is becoming aroused to the dangers which threaten
American society from the escape of criminals and the lax and sluggish
administration of the criminal laws. But the remark must be made that
our existing methods of framing, executing, and expounding criminal laws
are merely an illustration of the extent to which the state governments,
under the influence of traditional legal and political preconceptions,
have subordinated the collective social interest to that of the possible
individual criminal; and no thorough-going reform will be possible until
these traditional preconceptions have themselves been abandoned, and a
system substituted which makes the state the efficient friend of the
collective public interest and the selected individual.

Assuming, then, that they use their increased powers more effectually
for the primary duty of keeping order, and administering civil and
criminal justice, reforming state governments could proceed to many
additional tasks. They could redeem very much better than they do their
responsibility to their wards--the insane and the convicted criminals.
At the present time some states have fairly satisfactory penitentiaries,
reformatories, and insane asylums, while other states have utterly
unsatisfactory ones; but in all the states both the machinery and the
management are capable of considerable improvement. The steady increase
both of crime and insanity is demanding the most serious consideration
of the whole problem presented by social dereliction--particularly for
the purpose of separating out those criminals and feeble-minded people
who are capable of being restored to the class of useful citizens. In
fact a really regenerated state government might even consider the
possible means of preventing crime and insanity. It might have the
hardihood to inquire whether the institution of marriage, which would
remain under exclusive state protection, does not in its existing form
have something to do with the prevalence and increase of insanity and
crime; and it might conceivably reach the conclusion that the enforced
celibacy of hereditary criminals and incipient lunatics would make for
individual and social improvement even more than would a maximum
passenger fare on the railroads of two cents a mile. Moreover, while
their eyes were turned to our American success in increasing the social
as well as the economic output, they might pause a moment to consider
the marvelous increase of divorces.