ll known that a largo percentage of the hard,
manual work done in America is performed by those men. The economic
condition of the average native born American is superior to the
economic condition of the average emigrant; but the native American,
notwithstanding his economic superiority, cuts a worse figure in the
statistics of crime. This is a state of things the Americans
themselves are just beginning to perceive, and it cannot fail to make
them uneasy as to the efficacy of some of their erratic methods of
punishing crime. It has, until recently, been the habit of American
statisticians to compare the foreign born population with the whole of
the native population with respect to crime. The outcome of this
method of comparison was taken all round favourable to the born
Americans, and for many years people satisfied themselves with the
belief that a high percentage of crime in the United States was due to
the foreign element in the community. It is now seen that this method
of calculation is defective and false. A comparatively small number of
foreigners emigrate to the United States under eighteen years of age;
in order, therefore, to make the comparison between natives and
foreigners accurate, it must be made with foreigners over eighteen and
Americans over eighteen, for it is after persons pass that age that
they are most prone to commit crime. The result of this new and more
correct method of comparison has been to show that the native American
element, that is to say, the element best situated economically, is
also the element which perpetrates most crimes. Such a result is only
another illustration of the truth that an advanced state of economic
well-being is not necessarily accompanied by greater immunity from
crime.

A further illustration of this significant truth is to be witnessed in
the Antipodes. In no quarter of the world is there such wide-spread
prosperity as exists in the colony of Victoria. All writers and
travellers are unanimous upon this point. Nowhere in the world is
there less economic excuse for the perpetration of crime. Work of one
kind or another can almost always be had in that favoured portion of
the globe.

Even in the worst of times, if men are willing to go "up country," as
it is called, occupation of some sort is certain to be found, and
trade depression never reaches the acute point which it sometimes does
at home.

Nevertheless, on examining the criminal statistics of the colony