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 he questions the alleged unusual tendency to commit murder on the part of citizens of the United States.