"[4]

The most "prosperous" industrial period makes it impossible for the
worker to earn enough to keep up health and vigor. And as prosperity
is, at best, an imaginary condition, thousands of people are
constantly added to the host of the unemployed. From East to West,
from South to North, this vast army tramps in search of work or food,
and all they find is the workhouse or the slums. Those who have a
spark of self-respect left, prefer open defiance, prefer crime to the
emaciated, degraded position of poverty.

Edward Carpenter estimates that five-sixths of indictable crimes
consist in some violation of property rights; but that is too low a
figure. A thorough investigation would prove that nine crimes out of
ten could be traced, directly or indirectly, to our economic and
social iniquities, to our system of remorseless exploitation and
robbery. There is no criminal so stupid but recognizes this terrible
fact, though he may not be able to account for it.

A collection of criminal philosophy, which Havelock Ellis, Lombroso,
and other eminent men have compiled, shows that the criminal feels
only too keenly that it is society that drives him to crime. A
Milanese thief said to Lombroso: "I do not rob, I merely take from
the rich their superfluities; besides, do not advocates and merchants
rob?" A murderer wrote: "Knowing that three-fourths of the social
virtues are cowardly vices, I thought an open assault on a rich man
would be less ignoble than the cautious combination of fraud."
Another wrote: "I am imprisoned for stealing a half dozen eggs.
Ministers who rob millions are honored. Poor Italy!" An educated
convict said to Mr. Davitt: "The laws of society are framed for the
purpose of securing the wealth of the world to power and calculation,
thereby depriving the larger portion of mankind of its rights and
chances. Why should they punish me for taking by somewhat similar
means from those who have taken more than they had a right to?" The
same man added: "Religion robs the soul of its independence;
patriotism is the stupid worship of the world for which the
well-being and the peace of the inhabitants were sacrificed by those
who profit by it, while the laws of the land, in restraining natural
desires, were waging war on the manifest spirit of the law of our
beings. Compared with this," he concluded, "thieving is an honorable
pursuit."[5]

Verily, there is greater truth in this philosophy than in all the