Читать книгу The New York Tombs Inside and Out!. Scenes and Reminiscences Coming Down to the Present. A Story Stranger Than Fiction, with an Historic Account of America's Most Famous Prison онлайн

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John Howard, the Morning Star of Prison Reform, who in his day encouraged popular education, was careful to say, “Make men diligent and you will tend to make them honest,” and he added that he did not believe education of the head would amount to much unless it was followed by “education of heart and hands.”

Within recent years Christian penologists are almost unanimous in the opinion that mental training alone has little influence in decreasing crime. Nor does it follow that in countries where illiteracy stands high that crime is greater than in countries where the opposite is true. In Spain, where two-thirds of the people are illiterate there is less crime, according to the population, than in Massachusetts where nine-tenths of the people can read and write.

So also in rural settlements where there is always less educational privileges than in large cities, crime is vastly less in the former than in the latter.

In the early history of this country petty crimes were usually committed against domestic products, but with the advance of our present civilization such crimes are nothing compared to stealing railroads, coal mines, gold mines, safe cracking, colossal swindling and bank wrecking in which millions are stolen yearly. And all of these crimes are the work of well educated men.