Moral Problems of the Community

a) Crime and Delinquency

A crime is an offence against the civil law. If serious, it is called a felony; if less serious, it constitutes a misdemeanor. Crime is sometimes called delinquency, and this term is most frequently employed to designate the crime committed by those whose responsibility is less perfect, the young and the subnormal. A general classification of crimes distinguishes them as offences against (a) peace and order; (&) authority; (c) persons; (c?) property. Sociologists have long sought to discover and tabulate the causes of crime. Forgetting the fact that every man has a free-will, and is not merely a bundle of nerves and muscles reacting mechanically to external stimuli, certain sociologists and criminologists have looked for the causes of crime in geographical conditions, in climate, in seasonal changes and influences. Others have tried to discover physical marks as determinants of “the criminal type,” believing that there is a “criminal class,” that is, that criminals are born and not made. Sane sociology has abandoned these theories. For, while outside influences and physical defects may constitute the more or less proximate condition or occasion of crimes, they are never the true cause of the criminal activity of a free man. Mental defect can indeed be regarded as the cause of crime when it is so great as to offer serious injury to normal self-control. But, in cases that are normal or nearly normal, the cause of crime is the free-will of the criminal. “The cause is in my will; I will not come. That is enough to satisfy the Senate.” So said Caesar in the immortal play; and he spoke as a sound psychologist should speak. The cause of human conduct is in the will. That granted, it becomes necessary to inquire into the influences which bear strongly upon the will and move it in the direction of crime and social misconduct.

The first and greatest of the influences which make for a bad will and bad conduct which may easily become crime, is the lack of proper home training. Homes in which the children have not the benefit of good moral and religious example on the part of parents; homes established in neighborhoods which tend to nullify, by their exemplification of evil living, the lessons imparted by word and example in the family circle; homes broken by divorce; homes spiritually poisoned by the impure atmosphere which surrounds the practice of Birth Control; homes spoiled by an unclean and careless poverty which hurts the finer sensibilities and tends ultimately to cheapen respect for spiritual values and to dull consciences—all such homes are socially ineffective, and out of them come many ill-trained and evilly-inclined persons to swell the ranks of criminals. Of course, many a criminal has had in youth all the advantages of a good home; and many a splendid man and noble woman has managed to achieve virtue and character without the help of a normal home. The “personal equation” is ever to be considered; in other words, free-will and individual responsibility are facts. But, generally speaking, the influence of the home for weal or woe is the greatest of social influences. Next in importance, as an influence making for social misconduct and crime, is what may be loosely called the spirit of the times. It amounts, of course, to the general decay of religious belief and the conviction that morality is a matter of convention, like table-manners. This spirit grows apace, and is fostered by an impure press, a restless quest of pleasure that somehow usually turns sexual, plays and motion pictures which glorify vice and present gangsters as heroes, books and magazines which make the great modern adventure a matter of escaping the restraints of decency or the clutches of the police. The influence of this Zeitgeist or “spirit of the times” is also powerfully augmented by materialistic education. The professor of psychology explains man in terms of physics and chemistry, and makes all his conduct a mere matter of stimulus and response. Meanwhile the professor of sociology, mysteriously stimulated, makes social plans and programs which —as the alert student cannot help but notice—will have no more value than a mechanical or chemical reaction to whatever influence may have brought the stimulus. A student hears in one class that man is but a super-developed ape, and, in another, tries with puzzled frown to discover why he so frequently acts like a beast. Other influences which make for crime are the acquired habits of intemperance or addiction to drugs; lack of training in a suitable trade, and consequent inability to hold a position which affords a living wage; callous public neglect of defective, afflicted, and impoverished persons; laxity in the execution of criminal laws, and the multiplication of opportunities for evading capture or conviction for offences; a bad system of punishment for crime which often makes the penal institution a graduate school for criminals; sentimental administration of the laws, and the abuse of the remedial or rehabilitating measures known as probation and parole. The spread of the true religion, the revitalizing of Catholic effort and practice, or, in the current phrase, the furtherance of Catholic Action, is the first great need of mankind for the solution of the problem of crime. Home-life needs stabilizing; decent surroundings, physical and moral, for dwellings are required; filthy slums need cleaning up; homesteading programs need furthering; there is need of a general establishment of a living family-wage; the breadwinners of the future should have the advantage of training in suitable trades and professions (“vocational training”) in their school-days; the system of carefully conducted juvenile courts, with powers to place youthful offenders in suitable foster-homes or institutions and to guide their progress in social rehabilitation, should be extended; penal institutions should be compelled to keep first offenders from associating with older and hardened criminals; laws should be applied with promptness; politics and sentimentalism should be kept out of the courts. These and other measures await the work of the sociologist who wishes to come to grips with the problem of crime and delinquency. Manifestly, there is no place within the scope of this manual for methods and detailed programs indicated for this work. Each item mentioned in the list of remedial measures demands a lengthy and important study in itself. We mention only one tremendously important point, and this merely by way of reminder: Let the social worker, and the theoretical sociologist as well, remember that every one of the activities studied or promoted for the solution of the problem of crime concerns human beings, not impersonal “cases”; and human beings have free-will, full human dignity, and are responsive to the influence of noble motives and of divine grace. The social scientist who loses sight of this fact in the maze of scientific apparatus and the details of elaborate programs will either fail of permanently successful work or he will do positive harm to society.

