Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/338

 326 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

can carry out the policy; but where freedom, fresh air, play, industry, and rational treatment are given, the hospital must have many gentle, strong, and trained nurses. So exclusive reliance on a stone-breaking test tends to place surly and cruel keepers in charge of all applicants for shelter and aid ; and thus the institu- tion designed for charity and justice becomes an insult to honest workmen and a discouragement to the sensitive, without furnish- ing the quick insight which most unerringly discovers real crim- inals, (b) The work test, in many forms, is only one useful method which works well under good direction, since crime is as parasitic as pauperism, and the mark of the parasite is that he wishes to live at the expense of others, (c) The employment bureau, with a reliable record and a sharp watchcare, is another means of marking the industrious man and discovering the cheat. (d) In cities, and often in towns, a certain amount of personal guardianship, a kind of probation work, is necessary to hold a moral weakling back from sliding down the easy incline toward criminality. All this information which is necessary for a wise treatment must be collected instantly, by means of messengers and telephone and telegraph, and from every available source. For the moment when a man can be helped and turned away from beggary or crime is the moment when he is under treatment and within the grasp of the official. The German VerpHegungs- stationen, with their simple inns and their system of certificates and records, have much to teach us.

But whatever the tests employed, in some way the members of the Criminal Group must be distinguished, known, and isolated from the Dependent Group. Charity, public or private, has no machinery of compulsion, and ought not to have. The steamboat is not made to sail on land ; the schoolhouse is not constructed to hold burglars in confinement; and a charity bureau is not fitted for the task of managing deserting husbands, petty thieves, and confirmed inebriates. Society must erect specially adapted machinery for dealing with this class of men, and it must have agents trained for each particular branch of its service.

3. Part of our social policy must be a better understanding between the public and private agencies of relief. So fflr as