ho shoots his fellow because he believes himself to have been
cheated out of ten cents were really civilized, he would either not
have the impulse to kill or, having the impulse to kill, would have
sufficient power of self-control to refrain from doing so. This power
of self-control may be natural or acquired, and it may or may not be
possessed by the man who feels a desire to commit a homicide. The fact
to be observed--the interesting and, broadly speaking, the astonishing
fact--is that among a people like ourselves anybody should have a desire
to kill. It is even more astonishing than that the impulse should be
yielded to so often if it comes.

This, then, is the real reason why men kill--because it is inherent
in their state of mind, it is part of their mental and physical
make-up--they are ready to kill, they want to kill, they are the kind
of men who do kill. This is the result of their heredity, environment,
educational and religious training, or the absence of it. How many
readers of this paper have ever experienced an actual desire to kill
another human being? Probably not one hundredth of one per cent. They
belong to the class of people who either never have such an impulse, or
at any rate have been taught to keep such impulses under control. Hence
it is futile to try to explain that some men kill for a trifling sum of
money, some because they feel insulted, others because of political or
labor disputes, or because they do not like their food. Any one of these
may be the match that sets off the gunpowder, but the real cause of the
killing is the fact that the gunpowder is there, lying around loose,
and ready to be touched off. What engenders this gunpowder state of
mind would make a valuable sociological study, but it may well be that a
seemingly inconsequential fact may so embitter a boy or man toward life
or the human race in general that in time he "sees red" and goes through
the world looking for trouble. Any cause that makes for crime and
depravity makes for murder as well. The little boy who is driven out of
the tenement onto the street, and in turn off the street by a policeman,
until, finding no wholesome place to play, he joins a "gang" and begins
an incipient career of crime, may end in the "death house."

The table on the opposite page gives the figures collected by the
'Chicago Tribune' for the years from 1881 to 1910.

In view of the foregoing it may seem paradoxical for the writer to state
that