b) Social Dependency

In this section we discuss the problems which confront the community in the care, maintenance, or relief which must be given to the poor, to paupers, to orphans, and to mental defectives. Poverty of spirit is placed first in the great list of virtues which win eternal happiness for the soul, and this not by professional sociologists figuring from shoals of dusty data, but by God Himself. Now, poverty of spirit is practised by those who willingly give up the comforts and the conveniences of bodily life by a religious dedication to a special service of God; it is practised also by those who, deprived of conveniences and even of relative necessaries, bear their heavy burden with fortitude, taking, like holy Job, good and evil from the hand of God, sincerely and uncomplainingly accepting His will. That there are many who possess the poverty of spirit, many who “practise poverty” in the first way or the second, is a glorious and a necessary blessing for mankind. There is yet a third class who benefit themselves and society by the practice of poverty of the spirit, and these are the people—rich, poor, or “comfortable”—who refuse to direct their efforts and their lives to a golden goal, and who have put aside wealth-getting as the ideal by which to live. It is not of this splendid poverty of spirit that we speak when we discus^ poverty as a social problem. Poverty, as we understand it here, is the deprivation of the means for normal, decent, socially effective living. It is a condition calling imperatively for relief and, in so far as may be possible, cure. Our Lord, who taught poverty of spirit as a necessary virtue, made the care of the poor His constant concern, taught men to consider the relief of His “least brethren” as the service of God, and told the rich young man to sell his property and give the proceeds to the poor. It is the duty of every man to act as God’s steward, and to give of his superfluity to the support of those who suffer deprivation. We have once more the direct word of God to guide us in the matter, and are divinely taught that the spirit of God does not reside in that man who sees his fellowman in want and refuses him the aid which it is possible to give. And if poverty be a “phenomenon” of community life, community measures are to be undertaken for its relief. From decent poverty, which is not the fault of the persons who bear it—or, more accurately, is not the fruit of their whole mode of life—we distinguish pauperism, which is an abject and spiritless willingness, on the part of those who suffer deprivation of the common necessaries, to be carried along by others and to make no effort to improve their condition by their own exertions. This distinction is not always clearly drawn, and sometimes the term pauper (which carries a note of reproach) is unfairly applied to one who is impoverished, or even destitute, but eager to do what he can to maintain himself. In seeking the causes of poverty, some social theorists have propounded plausible but fallacious doctrines. Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), an English economist, declared that poverty is the direct result of the pressure of increasing population on the foodsupply. Karl Marx (1818-1883), a German-Jewish Socialist, taught that poverty comes from one cause, and one only, to wit, that the capitalistic employer appropriates the fruits of labor justly due to the worker, and compels the latter to accept an inadequate wage. Henry George (1839-1897), an American economist, believed that poverty comes from faulty methods of taxation, and would disappear if a “single tax” were imposed upon land, thus taking from landlords the “unearned increment” which, through its present misdirection, impoverishes the people. But there was poverty in the world before the population was large, before capitalistic society was thought of, and before landlordism existed. Hence these theories are all fundamentally unsound. The true causes of poverty are various. Some are found in nature (e. g,} earthquakes, floods, epidemics, crop failures, non-productive soil); some are found in human beings (e. g., sickness, waste, extravagance, intemperance, mental defect); some are found in poorly operative social and industrial institutions (e. g., low wages, unemployment, bad living conditions, deadly monotony of certain industrial employments, competition with low-paid imported labor). Add to these causes the devastating effect of wars, and the list of the causes of poverty will be fairly complete.* *The following remarks of Father James M. Gillis, C.S.P., are of interest and value: “Or take the problem of poverty. This too is a bete noire of the birth-control agitators. ‘The poor you have always with you,’ said our Savior. And He might have added, ‘Because the rich you have always with you.’ There is now, and always, much discussion—much wasted discussion— about the causes of poverty. The chief cause looms so large that no one seems to see it. The reason for poverty is wealth. Sutherland.

