Month: July 2010

Franklin Roosevelt’s Early Experiences with the Poor

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From an early age, Franklin Roosevelt was taught to help others. As a teenager, his mother encouraged him to join the Missionary Society at his boarding school. The society sponsored a summer camp for poor city children. Franklin taught campers to swim, canoe, and sail. He also heard prominent reformers of the time period speak at his school. They included Jacob Riis, who championed the cause of the poor, and Booker T. Washington who sought to help African-Americans improve their social status. Moved by the words of these men and others, Franklin wanted to contribute to their causes. Though he did not have money of his own, he wrote home for permission to donate to these reformers.

Even when he left for Harvard, Franklin still found time to serve the Missionary Society at his former school. Since he was older, he could teach classes to the children and oversee games at the St. Andrew’s Boys Club in Boston. At Harvard, he joined the Social Service Society. He was genuine in his desire to help the poor but he did not have much contact with them outside of classroom or camp settings. After meeting his future wife Eleanor, however, he would learn more about the daily life of the poor.

Eleanor taught dancing at a school for immigrant girls. Franklin came to pick her up after work and they helped one of Eleanor’s students return home at night. When he came out of the girl’s apartment, Franklin was appalled by the condition in which the girl lived. The hallway was greasy and unlit and the plumbing was bad. He said to Eleanor, “My God, I didn’t know anyone lived like that.” Eleanor thought Franklin’s visits to her school helped shape his career. She often asked him to pick her up at the school because “I wanted him to see how people lived…And it worked. He saw how people lived, and he never forgot.”

His early experiences with the poor made Franklin determined to help people who lost their jobs during the Great Depression. As president, he helped the unemployed find work by creating a variety of government programs. For example, the Works Progress Administration put people to work building roads, bridges, airports, schools, and other buildings. Although the programs could not employ everyone who needed a job, they had a positive impact on millions of jobless Americans.   

Slavery and the American Revolution

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The democratic ideals of the American Revolution probably caused African American slaves to hope that their status in society might improve. Slaves took part in the revolutionary movement and assumed new roles in the process. Slaves served the British and American armies and received bounties, land, or freedom in return. After the war a movement to abolish slavery began in the North. Various Northern states called for a gradual abolition of slavery so that slaves born after a certain date would be set free.

Although the American Revolution caused slaves to assume new roles and gave some their freedom, in general African Americans did not achieve the freedoms which the Declaration of Independence claimed for all men. It was one thing to limit slavery in the North, but slavery was most common in the South where it was an important part of the economic system. Plantation owners felt they needed slaves to work in the fields, and they did not want to lose their cheap labor. To southerners, the principles of liberty established in the Declaration of Independence did not apply to African Americans. Slaves were thought of as property and not as men so they could not be considered equal. Despite America’s promises of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all, slavery remained a fact of life for most African Americans, depriving them of each of these rights.

The failure of the American Revolution to grant basic rights to African Americans was not changed by the Constitution which developed after the fighting stopped. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention did not attempt to abolish slavery, though some wanted to, because they knew the southern states would not accept a constitution that eliminated their labor force. Establishing a constitution that would unite the states was more important to members of the convention than African American rights. The constitution permitted Congress to limit the Atlantic slave trade in 1808, but it failed to give those slaves who were already in the U.S. any additional freedoms. The failure of the Constitutional Convention’s delegates to fully address slavery meant that African Americans would continue to struggle for equality with whites for years.

Historical Views of Torture vs. Torture Today

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Though written over two hundred years ago, Cesare Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments remains relevant today. Many governments still endorse torture as a form of punishment for criminal acts. In the U.S., the use of the death penalty is still a debated issue. Do these forms of punishment really prevent crime? Beccaria faced this question, but concluded that torture or killing only destroys man’s spirit and his faith in the government. 

 

History provides many instances in which torture was used. The Spanish Inquisition, for example, used torture to suppress heresy within the Catholic church. Beccaria, however, disagrees with these harsh punishments. He writes of past tortures, “Can one read history without horror and disgust at the useless barbarity of the tortures so coldly invented and inflicted by men who were reckoned wise?” Rulers inflict pain on their enemies and destroy them, but the rulers destroy the basic humanity within themselves by carrying out torture. 

 

Though Beccaria feels that those who torture others are transformed into barbarians, the punished man is even less human than his antagonist. The aggressor, though cruel, is capable of the human emotion of anger. The afflicted, however, eventually becomes indifferent after repeated torture. Beccaria states, “as punishments become more cruel, men’s minds…become increasingly hardened; and human emotion has such a lively force that after a hundred years of cruel punishment of that kind the wheel would only seem as terrifying as the prison had been earlier on.” When the punishment is constantly brutal, the punished no longer reacts to it and his human emotions disappear.

 

One of the main justifications for harsh punishments is that others will fear those punishments and stop committing crimes. Although this might be effective for a while, just as the prisoner becomes immune to his punishment the public also ceases to remain in awe if penalties are repeatedly severe. Beccaria points out that if law constantly dictates harsh punishments, that law will not last long. He warns, “If the laws are indeed cruel, either they are altered or they occasion a fatal tendency not to punish.” Instead of preventing further crime, cruelty promotes indifference to all punishments. Since no one, not even Beccaria, advocates the absence of punishments, the punishments must fit the crimes committed. Harsh punishments such as life imprisonment should be rare and reserved for the worst crimes, ensuring that the people do not become indifferent towards punishment.  

 

Just as he opposes other forms of torture, Beccaria also opposes the death penalty. The job of the government is to provide the people with laws that protect them. Beccaria comments on the difference between the laws the people are given to follow and the laws the government leaders follow. Though the people cannot commit murder, the death penalty is permitted under the law. Beccaria points out that through the cruelty of the death penalty, leaders only inspire hate for the government. 

 

To Beccaria, brutality harmed each aspect of civilization. It harmed the officials by making them cruel, the afflicted by making them indifferent, and the government through the disgust of the public. The United States maintains Beccaria’s anti-brutality stance in its prisons, yet has the death penalty in many states. Contrary to our laws, some prisoners have been beaten or mistreated to get confessions from them. According to Beccaria, until the death penalty and beatings are eliminated, civilization will continue to suffer.