p. 7 | EDUCATED CRIMINALS by The Commoner

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Aug 23, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 34.

EDUCATED CRIMINALS.

By The Commoner

PROFESSOR WILLIAM JAMES, of Harvard University, in a recent address, said: “There is not a public abuse on the whole eastern coast which does not receive the enthusiastic approval of some Harvard graduate.” And he added: “Fifty years ago the schools were supposed to free us from crimes and unhappiness; but we do not indulge in such sanguine hopes to any such extent to-day. The education frees us from the more brutal forms of crime, it is true that education itself has put even meaner forms of crime in our way. The intellect is a servant of our passions, and sometimes education only makes the person more adroit in carrying out these impulses.”

President Roosevelt, in his speech at Harvard, brought substantially the same indictment against the well-educated lawyers. Unpleasant as it may be, the truth of these statements must be admitted. If our schools train men and then leave them to prey upon society, we are going to find a decreasing interest in education.

What we need just now is to cultivate a moral purpose in our students which will make them employ their talent and their training for the benefit of society rather than against it. In other words, ethical development must accompany intellectual development or our country will find itself at the mercy of a lot of well-educated criminals trained at public expense for public harm. And it is just this ethical training that is likely to be neglected by a college which asks for an endowment from the trust magnate and the market speculator. As long as our colleges are looking to the big criminals for endowments, the professors can not take the position they ought to on sociological and economic questions. — The Commoner.