TREASURER'S REPORT. 1874. August 7. To Cash from J. Hancock, Treasurer, including $19.85 from S. H. White......... Dr. $489 51 1875. July 29. To Wm. R. Abbott. Subscription of M. Wilson......... 20 00 76 22 July 29. By Amount paid C. Hamilton, for Printing and REPORT OF PUBLISHING COMMITTEE. ..$1,424 04 40 75 An edition of 1500 copies of the Proceedings for 1874 was published. Amount paid Mr. Hamilton.............. ........... 250 6 25 $1,473 54 1,067 29 $406 25 Of this amount due, $400 is in a note at Mechanics National Bank, Worcester, for $400, due September 21-24, 1875, signed by the Treasurer. Of the edition, that is to say 1500 volumes, 75 were lost in removal in consequence of a fire next block....................... 75 445 31 380 25 24 On hand...... 520 ......... 1,500 For the Committee on Publication, A. P. MARBLE, Chairman. DEPARTMENT OF HIGHER INSTRUCTION. First Day's Proceedings. TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 1875. The Department of Higher Instruction met in the Pence Opera House, Minneapolis, Minn., at 2 P. M. The President and Secretary both being absent, Dr. Danlei Read, of the University of Misssouri, Columbia, was chosen President pro tem, and W. D. Henkle, of Ohio, Secretary. The Rev. Dr. J. B. Bittinger, of Sewickly, Pa., being absent, the Secretary presented the Doctor's paper on THE RELATION AND DUTIES OF EDUCATORS TO CRIME. It is hardly too much to say, that the American people have been in danger of falling into the error of believing that knowledge is virtue—that to do better, it is only necessary to know better, and that intellectual culture is the panacea for moral, social, and political ills. The general establishment of the common-school system was both the effect and the cause of this sentiment. Of late, there has been some reaction against this one-sided view of the human problem of reform and progress. In the quickened interest in all social questions, together with the increased study of statistics, and their application to the solution of the various questions of sociology, Education as related to crime has not escaped the student of science, and especially of those who have been interested and engaged in penal reform. It has been clearly shown that ignorance and erime live in close and sympathetic relations. Criminal statistics have proved that, in proportion to their numbers, there are mere criminals among the ignorant than among the educated. Ignorance exposes to crime by diminishing men's self-respect; by limiting men's opportunities and means of livelihood; by restricting the range of pleasure and safe pastime; and by exposing men to the full play of their animal passions. But, while all this is true, and a more extended study serves to deepen the conviction that ignorance is the most fruitful source of crime, it still remains true that ignorance is not the only source of crime. A deeper study of criminal statistics, and a more careful classification of criminals, has brought to light the fact that there are educated criminals, as well as unedu cated criminals. Forgery, counterfeiting, embezzlement of funds, perversions of trust, and also adulterations of food and drinks are not the crimes of ignorance, but rather of knowledge. The same must be admitted of bribery, tampering with the ballot, whether by fraudulent naturalization papers, by colonizing voters, or by stuffing the ballot-box. There may be many ignor. ant dupes in all these organized and wide-reaching villainies, but the leaders are neither ignorant nor duped. The man who plans a scheme of counterfeiting is never an ignoramus whatever may be true of the shover of "the queer," he has both capital and knowledge. In general, it may be said that between the two great classes of crimes-crimes of passion, and crimes of reflection, that crimes of reflection are cominitted by the intelligent rather than by the ignorant. Animal passions are less active among them, but the higher passions of the mind-covetousness, ambition, the desire to live extravagantly, and to keep up appearance and show, are passions which rage among the cultivated rather than among the uncultivated; and the crimes to which they lead are not petty larceny and sneak-thieving, but peculation, political jobbery, and ring-frauds. The crimes with which the names of Swartwout and Price, Schuyler and Breslin and Tweed stand connected, are not crimes of ignorance, but of knowledge; not crimes of animal passion, but of social, political, and intellectual passion. Education lifts men above the crimes that come from those passions. Education lifts men into a higher plane of action, and so exposes them to the crimes that lie in that higher sphere. An ignorant man will steal your coat, or pick your pocket; your educated rogue will work shoddy and devil's dust into the coats of whole armies and pick the nation's pocket. Education does not diminish the force of ambition, it rather strengthens it. Education will abate thieving, drunkenness, licentiousness, dog-fighting, &c., it will not directly diminish forgery, counterfeiting and kindred crimes of intelligence— save as it diminishes the