunting and by gathering roots, berries and herbs. Later they tended their flocks and cultivated the fields in a simple way.