winter and in summer. This is, therefore, a practical proof of
the influence of climate, and it is re-enforced by the fact that
delirium and epilepsy in insane asylums are also more frequent in hot
than in cold months. The influence of the telluric factors, then, cannot
be denied, and the influence of the social factor intensifies it, as I
have already shown by its most drastic and characteristic example, that
of want. One can, therefore, understand that a man, whose morality has
been shaken by the pressure of increasing want, may be led to commit a
crime against property or persons.

It is certainly quite evident, that economic misery has an undeniable
influence on criminality. And if you consider, that about 300,000
criminals are sentenced in Italy every year, 180,000 of them for minor
crimes, and 120,000 for crimes which belong to the gravest class, you
can easily see that the greater part of them due mainly to social
conditions, for which it should not be so very difficult to find a
remedy. The work of the legislator may be slow, difficult, and
inadequate, so far as the telluric and anthropological factors are
concerned. But it could surely be rapid, efficacious and prompt, so far
as the social factors influencing criminality are concerned.

We have now demonstrated that crime has its natural source in the
combined interaction of three classes of causes, the anthropological
(organic and psychological) factor, the telluric factor, and the social
factor. And by this last factor we must not only mean want, but any
other condition of administrative instability in political, moral, and
intellectual life. Every social condition which makes the life of man in
society insincere and imperfect is a social factor contributing towards
criminality. The economic factor is in evidence in our civilization
wherever the law of free competition, which is but a form of disguised
cannibalism, establishes the rule: _Your death is my life_. The
competition of laborers for a limited number of places is equivalent to
saying that those who secure a living do so at the expense of those who
do not. And this is a disguised form of cannibalism. While it does not
devour the competitor as primitive mankind did, it paralyzes him by
calumnies, recommendations, protection, money, which, secure the place
for the best bargainer and leave the most honest, talented, and
self-respecting to the pangs of starvation.

Moreover, the economic factor exerts i