A A zz n == === c_ i = 3; = 5 1 o 5 *> 1 - := 3D ! 1 > 7 : ^^^^ — ' ^ — ^ 8 SHEPARD The Work of a Social Teacher, ■J W UUiT H\1 22 J6 L7 ECONOMIC TRACTS. No. XII. THE WORK OF A SOCIAL TEACHER lSKING A MEMORIAL (')I' RICHARD L. DUGDALE EDWARD M. SHEPARD NEW YORK THE SOCIETY FOR POLITICAL EDUCATION 4 MORTON STREET 1884 This Memorial is issued as one of the regular tracts of the Society, in the belief that it will directly serve the cause of Political Educa- tion l)y showing how much good one man, working against many disadvantages, may do even in a short life, and by inspiring others to do their part in the kind of work to which he gave his life. The Work of a Social Teacher. BEING A MEMORIAL OF RICHARD L. DUGDALE. The men are very few indeed, whose best years and whose most fruitful labor are given, not to themselves and to those dear to them, but for the sake of mankind. And of these, the men are still fewer whose years of active usefulness are conse- crated to the service of human beings repulsive to the sight and hateful to think of — human beings who do not know or understand their benefactors, and who, if they did know them, would return no conscious gratitude. Inspiration cannot be found for these men even in the well-earned and grateful applause of their own time. That applause goes most often and most freely to what is obvious and splendid in performance, to what appeals directly and intelligibly to the fellow-feeling of men who are well housed, well fed, and well clothed. The founders of those schools and hospitals whose fine facades and spacious and comfortable rooms are always before our eyes, the discoverer of remedies i which an) r one of us, however fortunate his condi- tion, may by and by need — these benefactors we easily and warmly appreciate. They are agreeable figures in crowded drawing-rooms; the crown of the civic hero is ready for them in every meeting of reputable and happy citizens. But toward the men whose walks of mercy are in haunts we never willingly see or imagine — whose tenderness touches and whose intelligence raises wretches of moral degradation and physical loathsomeness which we banish from our thoughts almost as completely as we do from our eyes and ears — toward those men there goes from us scant and frigid recognition, until long after a just recognition is too late to be to them either help or reward, or to bring them the sweet and triumphant sense of appreciation wist- fully sought by even the saviors of mankind. The\" become themselves part of a disagreeable and repulsive subject. Upon the fingers of one hand may be counted, for any one generation, the heroes who suffer through life this almost hardest of sac- rifices for their fellow-men. Among these heroes was Richard L. Dut.dale, who died at New York on the 23d of July. 1883. Mr. Dugdale's father and mother were English, having a natural pride in an ancestry of much social distinction — a pride which did not, however, curb the utmost democracy of sentiment and practical life. He was born at Paris in 1841, his father being there engaged in business. On suffering serious pecuniary reverses, his father returned to England in 1848. The son developed in his London home artistic tastes which led to his being placed in the government drawing-school at Somerset House. Here he was engaged when in 185 1 his family came to America. In New York he attended a public school for two or three years ; and then, at the age of fourteen, was employed by a sculptor with whom he did very creditable artistic work. The shadow of disease was however already over him. A serious exposure while at the public school had irreparably impaired his very delicate constitution ; and when about seventeen years old it was thought necessary for his health that his family should remove to a farm purchased by his father in Indiana. Young Dugclale's strength did not however sufficiently in- crease to fit him for the work of a farmer; and in i860 he returned with his family to New York, During his absence he had with characteristic industry learned phonography, an art he afterward practised for a short time as a means of livelihood. Entering business, as he was compelled to do, upon his return to New York, Mr. Dugdale attended the admirable night classes of the Cooper Union. Mere, and especial!}' in the debating clubs, he easily distinguished himself. He had already, doubtless through natural aptitude and from his reading, be- come greatly interested in social subjects. He then keenly desired to devote himself to the methodical study of social science. He afterward said of this time : "At twenty-three I clearly saw that, even did I possess the most perfect technical training to enable me to analyse the complex questions involved, there was no institution or patron to defray the expenses of a continuous, calm, independent, and unconven- tional critical study of social phenomena. I. there- fore, had to confront this practical question — to earn the costs of an education which no college provided, and amass sufficient fortune to purchase the privilege of independent subsequent inquiry. 1 met the dilemma by entering the career of merchant and manufacture:]-, because this combined the opportun- ity for stud\- of a distinct class of social phenomena and tb.e promise of earning the means for future freedom of investigation. After ten years of this double work, I broke down in health, yet I continued business for two years more until my physician per- emptorily ordered rest, physical and mental; and for four years I could neither earn nor learn." ilow active and multifarious was Mr. Dugdale's interest in social subjects during the vcars he thus 5 mentions, one may easily imagine from an imperfect list of the bodies of which he was a zealous and im- portant member. He was Secretary of the Section on Sociology of the New York Association for the Advancement of Science and the Arts ; he was Secretary of the New York Social Science Society, and of the New York Sociology Club ; he was Treasurer of the New York Liberal Club ; he was Vice-President of the Society for the Prevention of Street Accidents ; he was later, for a time, Secretary of the Civil-Service Reform Association ; he was an active member of the American Social Science Asso- ciation and of the American Public Health Associ- ation. He was also a member of the American Free- Trade League, of the Chamber of