CHAP. Humanizing the Justice school of criminology which will have offenders dealt with impersonally. The eighteenth century reformers assumed that each lawCourts of breaker is morally responsible. It follows, then, that all who have committed the same offense are equally guilty and should receive like treatment. Punishment is to be meted out not according to the nature of the offender but according to the nature of his offense. Hence the legislator attaches a fitting penalty to each type of crime and the sole duty of the court is to ascertain whether or not the accused has broken the laws. This system does away, to be sure, with the old-time arbitrary judge, harsh or lenient according to the social importance of the culprit before him. But in order to rid justice of this offensive personal element, there is created a machine which grinds up alike the young and the hardened, the simple and the cunning, the well-intentioned and the wicked, the chance offender and the professional. The Cost of Lumping To gether the Unlike Little by little the administration of Justice has been humanized by admitting exceptions and discriminations. Is the offender of sound mind? Was he in full possession of his faculties? Were there extenuating circumstances? Was there great provocation? Is it his first offense or is he a repeater? Finally the idea that what is being punished is not a deed but a man triumphs and we have the modern school of criminology, which likens sentencing an offender to prison for a fixed term to prescribing so many weeks in the hospital for a sick man. The patient is let out when he is well and the criminal should be let out when he is fit to be at large. On the exceptional lumping imposes the pain of misfit. Too much of it produces a chronic distress like that of wearing clothes that "bind," sleeping on a slope, walking on soles of differing thickness or rowing with oars of unequal lengths. In those who are brought up under the lumping system, e.g., the inmates of the old-fashioned orphan asylum, personality is stunted and they go through life less eager and reactive than they should be. Under the later Roman Empire the unfortunate Graeco-Latins, prisoners of a contracting system, felt themselves emasculate, incapable of the grand emotions and initiatives of their fore-fathers in the old free heroic days. INDIVIDUALIZING EDUCATION СНАР. LVI of Recog dividual ences If we are not to become automatons as more of life is stand- Necessity ardized and we come under the stricter discipline large organiza- nizing and Altion imposes, we must take more account of individual differences lowing and make proper discriminations. When possible school children for Inof each year should be grouped according to mentality and the Differclass for teaching should comprise those of about the same mental gait. Or class work may be individualized by encouraging the child on each topic the class takes up to do an amount of work corresponding to its powers. Promotion, instead of being confined to certain times, should occur whenever the child is ready for it. Mere passive absorption by the pupils should content no teacher; they should be stimulated to react. In the high school no single text should be swallowed whole. The pupil should do collateral reading and compare viewpoints. In college the rigid curriculum should give place to the free choice of studies under advice while the lecture should be relegated to a subordinate place in teaching. INDIVIDUAL SOCIAL WORK ualization Relief Poor In the care of dependents, the orphanage should make way for Ind the placing-out system. The doling out of supplies to needy in the people should be anathema. The maxim "not alms but a friend" strikes the true note. Almsgiving which is promiscuous should be thought of not as God-pleasing but as God-offending. Each poor family should be held to present a problem by itself. For certain kinds of dependents guarded outdoor relief is more individualizing and humane than institutional care. By sorting out from it the children, the sick, the feeble-minded, the insane and the vagrant, the almshouse from being a dumping ground for the refuse of humanity becomes a home for the aged and respectable poor. In the linquents In the treatment of wrongdoers, lumping survives in the un- Treatment hesitating and sweeping condemnation of the "scarlet woman," of Dein the "jail bird" stigma which bars the discharged prisoner from honest employment, in the confusion of "political" with common" offenders, in the treatment of "conscientious objectors as if they were vulgar recalcitrants, in uniform treatment of types so distinct as the born criminal, the habitual crim СНАР. inal, and the occasional criminal. Individualization calls for the recognition of nervous disorders, passion, suggestion, and obsession as limiting responsibility in the sane; for the application of the suspended sentence with probation and the indeterminate sentence; for the establishment of the juvenile court and the detention home for juvenile offenders; for the differentiation of work house from jail and prison, for the restricted use of the prison stripe and for the treatment of convicts as so many human individuals. Not all Discrimin ations by Govern ment Are Blameworthy INDIVIDUALIZING GOVERNMENT Government passes from arbitrary discriminations based on birth, sex, income, creed, nationality or race through a period of flat democratic treatment to fresh discriminations based upon logic. "One man one vote " looks good until it is discovered that 22 per cent. of our draft registrants are weak-minded. They were held unfit to be soldiers and they are equally unfit to be After Negro domination has done its worst Negro suifrage is qualified by a literacy requirement. After the "open door" has filled this country with people who