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Page 4
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 multitude 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--assigned 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 illustration 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.
Only two Americans established a considerable and permanent reputation
in the world of European thought prior to the present century,--Benjamin
Franklin and Jonathan Edwards. In 1736, Dr. Isaac Watts published in
England Mr. Edwards' account of the beginning of the great awakening in
the Connecticut valley. Here more than a century and a half ago, when
the colonies were small, their future unsuspected and the ability of
their leaders unrecognized, Jonathan Edwards "erected the standard of
Orthodoxy for enlightened Protestant Europe." Who can estimate the
eloquence of that simple fact? Almost everything of his which was
published in the colonies was speedily republished in England. Of what
other American philosopher and theologian has this been true? Here are
a few of the tributes to Mr. Edwards:
_Daniel Webster_: "The Freedom of the Will" by Mr. Edwards is the
greatest achievement of the human intellect.
_Dr. Chalmers_: The greatest of theologians.
_Robert Hall_: He was the greatest of the sons of men.
_Dugald Stewart_: Edwards on the Will never was answered and never will
be answered.
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