Commerce, and of the American Institute. Nor did this varied work indicate either restless- ness or superficiality of intellectual interest. These clubs and associations were nearly all directly re- lated to the amelioration of the condition of men. Those to which his time was chiefly given had to do with men who were suffering because of their poverty, or vice, or the oppression of others, or the singularity of their opinions. During the years of his business career his spare energy, never daunted by the savage threats of the disease which hung over the years of his manhood, was spent in this field of beneficence. And until his death his zeal and in- terest remained undiminished in all the reforms which these bodies were intended to promote. Mr. Dugdale was, however, to find his chief fame in the work of bettering the condition of prisoners. These fellow-beings commended themselves to him because they were suffering, and because they were not only friendless, but to most men were odious. In the criminal or vicious life, in the inherited disease, or in the degradation of their former environment, his hopeful and buoyant sympathy found glimmering the faint light of a ] moral restoration. Or, where this light had quite flickered out. lie then sought the lessons grimly taught by the hopeless career- of k st men and women. These lessons and possible he the causes which n ;uch career. learned to a merciful purpose. He became a member of the Executive Commit- tee of the Prison Association of Xcw York in 1S6S. In the wi >rk of this society, inspired as it v." as by the loftiest humanitarian impulses, but tread!: g always the firm ground of practical beneficence, there was most admirable' opportunity tor the exercise of his ities. LTitil his death lie gave it unstinted time and lab >r. The work of this famous association was twofold: first, the improvement of prison dis- cipline, the intelligent separation, grouping and 7 treatment of convicts, so that they should acquire new and wholesome habits of work, attention, and thought, and that they should not, at least, grow in depravity while within the prison walls ; and sec- ondly, the practical aid of convicts, after their re- lease, to earn an honest livelihood. Mr. Dugdale expended a vast amount of time, and drew heavily upon his private resources in visits to the different prisons and jails of the State. Not shrinking from work singularly repulsive to one of so gentle a tem- per, he made the personal acquaintance of many convicted or reputed criminals in and out of prisons. He learned their biographies. He heard their case against society, as well as the more obvious though perhaps no stronger case of society against them. The result of this investigation is given in the famous brocJiure ''The Jukes," which he published in 1877. This study of hereditary crime and pau- perism, profoundly useful and interesting as it was in spite of the unavoidable horror of its details, at once attracted wide-spread attention. In this coun- try and Europe it has been read and quoted to the present time. The plain sobriety of its statements, often compressing into schedules the result of most laborious and accurate research, rather heightens the effect of its appalling picture of a life which goes on at the heart of our civilization, and from the taint of which no one wholly escapes. From the facts of " The Jukes," Mr. Dugdale drew very important and far-reaching generalizations. He concluded that there is hope in the physical and mental vigor of criminals; that there is hopelessness in the absence of that vigor in paupers ; that pauperism is more, therefore, to be dreaded than crime ; that the mis- directed energy of the latter may, by proper dis- cipline, be diverted to useful work; but that the sooner death comes the better, to the " under- vitalization and consequent untrainableness " of pauperism ; that it is a crime to so maintain paupers that they ma} - breed another and perhaps more numerous generation of their own kind ; that licen- tiousness is the concomitant and a chief cause both of pauperism and crime ; and that the open aban- donment of virtue in women is the dreadful ana- logue of pauperism and crime in men. There is, in " The Jukes," no aesthetic and fatuous ignoring of the gross and repulsive causes of so much of pauperism and disease. — causes which, however pleasantly veiled by euphemisms, are still an ever-present and an ever-dreadful obstacle to making humanity bet- ter and happier. Nor did Air. Dugdale propose by an}* false tenderness to evade the real problem, hie would not prevent nature, with inexorable benefi- cence, visiting her penalties upon the vicious and indolent. But for the young and for those not yet hopelessly degraded, he would provide, first, the necessary conditions of physical health, as a chief foundation of morality, and then add the guidance and stimulation of education, and the training and protection of hard work. In " Further Studies of Criminals," he briefly draws the lessons learned from his laborious investigations. In discussing the question of intermittent in- dustry, he says: "It was shown that one of the causes of idle habits was primarily physical and mental disease. * - * * The first condition, therefore of social and moral regeneration is public health. The draining of lands, the sewerage of cities, the ventilation of houses, the amelioration of tenements, the cleansing of streets, the widening of thoroughfares, the demolition of rear buildings, the removal of cesspools, the purity of water-supplies, the cubic space allotted to each person in dwellings, are only a few of the conditions which, if observed, will so improve the health of the general community that they will be more capable, and for that reason willing, to do their work without exhaustion than they now are, and with this additional increment of vitality will need less and therefore consume less of inebriating stimulants than they now do. Public health will re-act against intemperance in all its IO forms, and this again will re-act in maintaining and perfecting public health. In a community in which its infants are blessed with the advantages of perfect hygienic training, the body will assume that steady, uninterrupted growth which is the first requisite for the organization of a sound mind and its concomi- tant — a well-balanced life. "••' ' :: " - " :: " Given a taste