nal
population is concerned, no necessity exists for the organisation of
State factories; and so far as destitution is a factor in the
production of crime, it can be grappled with by other agencies. In
fact, if a graduated system of Unions, with a kind of casual ward,
somewhat after the German Naturalverpflegstationen, could be worked
and if Trade Societies adopted, under proper precautions, the
principle of allowing debilitated members of their trade the
opportunity of doing something at a somewhat reduced rate, it would be
impossible for any well-intentioned man to say that he was driven to
crime from sheer want. It is worth while, on the part of the nation,
to make some small sacrifice to attain an object so supremely
important as this. It is very probable that hardly any sacrifice will
be needed. In any case it would get rid of the uncomfortable feeling
entertained by many that there are occasions when human beings are
punished who ought to be fed. It would completely alienate all
sympathy from crime; it would then be known that criminal offenders
deserved the punishment they received, and justice would be able to
deal with them with a firm and even hand.

CHAPTER V.

POVERTY AND CRIME.

Having analysed the part played by destitution in the production of
crime, the cognate question of the extent to which poverty is
responsible for it will now be considered. If actual destitution does
not count for very much in producing criminals, it may be that poverty
makes up the difference, and that the great bulk of delinquency, if
not the whole of it, arises from the combined operation of these two
economic factors. We have examined one of them, let us now go on to
the other. As this examination will have to be conducted from several
different points of view which, for the sake of clearness, it will be
expedient to consider one by one, I shall begin by inquiring what
light international statistics are capable of throwing on the
relations between poverty and crime. At the outset of this inquiry we
are at once met by the old difficulty respecting the value of
international criminal statistics. The imperfection of those
statistics is a matter it is always important to bear in mind, but in
spite of this circumstance the light which they shed on the problem of
poverty and crime is not to be rejected as worthless.

It has been pointed out in the preceding chapter that the offences
people, in a state of destitution, are