NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 14$
Is Poverty Diminishing? The first requirement is a standard of poverty. Mr. Charles Booth and his collaborators affixed the term poverty to all real incomes below a certain level, 2is., and found that about 31 per cent, of Londoners were sub- ject to " poverty," or just about one-third of the whole population, if the inmates of public charitable institutions are added to the list. This is the only direct measure- ment of local poverty upon any considerable scale which we possess. It is a popular belief that poverty is decreasing, a belief based upon the decline of pauperism and statistics bearing upon the rise of wages and the general improvement of the econo- mic condition of the working classes. The first argument is based upon statistics for outdoor relief, which afford no real basis for the contention. Those who adduce evi- dence derived from the general statistics of wages, prices, working-class consumption and savings to prove the diminution of poverty, fall into the patent fallacy of aver- ages. Such arguments are quite consistent with an increase in the number and the proportion of the poor. In regard to the general economic prosperity, it is true that the standard of comfort of the poor has risen and is still rising. If we took as a sole and sufficient gauge of poverty the actual command of commercial goods, we should give an affirmative answer to our initial question, whatever limit we assign to the term poverty. But if we reckon in those elements of physical utility which are deteriorated by the very conditions under which the economic income of the poorer classes has been raised, we shall hesitate to register a judgment that there is among the poor any increased ability to maintain a wholesome physical life. Real poverty is a subjective condition. If our desires are rightly adjusted to legitimate objects of human satisfaction, while the barriers of external environment and the influences they exercise upon the efficacy of effort disables us from any reasonable prospect of suc- cess, that disability constitutes poverty alike from the individual and the social stand- point. This type of poverty is on the rapid increase. JOHN A. HOBSON in The Con- temporary Review for April 1896.
Crime Increased by the Lax Enforcement of Law. If the criminal pro- pensities of men are restrained by fear of punishment ; if the actual punishment of crime prevents the criminal from repeating his offense and deters others from imi- tating it; if the seclusion of the offender suspends his criminal career during the period of his sentence and removes from society a crime-producing influence ; and if, in some cases, the punishment of the offender occasions his reformation, then it fol- lows, inversely, that a failure to interpose these deterrent and corrective measures must occasion an increase of crime. The main question, however, is not whether the lax execution of law causes crime, for this is admitted ; but, what causes the lax exe- cution of the law. This may result from any one, or more than one, of a dozen pos- sible causes. These are defects in the law itself ; disproportion between the crime ati'l the penalty; an insufficient and inefficient police and detective force; the excep- tional cunning, boldness, or desperation of the criminal; police corruption; bribery of courts and juries ; incompetence or carelessness of the prosecuting attorney ; the bad eminence of certain criminal lawyers; abuse of the pardoning power; bad politics that elect incompetent men to our legislatures; false public sentiment about special classes of offenses and offenders. The remedies lie along the same lines. We need better politics, better legislators, better laws, better lawyers, better police, better courts, better juries, a better penal and reformatory system, more intelligence and patriotism and public conscience among our citizens. Make the crime a cause and the penalty an effect, and let it be understood that the effect will follow the cause with the inevitableness of fate. GEORGE //,; //,/;/. /for May 1896.
Limitations of the Introspective Method in Ethics. (Alton's investiga- tion- have demonstrated that the exclusive use of introspection leads to nothing better than one sided results. The "objective method" has been generally applied in psy- chology, but has hardly l>ecn attempted in ethics, although it is generally admitted that a large proportion of ethical problems are psychological in nature. The intro- spective method can be relied upon only if moral ideals and modes of judgment of the members of the highest races are identical. Hut this is not the case, as is shown 1>\