for steady work and you have the best possi- ble safeguard against the unbridled indulgence of the passions, and, with this, an effectual check- to the formation of criminal practices which are, in a majority of instances, the direct result of indulgence in exhausting vices, or in the feverish pursuit of in- dulgences which a hard-working man does not think of. But the industrial training, here advocated, must net be the arbitrary imposition of a formal task. Work is not an education in its proper sense unless it enlists the putting forth of the powers of body and mind, simultaneously and cheerfully, to accomplish a pre-determined result." "■ The Jukes " audi " Further Studies of Criminals," speedily attained a high reputation as unique and valuable works. Mr. Dugdale followed them by a number of essays on sociological subjects published in tlie Westminister Rcviczv, the North American Re- 7'iezi', the Atlantic Monthly, and other periodicals. This was in addition to the essentially literal'}' II work he did for the various bodies of which he was a member, the reports and public addresses com- posed by him for them, and the papers read before them at their meetings. His literary composition was done in an attractive, nervous, and vigorous style, but with a considerate deference to the opin- ions and studies of other men, and . with a modest and continuous acknowledgment of the large ex- tent and complex nature of the problems upon which he was engaged, always forbidding, as they did, narrow and dogmatic assertions. In 18S0 Mr. Dugdale became the first Secretary of the Society for Political Education. This again was labor in the field of social improvement. Valu- able as had been the work done by political parties in discussing political questions, the work was still always limited by the fancied necessities, frequent pretences, and dexterous timidity of partisan con- flicts. Every effort at prison reform, at the com- pulsory sanitary protection of the very poor and the very young, had to be successful, if at all, through legislative or executive bodies, made up almost entirely of men in political life. It was a most serious obstacle to the advance of the reforms on which Mr. Dugdale's heart was set, that these men were often chosen as the result of skilful in- trigue or as a reward for the lowest order of par- 12 tisan activity. Men so chosen could not be equal to the statesmanlike work appropriate to the offices they held. And it was plainly seen that the popu- lar choice of public officers would continue to be so made as long as public opinion was not directed to administrative efficiency and honor, but was swayed by vague sentiments cleverly heated by rival parti- sans for election emergencies, or by corrupt and sinister influences designed to prevent either party from taking a distinct position upon any matter of real public moment, — and so long as popular in- terest in political questions was not sufficiently wide-spread or well-enough disciplined to compel parties to take sides upon them. The education of the people in true politics, it seemed, therefore, to Mr. Dugdale and his associates, would not only greatly aid popular judgment on political questions, but would be a necessary preliminary to the elec- tion (jf public representatives and officers upon real issues. It elections were so held, successful candi- dates would come generally to be men competent to consider and expert in dealing with questions of state and administration. And if legislators and executives were so competent and expert, and were not merely men accomplished in intrigue or active in part\- contests, we should have from them con- scientious and intelligent consideration of measures 13 intended to aid vital social reforms. Legislative committees, governors, mayors, commissioners of charities and corrections, superintendents of prisons, reformatories, almshouses, hospitals, would then patiently listen and intelligently act upon discus- sions of the condition of the extremely poor and the vicious, and especially of children and young men and women not yet hopelessly hardened. The work of the Society for Political Education was thus closely related to the beneficent labors to which Mr. Dugdale had given his life. The Society received from Air. Dugdale the most zealous and intelligent service from its beginning until he was overmastered by disease. Under his administration the Society rapidly grew in numbers and reputation until, at his death, it is no exaggera- tion to say that it had become a valuable factor in the creation and direction of American public sentiment. In March, 1883, the disorder of the heart, which, had for years been his ominous companion, over- came him. In April, however, he returned in- domitably to the work of the Society and to his interest in his fellow-men. This was but a respite of two or three weeks. His cruel enemy was at last victorious. After several weeks of intense agony, borne with imperturbable sweetness of temper, he died on the 23d of July, 1883, at his residence in H Morton Street, New York, made by him the familiar office of this Society. Though of slight frame, and in spite of his phys- ical suffering, Mr. Uugdale was a man of remarkable activity and persistence. And this activity and persistence were due to a courageous and loft}' res- olution which neither sickness nor suffering could abate. Nor did they prevent his temper from being equable. His manners were always considerate and oftentimes diffident. His personal bearing showed the simple and sincere earnestness and the sympa- thetic concern for others, which were plain charac- teristics of the man. Mr. Dugdale's associates in the Society feel that his place cannot be filled. His work, however, sur- vives him. and must be done. He leaves to us a hopeful belief that Americans have only begun the era of wide political intelligence, of a greater and more constant care for the methods of government and for the capacity and honor of public servants, of the more scrupulous and jealous regard for the rights of men who belong to no easily-heard class, a regard which the end of administrative abuses is sure to create, and of a sounder and steadier mercy toward those of whom it is doubtful whether their wickedness is due to their misery or their misery is due to their wickedness. THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. Series 9482