Jukes-Edwards Part 1

Jukes-Edwards.

by A. E. Wins.h.i.+p.

PREFACE.

Of all the problems which America faces on the land and on the seas, no one is so important as that of making regenerates out of degenerates.

The ma.s.sing of people in large cities, the incoming of vast mult.i.tudes from the impoverished ma.s.ses of several European and Asiatic countries, the tendency to interpret liberty as license, the contagious nature of moral, as well as of physical, diseases combine to make it of the utmost importance that American enterprise and moral force find ways and means for accomplis.h.i.+ng this transformation. The grand results of the movement in New York city inspired by Jacob Riis; the fascinating benevolence of the Roycroft Shop in East Aurora, N.Y.; the marvelous transfiguration of character--I speak it reverently--at the George Junior Republic, Freeville, N.Y., added to the College Settlement and kindred efforts merely indicate what may be accomplished when philanthropy supplements saying by doing, and when Christianity stands for the beauty of wholeness and is satisfied with nothing less than the physical, mental and moral conversions of all cla.s.ses among the ma.s.ses at home as well as abroad, in the East as well as in the West.

A problem is primarily something thrown at us as a challenge for us to see through it. To solve a problem is to loosen it so that it may be looked into or seen through. Whatever contributes to the loosening of a problem by throwing light upon the conditions is of value in aiding in its solution, hence the publication of this study of the family of Jonathan Edwards as a contrast to the Jukes.

A.E.W.

Somerville, Ma.s.s., _June 1, 1900_.

CHAPTER I

THE JUKES

Education is something more than going to school for a few weeks each year, is more than knowing how to read and write. It has to do with character, with industry, and with patriotism. Education tends to do away with vulgarity, pauperism, and crime, tends to prevent disease and disgrace, and helps to manliness, success and loyalty.

Ignorance leads to all those things that education tries to do away with, and it tends to do away with all the things that education tries to cultivate. It is easy to say these things, and every one knows they are true, but few realize how much such statements mean. It is not easy to take a view of such matters over a long range of time and experience.

A boy that leaves school and s.h.i.+fts for himself by blacking boots, selling papers, and "swiping" fruit often appears much smarter than a boy of the same age who is going to school all the time and does not see so much of the world. A boy of twelve who has lived by his wits is often keener than a boy of the same age who has been well brought up at home and at school, but such a boy knows about as much and is about as much of a man at twelve as he will ever be, while the boy that gets an education becomes more and more of a man as long as he lives.

But this might be said a thousand times to every truant, and it would have very little effect, because he thinks that he will be an exception.

He never sees beyond his own boyish smartness. Few men and women realize how true it is that these smart rascally fellows, who persist in remaining in ignorance, are to be the vicious, pauper, criminal cla.s.s who are to fill the dens of vice, the poorhouses, and the prisons; who are to be burglars, highwaymen, and murderers. In place of opinions, it is well sometimes to present facts so clear and definite that they cannot be forgotten.

R.A. Dugdale, of New York State, began the study of "The Jukes" family in 1874, and in 1877 in the twentieth annual report of the New York Prison Commission he made a statement of the results.[Footnote: G.P.

Putnam's Sons, New York, reprinted this study in "The Jukes."] This brief summary of "the Jukes" is based upon the facts which Mr. Dugdale has published.

"The Jukes" is a name given to a large family of degenerates. It is not the real name of any family, but a general term applied to forty-two different names borne by those in whose veins flows the blood of one man. The word "jukes" means "to roost." It refers to the habit of fowls to have no home, no nest, no coop, preferring to fly into the trees and roost away from the places where they belong. The word has also come to mean people who are too indolent and lazy to stand up or sit up, but sprawl out anywhere. "The Jukes" are a family that did not make good homes, did not provide themselves with comforts, did not work steadily.

They are like hens that fly into the trees to roost.

The father of "The Jukes" Mr. Dugdale styled "Max." He was born about 1720 of Dutch stock. Had he remained with his home folk in the town and been educated, and thrifty like the rest of the boys, he might have given the world a very different kind of family from "The Jukes."

Max was a jolly good fellow and not very bad. He was popular and he could tell a good story that made everybody laugh. Of course he was vulgar, such jolly good fellows are usually vulgar. He would not go to school, because he did not like it. He would not stay in evenings, for he did not like that. He did not enjoy being talked to, but always wanted to talk himself, and to talk to boys who would laugh at his yarns. He would not work for he did not like it. He wanted to go fis.h.i.+ng, hunting, and trapping; so he left home early and took to the woods.

Max liked nature. He thought he was lots better than town people because he knew more about nature. He found a lovely spot on the border of a beautiful lake in New York State, where the rocks are grand, the waters lovely, the forest glorious. There was never a more charming place in which to be good and to love G.o.d than this place where Max built his shanty about 1750. But he did not go there to wors.h.i.+p or to be good. He went simply to get away from good people, to get where he would not have to work, and where he would not be preached to, and this beautiful spot became a notorious cradle of crime. Nature is lovely, but it makes all the difference in the world how we know nature and why we love it.

In 1874 Richard L. Dugdale was employed by the New York Prison Commission to visit the prisons of the state. In this visit he was surprised to find criminals in six different prisons whose relatives were mostly criminals or paupers, and the more surprised to discover that these six criminals, under four different names, were all descended from the same family. This led Mr. Dugdale to study their relatives, living and dead. He gave himself up to this work with great zeal, studying the court and prison records, reports of town poorhouses, and the testimony of old neighbors and employers. He learned the details of 540 descendants of Max in five generations. He learned the exact facts about 169 who married into the family. It is customary to count as of a family the men who marry into it. He traced in part others, which carried the number up to 1,200 persons of the family of the Jukes.