field of the sharper's operations. Dupes will diminish and so there will be fewer dupers. Nor should it be overlooked that the crimes of intelligence are much wider in their pernicious reach than crimes of passion. The latter, except in the case of murder, spend themselves on the spot-then and there, as unexpectedly to the perpetrator as to the victim: not so the crime of reflection. It was conceived in cold blood. It organizes itself carefully and coolly, it executes itself deliberately and at long range. Who can trace the corrupted currency to its fountain head? Who can bring home to the criminal the cotton that has been wrought into his broadcloth? or the terra alba that has gone into his sugar? or the log-wood that blushes in his wine? In the march of intelligence, crime marches pari passu. There could be no pocket-picking in Sparta, nor in an age when there was no currency; nor burglary so long as men had no fixed habitations. Vulgar stealing, and false swearing were contemporaneous with only the ruder states of society, while the gigantic swindles of the stock exchanges of London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and New York are as far beyond Greek rascality as the drama is beyond the modern farce. Take the "Schuyler frauds" on the New York and New Haven Railroad. The "Credit Mobilier" scheme, the "Erie management," the Southern Improvement Co.'s movements, the New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh Rings, the Indian Ring, the Custom-House rings, the silk and whiskey frauds, the New-York canal-contract ring, and the organizations of money schemes in oil, coal, and gold-not to mention lobbying these are not the plots of ignorance and passion-somewhere in those huge schemes of fraud and oppression are hidden master-minds of intelligence and administrative ability. It could only be a thoroughly-educated rascal, who could conceive the plot of "salting" a field with diamonds, in order to place its mining shares at an advantage. If the general influence of education is to diminish crime, and yet its exceptional influence is to enlarge the scope of a certain class of criminals, what under these circumstances are our relations and duties as educators to crime? First, We must acknowledge and teach that there are educated criminals. Men who use their intelligence as a power to do wrong; taking criminal advantage of this superiority of knowledge over ignorance. Secondly, We must teach that this class of criminals is the principal perpetrator of crimes of reflection-crimes, as has already been shown, that are aimed at property rather than persons; crimes, moreover, which attack society in its organized well-fare-by debasing the currency, adulterating food, drink, and clothing; manufacturing goods "short," and selling them at standard weight and measure, and corrupting the channels of legislation, justice, and politics. Thirdly, It must be held to be the duty of educators to elevate the moral tone of their pupils by showing that many forms of fraud, which are not against the statute, and which lead to wealth, are more debasing and more injurious than crimes of a more disreputable character. This latter kind of education is carried on more by example than by formal precepts—the educator himself being the example. Next to parents, teachers stand in the closest and most influential relations to the young, and as their toils tend to take persons out of the ranks of illiteracy, and put them into the educated class, so the crimes with which they stand most closely connected, are the crimes of educated as opposed to uneducated criminals. The great mass of our criminal population cannot read or write; but the forger can certainly write; the counterfeiter has been, to school. William Dodd was a scholar—a private tutor to Lord Chesterfield, and yet he was guilty of bribery, and hanged for forgery. Prof. Webster, of Boston, was a scholar,and no doubt his chemical skill became a temptation to him, in his evil hour. Eugene Aram was both scholar and schoolmaster, and yet guilty of robbery and executed for murder. All these men passed under the hand of teachers, and breathed the air of the schoolroom. It is a fair question to ask whether the atmosphere of the schoolroom is not sometimes tainted. With a view, perhaps, to disparage the moral influence of Sunday-School instruction, there have, at different times, appeared in the papers items and paragraphs as to how many of the inmates of our penitentiaries and jails had, at one time or another, been connected with Sunday Schools. In a similar spirit of depreciation a traditional charge has lain against the character of “ministers' sons' and 'deacons' daughters," and though this slur has been removed by carefully-prepared statistics, as it doubtless could be in the case of Sunday-School instruction, it nevertheless remains true that, even from a Sunday School, a boy might go to the gallows, or a girl to the brothel. Educators in Sunday Schools may carry on their professional work by immoral methods-raising missionary funds by appeals to vanity are immoral. Stimulating children's liberality by fairs, |