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Page 2
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 shifts 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 class
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
fishing, 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 God than this place where Max built his
shanty about 1750. But he did not go there to worship 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.
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