The Catholic Church, following perfectly the command of her Divine Founder, has always been the guardian and friend of the poor. No one who is ignorant of this glorious fact has the right to the name of sociologist. The history of the Church is an open book for all to read, and the story of Catholic religious Orders and of lay societies for the relief of the poor, is a record that no merely human institution can ever hope to rival. Men may talk as they please of bloodless “brotherhood,” of the aloof and unloving “philanthropy” of the wealthy, of the inhuman “humanitarianism” born into a world trying to be religious without Christ. Men may glory as they please in an “organized charity carefully iced in the name of a cold, statistical Christ.” But it is only the Church, divine mother of men, that can bring to the works of mercy that understanding sympathy, that whole-hearted recognition of the equal worth of human souls, that spirit of “faith that worketh by charity,” that hope which looks through death, that uncondescending attitude, which make her benefactions a real service to hearts and minds as well as to needy bodies. Recognizing Christ Himself in the persons of the poor, the Church seeks to serve them in a spirit of devotion, love, and reverence. Hers is not the prideful graciousness of one who stoops to aid the unfortunate out of his abundance; hers is not the crisp and frosty efficiency of one who tries to deal with human beings solely by approved methods of business. Hers is not the spacious posturing of those who feel the fineness of their condescending service. No; hers is the devoted and loving work of a mother caring for her children. And this work is shared by all the members of her family, as individuals and in organized groups. The thing called ‘‘organized charity” is, of course, not to be sneered at. It has its place, and—civilization being what it now is—its necessary place, in the activities required for solving the problem of poverty and pauperism. But if it be not suffused by the spirit of Christ, which the true Church alone knows how to bring to the works of men, it is likely to give rise to new social problems even as it moves to solve the old. The investigations of the “charity worker” are so likely to be impertinent and prying; the administration of relief is apt to be so impersonally efficient; the treatment of the poor is so frequently offhand and unsympathetic, that the activities of organized charity are likely to make, on the one hand, for an increased number of those willing to be patronized and handled paternalistically (that is, to be mere paupers), and, on the other hand, these activities tend to arouse a spirit of bitterness and resentment in those who must perforce accept their benefactions. The work of relieving poverty ought to be carried on with a minimum of “publicity” and “red tape.” There should be as little as possible of curious prying into private and family life. There,should be few, and brief, questionnaires. The persons aided should not be reduced to the status of names on index-cards or “cases” in the files of a central office. Some measure of these things is doubtless requisite, but the poor persons themselves should not be made so painfully aware of them. For even the poorest and most abject must feel a just resentment at being listed and filed in a public record, his misfortune embalmed for all time in unfading ink. The Catholic spirit in works of charity tends ever to keep these unpleasant requisites at an absolute minimum. Our loving Mother the Church is careful to avoid injuring the spirit of her children. How admirably, for example, does that splendid Society of St. Vincent de Paul—founded by the great Antoine Frederic Ozanam (1813-1853) in 1833 and established in America in 1845—accomplish its works of charity and relief of poverty, without subjecting the beneficiaries to the least indignity. The student of sociology, and, In special, the student of the problem of poverty, could make no more profitable course of study than a detailed investigation of the history and functioning of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. The problem of poverty would be rendered much easier of solution by the enactment and application of just laws controlling the hours and conditions of labor, minimum wage, social and employment insurance, cooperative unions, old age insurance, establishment of funds for relief, etc.

With the poor, it is natural to associate orphans, neglected or abandoned children, and the dependent aged. For all of these are—in so far as they present a social problem—poor and in need of care. The religious and secular institutions for the maintenance of these unfortunate persons are doing a notably fine work to-day, and, while it is not perfect, it approximates as well as may be done the normal and natural care which it seeks to supply. Many schemes and plans for the care of dependents, young and old, have been put to test. It seems safe to rate as the best of these social measures “the cottage plan” for orphans and institutionally reared children, and “old age pensions” for the dependent aged. Of course, any plan for the care of the dependent young must, to be of finest value, seek to place children as soon as possible in suitable homes. No institution can bring to its inmates the benefits of true home-life and home-training which are available in a well-managed household.

