Abundant as are the materials for a special psychology of certain specialities in crime, and extensive as was Lombroso’s acquaintance with individual criminals, none the less his account of the elementary qualities of the criminal nature is extremely simple. The differences between individual criminals, who at first sight appear extremely unlike, frequently depend merely upon the fact that the inclination to enrich their own personality at the expense of another is associated in the one case with a favourable, and in the other with an unfavourable, economic position. The thievish proletarian will steal anything he sees lying about or anything that he finds in someone else’s pocket. The millionaire similarly disposed will not steal single purses, but will find ways and means of emptying very numerous and very large purses. The criminal proletarian is a petty thief or a burglar; the criminal bourgeois founds fraudulent banks and limited liability companies, or transforms sound undertakings into swindles, or he systematically swindles his partners. Fraudulent bankruptcy is the leading field of typical bourgeois criminality. Thus we get an insight into the operation of many of the so-called “economic factors” of crime, which in essentials amount to this, that in times of economic depression a large number of unscrupulous persons seize opportunities for stealing bread that has risen in price or the money that is needed for the purchase of bread—a larger number than in more prosperous times; whereas in times of commercial expansion the talents of the swindler on the large scale and of the millionaire plunderer find their greatest opportunity. Moreover, it is clear that one who has no regard for his personal reputation will, if he is a poor man, more readily turn to the commission of offences against property; but if he is well-to-do, he is more likely to commit offences against the person. This is shown by the fact that those who are well off more often offend against the health, life, and sexual freedom of others; whilst those who are ill off more frequently commit offences against property. And it is further shown by the fact that when wages are rising, and the prices of the necessaries of life are falling, crimes against the person increase in number, whilst the number of thefts and embezzlements diminishes. This tendency is still more clearly manifested if the rise in wages and the fall in prices are simultaneous.