The Jukes rarely married foreign-born men or women, so that it may be styled a distinctively American family. The almost universal traits of the family were idleness, ignorance, and vulgarity. They would not work, they could not be made to study, and they loved vulgarity. These characteristics led to disease and disgrace, to pauperism and crime.

They were a disgustingly diseased family as a whole. There were many imbeciles and many insane. Those of "the Jukes" who tended to pauperism were rarely criminal, and those who were criminal were rarely paupers.

The sick, the weak, and goody-goody ones were almost all paupers; the healthy, strong ones were criminals.

It is a well-known fact in sociology that criminals are of three cla.s.ses: First, those who direct crime, the capitalists in crime, who are rarely arrested, who seldom commit any crime, but inspire men to crime in various ways. These are intelligent and have to be educated to some extent. They profit by crime and take slight risks.

Second, those who commit heroic crimes and find some satisfaction in the skill and daring required. Safe-breaking, train robbery, and some types of burglary require men of ability and pluck, and those who do these things have a species of pride in it.

Third, those who commit weak and imbecile crimes, which mark the doer as a sneak and a coward. These men rob hen roosts, waylay helpless women and old men, steal clothing in hallways, and burn buildings. They are always cowardly about everything they do, and never have the pluck to steal chickens even until they are half drunk. They often commit murder, but only when they are detected in some sneaking crime and shoot because they are too cowardly to face their discoverer.

Now the Jukes were almost never of the first or second cla.s.s. They could not be criminals that required capital, brains, education or nerve. Even the kind of pauperism and crime in which they indulged was particularly disgraceful. This is inevitably true of all cla.s.ses of people who combine idleness, ignorance, and vulgarity. They are not even respectable among criminals and paupers.

There is an honorable pauperism. It is no disgrace to be poor or to be in a poorhouse if there is a good reason for it. One may be manly in poverty. But the Jukes were never manly or honorable paupers, they were weaklings among paupers.

They were a great expense to the state, costing in crime and pauperism more than $1,250,000. Taken as a whole, they not only did not contribute to the world's prosperity, but they cost more than $1,000 a piece, including all men, women, and children, for pauperism and crime.

Those who worked did the lowest kind of service and received the smallest wages. Only twenty of the 1,200 learned a trade, and ten of those learned it in the state prison. Even they were not regularly employed. Men who work regularly even at unskilled labor are generally honest men and provide for the family. A habit of irregular work is a species of mental or moral weakness, or both. A man or woman who will not stick to a job is morally certain to be a pauper or a criminal.

One great benefit of going to school, especially of attending regularly for eight or ten months each year for nine years or more, is that it establishes a habit of regularity and persistency in effort. The boy who leaves school to go to work does not necessarily learn to work steadily, but often quite the reverse. Few who graduate from a grammar school, or who take the equivalent course in a rural school, fail to be regular in their habits of effort. This accounts in part for the fact that few unskilled workmen ever graduated from a grammar school. Scarcely any of the Jukes were ever at school any considerable time. Probably no one of them ever had so much as a completed rural school education.

It is very difficult to find anyone who is honest and industrious, pure and prosperous, who has not had a fair education, if he ever had the opportunity, as all children in the United States now have. It is an interesting fact developed from a study of the Jukes that it is much easier to reform a criminal than a pauper.

Here are a few facts by way of conclusion. On the basis of the facts gathered by Mr. Dugdale, 310 of the 1,200 were professional paupers, or more than one in four. These were in poorhouses or its equivalent for 2,300 years.

Three hundred of the 1,200, or one in four, died in infancy from lack of good care and good conditions.

There were fifty women who lived lives of notorious debauchery.

Four hundred men and women were physically wrecked early by their own wickedness.

There were seven murderers.

Sixty were habitual thieves who spent on the average twelve years each in lawless depredations.

There were 130 criminals who were convicted more or less often of crime.

What a picture this presents! Some slight improvement was apparent when Mr. Dugdale closed his studies. This resulted from evening schools, from manual training schools, from improved conditions of labor, from the later methods of treating prisoners.

CHAPTER II

A STUDY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS

The story of the Jukes as published by Mr. Dugdale has been the text of a mult.i.tude of sermons, the theme of numberless addresses, the inspiration of no end of editorials and essays. For twenty years there was a call for a companion picture. Every preacher, orator, and editor who presented the story of the Jukes, with its abhorrent features, wanted the facts for a cheery, comforting, convincing contrast. This was not to be had for the asking. Several attempts had been made to find the key to such a study without discovering a person of the required prominence, born sufficiently long ago, with the necessary vigor of intellect and strength of character who established the habit of having large families.

In 1897 a professional scholarly organization--to which the author has the honor to belong--a.s.signed to him, without his knowledge or consent, the duty of preparing an essay upon Jonathan Edwards for the May meeting of 1898. The study then begun led to a search for the facts regarding his family, and when it came to light that one of Jonathan Edwards'

descendants presided over the New York Prison Commission when it employed Mr. Dugdale to make a study of the Jukes, the appropriateness of the contrast was more than ever apparent.

In this study the sources of information are the various genealogies of families in which the descendants of Mr. Edwards play a part, various town histories and church and college publications, but chiefly the biographical dictionaries and encyclopaedias in which the records of the men of the family are chronicled. It would be impossible to follow out the positions occupied by the various members but for the pride they all feel in recording the fact that they are descendants of Jonathan Edwards. A good ill.u.s.tration of this may be had in the current announcements of the marvelously popular novel, "Richard Carvel," in which it is always emphasized that Mr. Winston Churchill, the author, is a descendant of Jonathan Edwards.