ce he can get, hoping to find a better one, which generally
means an easier one, before very long. It is hard for a boy to stick to
work; too many things are calling him away. Every instinct and emotion
is urging him to play. New feelings and desires are coaxing him from
work. His companions and the boy life in which he has a place urge him
to leave his task. Usually he keeps his job no longer than he can help
and later looks for something else. The chances are great that he will
never find what he wants; that he has not had the preparation or
training for a successful workingman's career, whatever that might be.
He is a doer of odd jobs and of poorly paid work all his life.

He must have some calling and takes the easiest one, which is often a
life of crime. From this start comes the professional criminal
so-called. He may make a business of picking pockets. If this comes to
be his trade it is very hard for him to give it up. There is so strong
an element of chance--he never knows what a pocket will contain--it
gratifies a spirit of adventure. Then it is easy. The wages are much
greater than he could get in any other calling; the hours are short and
it never interferes with his amusements. It is not so dangerous as being
a burglar or a switchman, for he can find an excuse for jostling one in
the street-cars or in a crowd and thus reaching into a pocket.

The burglar is not so apt to be a professional; his is a bolder and more
hazardous trade; if he is caught he is taken from his occupation for a
longer time. The great hazard involved in this trade and also the
physical strength and fitness of those who follow it lead to its
abandonment more frequently than is the case with a pickpocket or a
petty thief. Robbery is seldom a profession. It is usually the crime of
the young and venturesome and almost surely leads to early disaster.
Murder, of course, is never a profession. In a broad way it is the
result of accident or passion, or of relations which are too hard to
endure.

In prison and out, I have talked with scores of these men and boys. I am
sure they rarely tried to deceive me. I have very seldom seen one who
felt that he had done wrong, or had any thought of what the world calls
reformation. A very few have used the current language of those who
talk of reform, but generally they were the weakest and most hopeless of
the lot and usually adopted this attitude to deceive. In almost every
instance where you meet any