look upon it as a polyglot boarding house we apply the reading test to immigrants. We cease to lump children with adults. We remove them from the factory and send them to school. Discrimination is set up between the sexes, working women being given a protection which does not extend to men workers. If a class is not able to protect itself against another class and there is a public interest involved, the courts deem a law on its behalf not "class legislation" able Clas- but "reasonable classification." By this means that stiff plane, "freedom of contract," has been bent in a dozen places. "Reason sification" Instead of multiplying laws the detailed regulation of industry is effected by means of the easily-modified orders of a state industrial commission. Exemptions are granted that a statute would never allow and special orders issue to take care of peculiar cases. Marriage, once an indefeasible right of the unwedded adult, is denied certain classes of defectives. Instead of the old genial assumption that any citizen is fit for any post, the law creating a board provides that the members shall be engineers, physicians, psychiatrists, economists, social workers, accountants, employers, merchants, practical farmers, etc., according to the work to be done. INDIVIDUALIZING INDUSTRY CHAP. LVI the Em The wiser employers are not lumping their work folk as em- Individuployers used to do. The individual workman is studied in order alizing to land him in the job he is best fitted for. Physical examination ployee at hiring helps to a more intelligent dealing with the employee. A watchful nurse and a doctor look after the ailing. A wellhandled "suggestion box" draws out of the force a surprising number of valuable ideas. The prompt and fitting recognition of unusual individual service or merit improves morale. A brass plate bearing the engine-driver's name is affixed to the locomotive. The highway commission puts up a sign on each stretch of state road showing who patrols it. In a business house the name of the man at the wicket is shown by a bronze marker. In some establishments each man's performance is studied and if it falls off unaccountably investigation is set afoot to locate the source of the trouble. Employees are not poisoned trying to digest their grievances, for there is a bureau which will look into every man's complaint and see that he gets justice. Instead of "firing" a workman at the instance of a single foreman, he is tried out in different departments until he fits in or proves hopeless. The making of these discriminations costs time and money, but science is providing precise means of making them and the results in greater efficiency, good will and happiness prove that they are worth all they cost. Most With There will, of course, be a certain amount of lumping when, Lumping as in warfare or class strife, effective mass action is called for. can be Dispensed Aside from such dictated instances, lumping is due either to heartlessness or to ignorance and stupidity. In centralized military empires there is tenderness for the interests and feelings of the individual members of the privileged class but ruthless iron uniformity for the despised masses. In green democracies flat treatment prevails, not from heartlessness but because the past has made every form of discrimination hateful. But in time it is seen that equal treatment of unequals is crying injustice. As the odious old classifications of people are forgotten men dare to make new classifications based on need, service or social value. The finer these classifications, the less is the sacrifice to the average. In the end every normal man can be well cared for just as every normal man can be fitted with a ready-made suit of clothes, provided that suits are made in a sufficient number of shapes and sizes. СНАР. Every Element in Society Wants to Dominate or Lead But No Element is Free from Bias CHAPTER LVII THE PRINCIPLE OF BALANCE ACH of the elements in society intellectually qualified to lead has not only its special interest which it may try to advance at the expense of other interests — but it has also its special views, which it always strives to make prevail. It may be above greed, it may be above the lust for power, but it will never be above the craving for influence. Each element, then, pushes its influence as far as it can and is checked only by the spirit of independence or by the influence of some other element. Each class or profession which attracts to itself many of the talented of each generation is quite sure that, if only society would submit to its guidance, all would be well. Yet the truth is that no one element is wise enough to be followed blindly in all matters. The reason is not lack of ability, but the bias to which it is subject by reason of its esprit de corps or its distinctive work and manner of life. In spite of itself its judgment becomes warped by its special psychology. When, however, the leadership of society is shared among the various important elements, their special habits of thought neutralize one another, and the resultant is, on the whole, reasonable. One demonstrates the existence in each element of a bias which unfits it for unqualified leadership by showing what has actually happened when some element has gained such ascendancy that it has been able to mold society, as it were, to its heart's desire. Of course no element has ever ruled without check from any quarter, but there are instances which reveal clearly enough the tendencies which lurk in each of the groups that has, one time or another, set its stamp upon the social mind. THE RULE OF THE DEAD The dead count as a social element, for their recorded experience and transmitted institutions may be stalwart factors in the life of their descendants. When the living acknowledge an in |