CHAPTER IV. Why Do Men Kill?

When a shrewd but genial editor called me up on the telephone and asked
me how I should like to write an article on the above lurid title, I
laughed in his--I mean the telephone's face.

"My dear fellow!" I said (I should only have the nerve to call him that
over a wire). "It would ruin me! How could I keep my self-respect and
write that kind of sensational stuff--Why do men kill? Why do men eat?
Why do men drink? Why do men love? Why do men--"

"Look here!" he interrupted. "I want to know why one man kills another
man. If we knew why, maybe we could stop it, couldn't we? We could try
to, anyhow. And you know something about it. You've prosecuted nearly
a hundred men for murder. Get the facts--that's what I want. Cut
the adjectives and morality, and get down to the reasons. Anything
particularly undignified about that?" And he rang off.

I arose and walked over to the bookcase on which reposed several
shelves of "minutes" of criminal trials. They were dusty and depressing.
Practically every one of them was a memento of some poor devil gone to
prison or to the chair. Where were they now--and why did they kill--yes,
why DID they?

I glanced along the red-labeled backs.

"People versus Candido." Now why did HE kill? I remembered the Italian
perfectly. He killed his friend because the latter had been too
attentive to his wife. "People versus Higgins." Why did he? That was
a drunken row on a New Year's Eve within the sound of Trinity chimes.
"People versus Sterling Greene." Yes, he was a colored man--I recalled
the evidence--drink and a "yellow gal." "People versus Mock Duck"-a
Chinese feud between the On Leong Tong and the Hip Sing Tong--a
vendetta, first one Chink shot and then another, turn and turn about,
running back through Mott Street, New York, Boston, San Francisco, until
the origin of the quarrel was lost in the dim Celestial mists across
the sea. Out of the first four cases the following motives: Jealousy--1.
Drink--1. Drink and jealousy--1. Scattering (how can you term a "Tong"
row?)--1.

I began to get interested. Supposing I dug out all the homicide cases I
had ever tried, what would the result show as to motive for the killing?
Would drink and women account for seventy-five per cent? Mentally I ran
my eye back over nearly ten years. What OTHER motives had the defendants
at the bar had? There was Laudiero--an Italian "Camorrista"--he had
killed simply for the dist