inction it gave him among his countrymen
and the satisfaction he felt at being known as a "bad" man--a "capo
maestra." There was Joseph Ferrone--pure jealousy again. Hendry--animal
hate intensified by drink. Yoscow--a deliberate murder, planned in
advance by several of a gang, to get rid of a young bully who had made
himself generally unpleasant. There was Childs, who had killed, as he
claimed, in self-defence because he was set upon and assaulted by rival
runners from another seaman's boarding house. Really it began to look as
if men killed for a lot of reasons.

One consideration at once suggested itself. How about the killings where
the murderer is never caught? The prisoners tried for murder are only a
mere fraction of those who commit murder. True, and the more deliberate
the murder, the greater, unfortunately, the chance of the villain
getting away. Still, in cases merely of suspected murder, or in cases
where no evidence is taken, it would be manifestly unfair arbitrarily to
assign motives for the deed, if deed it was. No, one must start with the
assumption, sufficiently accurate under all the circumstances, that
the killings in which the killer is caught are fairly representative of
killings as a whole.

All crimes naturally tend to divide themselves into two classes--crimes
against property and crimes against the person, each class having an
entirely different assortment of reasons for their commission.

There can be practically but one motive for theft, burglary, or robbery.
It is, of course, conceivable that such crimes might be perpetrated for
revenge--to deprive the victim of some highly prized possession. But in
the main there is only one object--unlawful gain. So, too, blackmail,
extortion, and kidnapping are all the products of the desire for
"easy money." But, unquestionably, this is the reason for murder in
comparatively few cases.

The usual motive for crimes against the person--assault, manslaughter,
mayhem, murder, etc.--is the desire to punish, or be avenged upon
another by inflicting personal pain upon him or by depriving him of his
most valuable asset--life. And this desire for retaliation or revenge
generally grows out of a recent humiliation received at the hands of
the other person, a real or fancied wrong to oneself, a member of
one's family, or one's property. But this was too easy an answer to my
friend's question. He wanted and deserved more than that, and I set out
to give it to him.