attainment, and affects to spurn smaller fry.

But bear it in mind that no two criminals are impelled to criminousness by identically the same underlying impulsions.

The moral weakling stepped off with pyramided peculation, got caught at it, and lacking moral stamina to face out squarely a grave mistake, chose the supposedly lesser line of resistance to “easy money.”

This lad, congenitally tainted with light fingers, brought up in the midst of criminal suggestion, deprived of the benefit of influences that might have counterbalanced, literally kicked into the company of habitual thieves, finally casts his lot with them and lets it go at that.

That young man, inoculated with several species of the sporting bug, and with virus that saps at once his courage and vitality, gets entangled where he can’t get clear, juggles figures, and finds his way into a 6 x 8 cell, where, being a consummate ego-centric—spite of the miserable mess he has made of it—he indulges in self pity, swears to himself that “everybody gave him the worst of it,” and declares for reprisal upon society in general. This is the type most likely either to “overlap or underlap,” depending upon the prison régime and the after-parole circumstance.

Another, engulfed over a heartless wench who rouses in him the demon jealousy—through playing him against the fellow who flashes “real” money, and for whom she adjusts the base string of her bow—goes desperate for means with which to match his rival’s flings, “borrows” “bundle” after “bundle” from his employer, bets all, mostly on the wrong “ponies,” is held up, then thrown down by the girl, and then caves in and limps into a life of crime.

Such as the latter two types are criminals by the legal book, but as a rule they are not intrinsic criminals. Rather, they are comparatively spineless misfits in a closely competitive social scheme.

One who does predicate the alloy in man is the born brute who wields a blackjack with unrepressed satisfaction, kills ruthlessly without pity or subsequent remorse, and comes naturally by a social sense so blunted and oblique that he wouldn’t walk a straight line if he knew it led to paradise. Partly as a side issue for gain, and partly to assure appreciable immunity from punishment for the common crimes of his class, the likes of him take on political thugism, and practically the same thing when they act as “starkers” for the active agents of certain labor unions. Needless to add, down-and-out ex-prize fighters, and would-be pugs of the prize ring, constantly recruit the mounting army corps of footpads, and “buzz-wagon” bandits.

To immigration laws framed and executed as if in response to the dictation of the spewed human spawn of the universe, is America indebted initially for brigades of her most dangerous brigands.

Sicilian and Neapolitan-Italians, members respectively of the Camorra and Mafiauso, particularly run to death-dealing criminality, prosecuted mainly individual against individual or group against group within the clan, or clan against clan, or either or both in the form of blackmail against countrymen who have made or are making their pile, some honestly, more the reverse. The law does not cope with them and their ox-like blood-brothers in crime from the North and East of Italy, because the law goes about it piecemeal. Nothing short of a thorough governmental housecleaning of such will meet the issue as the government has allowed it to be presented by them. However they may war against each other, they move practically as one against the foundations of American institutions. Therefore they must be met with America’s concentrated power, consecutively applied. Pecking at them, here a peck, there a peck, is childish compromise with them, and they know it; therefore, they are of the most flippant of the genus criminal: the more naturally so, because their native countries played into their hands much as America plays into them.

Close in the running with the foreign-born marauder is the mostly second-generation hyphenate, who would stretch the commandment to all of earthly time, and retain the phrasing—“In it thou shalt do no manner of work.” This usually low-strata, erotic, intrinsically dirty, diseased, all-round trickster type, habitué of pool rooms, tinhorn gambling dens, and lowest-down houses of prostitution, is pernicious because he is so all-pervading, while versatile in his limited sphere: meaning, for instance, that he is just enough of a card shark to flank a real captain at crooked dealing, and just enough of a bandit to “steer” and help plunder such as an inebriated plunger, or to assist in a roughly-engineered hold-up. He will affect good clothes and the like, but will usually wear them in such pattern, color, ensemble, and fashion, as to render him at once suspect to the trained eye. Even in the matter of dress, criminals example duck following duck, and doing it, take on little habits, especially of using and placing their hands, that are informing. Also, as to the predatory type, particularly, the set, wolfish expression of countenance is quite likely to be as marked as is the “poker face” of the green-cloth gambler. And also, his sexual excesses will be lined in his face, as plainly as the geographic divisions between States.

Prolific dupes of the preceding type of criminal are potential criminals brewed originally in the home still: mama’s or papa’s, or mama’s and papa’s self-indulged pets, given money to burn, and unquestioned opportunity to burn it after the manner of the globe-trotting freelance. Enough said, save only that criminals so fashioned are usually the most difficult and most tenacious of criminals; the former, because they are usually the most intelligent; and the latter, for the reason that they were home-primed, up through the most impressionable periods of youth and young manhood, for that which they quite naturally take on in the end. The intrinsic good in such lads is never entirely obliterated; hence they have their sober moments—so sober in fact that they commonly make for the “white stuff” and forgetfulness, as well as for nerve to go on with it. And then—finis!

The mental dud and habitué of iniquitous dens fetches and carries for more pretentious criminals. He will likely be a graduated dock-rat. Also, the passive agent on whom certain criminals execute their sexually-perverted desires; and also, he will be taking his kindergarten degrees at picking, snatching and sneaking. Such crowded-out derelicts are much to be pitied and little blamed, since they are the victims of cumulative circumstances wholly unfortuitous.

So one might pick and parse to many times the length of this chapter, not forgetting the meanest of secondary, subterranean crooks, who sport one or another badge of authority, while declaring themselves “in” on the division of criminal spoils. When the “division” reaches to those who pull political strings, we have the ulcerating stage of the criminous sore in the body politic.

While considering the limited list of criminal types herein adumbrated, recall again and again that not less than seventy per cent of the members of them are the ready dupes of those who utter and shove this or that mint of spurious sporting coin, inclusive of “dames” of all varieties of their variety, who urge them to do their worst.

Hundreds of pages could be filled, just in following out to their ramifications, the holds with which catch-as-catch-can gamesters alone throw crime-driven lads. More often than the reverse, “sporting” induces the first criminal offense; and still more often the gaming