What Makes Convicts? the last fiber of his being, he prayed and pleaded for the life of the nation, according to his light. Neither of these great patriots lived to see the fearful spectacle which they had so eloquently deprecated. But when at last the dread day came, and our young heroes marched forth to bleed and die for their country, their own sons among the fore most, they carried in their hearts the lessons which they had taught, and all Massachusetts,
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all New England, from the beginning, marched behind them, " carrying the flag and keeping step to the music of the Union," as he had bidden them, and so I say, let us award to them both their due share of the glory. Thus to-day we consign this noble statue to the keeping of posterity, to remind them of "the patriot, jurist, orator, scholar, citizen and friend," whom we are proud to have known and loved.
WHAT MAKES CONVICTS? A MASSACHUSETTS society for the investigation of the relation of the liquor traffic to crime asked me to inquire into the habits of the convicts at Joliet (Ill.) as to the use of intoxicating drinks, with all the care possible, to assist the society in its endeavor to reach some reliable conclusions on the question. I complied with its wishes as best I could, and through the warden's favor and this request I had opportunity to learn more of the drink and the social habits of convicts than I otherwise would have known. I called many of the men before me and talked over the manner of their former lives without reserve, and by ques tions and answers got many facts which throw light on the question of what were the principal causes of their criminal actions. I also examined the institution's records covering these points in the cases of 1200 men. The memoranda I made of the con versations thus had with the men interviewed, and of the facts furnished by the prison's re cords to supplement and correct the matter gained through the interviews, fill many pages, and cannot be given here. The con clusions of the whole matter are as follows : — The leading causes of crime are bad heredity and bad homes and home surround ings in youth, and, later in life, drink habits, licentiousness, gambling and bad literature.
It sometimes is asserted that our prison population is drawn almost wholly from the illiterate classes, and that colleges and high schools are sovereign cure-alls for what some call the disease of criminality. An examination of the reports of the Joliet pen itentiary hardly upholds that assertion. The facts given in these reports are in harmony with those given in prison reports generally, if one may be allowed to draw so general a conclusion from the many reports which pass under one's eyes in a four-years' study of prison work. The report of the Joliet prison for 1896 is a fair average of the reports from that institution on this question for many years. I have the reports for the last twenty-five years before me as I write, and I give the facts from it as a fair index to all and because they are the most recent. September 30 of that year there were in Joliet prison 1,319 convicts. Of this num ber 86 were wholly illiterate, 22 were able to read and write a little, 206 others could read and write, 825 had a common-school educa tion and 90 claimed to have had the benefits of high-school and collegiate courses. The wholly illiterate population was six and onehalf per cent of the whole and the highschool and college representatives in the prison population were only a little under seven per cent of the whole. Taking into