Those who are mentally defective constitute a public charge of great weight. But it is false sociology which seeks to destroy these unfortunates by euthanasia, or to render them incapable of propagation by sterilization. Of the former method, which is merely extermination by quiet murder, it suffices to say that God alone is master of life and death, and that murder is never anything but the foulest of crimes. Of sterilization no more need be said here than a word to recall the authoritative pronouncement of Pope Pius XI, mentioned in another Chapter (Book Second, Chapter II, Art. 1, d): “Public magistrates have no direct power over the bodies of their subjects. Therefore, when no crime has taken place, and there is present no cause for grave punishment, they can never harm or tamper with the integrity of the body… Sound sociology seeks to meet and solve social problems, not to shirk them. And the advocates of euthanasia and sterilization are merely trying to get rid of dependent defectives because it means much trouble and expense to take care of them. Sociology of this stamp, if put into practice, would soon devastate the earth in the name of human welfare; the poor, the aged, the deformed, the orphan, the illiterate, including all school children— in a word, all whose presence here means work or expense for the state or municipality, would be quietly destroyed, and the problem of social dependency would be quickly obviated. If it be said that this is an absurd statement, we answer that it is nothing of the sort. If there is any consistency in human thinking, if there is such a thing as a principle and its application, the absurdity or sanity of the wholesale murder of troublesome and expensive dependents is exactly the absurdity or sanity of the proposal to remove the dependent aged and the unfit by euthanasia, and to block out of existence whole classes of dependents by sterilization. Here again we need the lesson imparted so wisely and lovingly by the Catholic Church, the mother of men. To this loving mother her afflicted children are as precious as those who are sound in mind and body; nay, the Church, like every good mother, gives even more care and consideration to her less fortunate children than to those more capable of caring for themselves. And her holy example may well teach the world that it is only the presence of those who constitute a public charge and a considerable bother and expense, that gives occasion for the exercise of the splendid “social virtues” without which human nature would lose its last remnant of fineness. It may, indeed, be a fact that our care for troublesome unfortunates may be the one thing which holds off the lightnings of Almighty God from a world that is reeking with selfishness and foul with vice. We speak specifically here of the defective persons who must be maintained at public expense, usually in institutions. The care of these defectives is, we repeat, a sacred trust, and must be thoroughly and humanely exercised, even at the cost of heavy taxation. Those in charge of caring for defectives must ever remember that these are children of God, possessing full human dignity, and are never to be treated with cruelty, harshness, or contempt. As to the propagation of defectives, a final word may be said. Those plainly insane are not capable of marrying, for marriage is a contract, and a certain mental ability and maturity are requisite for making a valid contract. But those who are not insane, but “defective,” and who, though mentally inferior, are not wholly incapable of normal social life, are not to be mutilated, segregated, or forbidden to marry and propagate.

c) Racial Problems

Mankind is one true society, all the members of which are descended from a common stock, a single pair of parents. Science joins perfectly with revelation in manifesting this truth. It follows that all human beings belong to one immense family, no member of which is naturally of greater value than any other. In the face of this fact it becomes inane to speak of some races as superior and of others as inferior, to sing the current song of praise to the Nordics (a fabulous race slowly losing grip on mistaken minds) and to slander the Latins, to boast of the glorious destiny of the white man and to disparage the importance of the colored races. Incidentally, the great truth that we are all formed of a common clay should offer an effective check to the boorishness which so frequently exists (and gives rise to social problems) among national groups within the same race. Inequalities there are among the members of the human family—inequalities of ability, of talents, of opportunities, of possessions. But there is no inequality of human dignity, no greater and lesser in the measurement of human souls. But men are often stupidly proud, and many are prone to judge an inequality in natural worth or importance to be present by reason of the accidental inequalities in cultures or even colors. Sane sociology disregards this mistaken and prideful judgment. But the sociologist is confronted with problems which arise out of its widespread acceptance. The most notable racial problem in America is the Negro problem. There are others, it is true, but they are of local and minor character. The Negro problem, on the contrary, is national in scope. In simple terms the problem amounts to this: The white man in America feels that he cannot meet on terms of equality with the Negro; he wants the Negro to

