guided almost exclusively by the mores--the folk-ways of
old--founded on expediency as revealed by experiences, and acquired by
the only known process, that of trial and error. If this be true, it
clearly follows that in order to conserve any vestige of a civilization,
we must realize the fact that property crimes are the normal results of
the complex activities making up the treadmill called civilization. We
must likewise realize that to modify these crimes we must modify the
trend of the race.

When the seamy side of man's behavior is scrutinized by science, it
cannot be other than grim and distressing to the reader. It is this to
the writer. But all the really significant facts of life are grim and
often repulsive in the material presented. To the "irony of facts" must
be ascribed the shadows as well as the high lights. No distortions or
speculations can influence the findings of science. They are accessible
and can be checked up by any one sufficiently interested. The student
knows that man is what he is, because of his origin and long and painful
past.

XIV

CRIMES AGAINST PROPERTY

By far the largest class of crimes may be called crimes against
property. Strictly speaking, these are crimes in relation to the
ownership of property; criminal ways of depriving the lawful owner of
its possession.

Many writers claim that nearly all crime is caused by economic
conditions, or in other words that poverty is practically the whole
cause of crime. Endless statistics have been gathered on this subject
which seem to show conclusively that property crimes are largely the
result of the unequal distribution of wealth. But crime of any class
cannot safely be ascribed to a single cause. Life is too complex,
heredity is too variant and imperfect, too many separate things
contribute to human behavior, to make it possible to trace all actions
to a single cause. No one familiar with courts and prisons can fail to
observe the close relation between poverty and crime. All lawyers know
that the practice of criminal law is a poor business. Most lawyers of
ability refuse such practice because it offers no financial rewards.
Nearly all the inmates of penal institutions are without money. This is
true of almost all men who are placed on trial. Broad generalizations
have been made from statistics gathered for at least seventy-five years.
It has been noted in every civilized country that the number of property
crimes materially