SOCIAL  PATHOLOGY  37

in  the  causation  of  crime  in  this  country  are  the  varying  phases
of  the  struggle  between  capital  and  labor.  Here  the  relation  of
degeneracy  to  crime  does  not  at  first  sight  seem  clear,  but,  as  will
be  shown  in  the  special  chapter  devoted  to  that  subject,  de-
generacy is  quite  as  potent  here  as  elsewhere  in  the  etiolc^  of
crime.  Another  equally  important  special  factor  of  environment
in  America  is  our  political  conditions.  Ail  political  and  gov-
ernmental systems  offer  facilities  for  and  temptations  to  crime,
but  the  political,  office-holding  "  thief  trust"  is  an  institution
peculiarly  American.
Yellow  journalism  is  not  to  be  forgotten  in  the  discussion  of
etiologic  factors  of  crimes  that  are  distinctively  our  own.
The  most  important  recent  advance  in  criminology  has  been
developed  by  the  study  of  the  physical  and  psychic  peculiarities  of
the  degenerate  classes,  of  which  the  criminal  is  chief.  Modem
criminology,  however,  does  not  claim  that  deformities  and
various  deviations  from  the  normal  type  are  necessarily  indicative
of  criminal  tendencies.    In  brief,  its  tenets  are  these :

1.  The  criminal  and  vice  classes  are  the  product  of  certain
influences  of  heredity,  congenital  and  acquired  disease,  and  un-
favorable surroundings  involving  pernicious  teaching  and  ex-
ample, physical  necessities,  and  other  social  maladies.
2.  These  influences  result  in  a  class  of  persons  of  low  grade
of  development,  physically  and  mentally,  with  a  defective  under-
standing of  their  true  relations  to  the  social  system  in  which  they
Kve.  Such  persons  have  no  true  conception  of  that  variable  thing
called  morality,  and,  in  the  case  of  the  criminal,  no  respect  what-
ever for  the  rights  of  others,  save  in  so  far  as  it  may  be  compelled
by  fear  of  punishment.  Some  become  criminals,  some  paupers,
and  still  others  prostitutes,  inebriates,  or  insane.