“keep his place” as one socially inferior, to live with his own kind in definitely segregated districts, called “colored sections,” in cities and towns, and to acknowledge, with seemly courtesy, the superiority of his white neighbors. The Negro resents the attitude of the white man; he dislikes the social barriers that humiliate him; he hates the idea of “segregation.” Here is a bad social situation, and too frequently it occasions actual trouble. There are more than twelve millions of Negroes in America—a considerable group even in a population of over one hundred and twenty millions. And it is unquestionably true that the Negro is treated unfairly. He was brought to this country against his will, for, despite the belief of many that some Negroes had settled in America before its discovery by Columbus, most of the Negro population to-day is descended from slaves. The Negro was kept in a state of servitude; opportunities of education were denied him; he was treated with scant respect and his moral as well as his mental requirements were often neglected. His sudden liberation, his establishment on a plane of political equality with whites, his spread through the North and West in answer to the call for hard and cheaply paid labor, have all been factors in a social maladjustment which seems effectually to resist almost all efforts to correct it. To-day the Negro has little chance to advance socially. Kept to the poorer parts of cities and towns, left without the recreational facilities so widely furnished for whites, excluded from normal and proportionate participation in community affairs, he is made to feel that he is a social inferior, one suited to be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water for his white neighbor, but on no terms to be recognized as of full human stature and value. The Negro, on his part, is not without faults, but these are, in the main, the logical consequences of the conditions under which he is forced to live. The Negro definitely suffers wrong; and for this reason the present slight study is listed as a moral problem. The Catholic Church has labored long and well on behalf of the Negro. Not only has the Church carried to her colored children the glorious Faith, but in minor matters she has served their social needs. She has founded schools; she has established religious communities of colored women; she has trained Negroes in her seminaries, and some of them have been raised to the priesthood for work among their fellows; she fosters worthy organizations among Negroes for their social betterment. Secular and lay effort has not been lacking on behalf of the Negro. Many institutions, leagues, and associations are working steadily and powerfully to establish them socially and to remove the barriers which stand in the way of their advancement. The Negro problem is the more difficult of full solution for the fact that even those who recognize its importance and gravity are often unsympathetic in their attitude towards it. And not only unsympathetic; many are adversely disposed to such a degree as to give expression, not to ill-will alone, but to damaged logic. We are all familiar with such a remark as the following: “It’s very well to talk of fairness to the Negro. I agree that he is a man; that before God he is as valuable as I; that he does actually suffer injustice. But what is to be done? Would you make a Negro your intimate? Would you invite him to your table? Would you have him marry your sister?” The answer to such objections is, of course, obvious. To do justice to one’s fellowman does not necessarily involve making an intimate of him or marrying him to one’s sister. There are many considerations to be weighed in choosing one’s intimates. Does any man make all his white neighbors his bosom companions? Does he invite all to his table? Does he insist upon the right of any white man to marry into his family? Manifestly not. Yet he concedes to all his white neighbors—however many lines be drawn in point of religion, politics, social caste, business, etc.—the equal human status which he denies to the Negro. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to be overcome is the mental bug-a-boo of a mixed race, of marriage between whites and Negroes. This terrifying thought is in the minds of many as soon as they hear of justice for the Negro. Yet there is small justification for it. That there are lines between classes of people is a certainty that may as well be acknowledged at once, and the color-line is one of them. While it is entirely possible to ignore these lines, the social effect of such action is seldom happy. Just as a member of the true Church is earnestly dissuaded from marriage, by dispensation, with a non-member, so should a member of one race be dissuaded from marriage with a person of another color. In marriages of either type there is a definite injustice done to children, there are almost inevitable misunderstandings between the parties themselves, and there is sure to be some friction between the families so gracelessly united. The Negro problem is complicated by the attitude of many Negroes themselves. Not only do they recognize the unkind and unjust attitude of white people in their regard; not only do they resent this attitude; they forget their own dignity and proper pride of race to become cheap imitations of the very persons who mistreat them. Of course, this is no more true of all Negroes than is dislike or contempt for Negroes a mark of all white persons. But it is true of a great many. These dislike their color; they are ashamed of kinky hair; they ape the manners of the more wealthy and prominent whites; they try to break into the “refined” districts in cities and to establish homes there. The very attitude and activities of these unworthy Negroes serve only to increase the scorn and antipathy of unworthy whites. Those who do social work among the Negroes have a difficult, nay, a heart-rending task. For Negroes are kept so poor; they have such little opportunity for decent housing, for adequate work, for recreation, for play-grounds for their children. Yet much has been accomplished in spite of all difficulties, and much more will be done. It will be done the more quickly if Negroes can be induced to leave off aspiring for recognition by whites and to take a deep interest in advancing themselves as Negroes. Instead of regarding themselves as segregated, let them learn to consider their groups as colonies. Let them be taught to leave off imitating any other race, and to develop their own race to its best and finest capabilities. For the rest, sociologists must labor on to procure for Negroes opportunities equal to those accorded to white people: equal facilities for education; equal opportunities for recreation and decent amusement; an equal standing with whites in point of work and wages; an equal status before the courts.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have dealt with some important problems, markedly moral in character or implications, which confront the social group called the community, whether this be State, municipality, or other civic body. We have discussed crime, in cause