An important circumstance in the development of the individual criminal is the existence of a professional rascality with ancient traditions, representing a kind of syndicated organization of the criminal interests, associated with the equally old traditions of the receivers, vagabonds, prostitutes, and gipsies. This has introduced into the life of crime a conventional element, which would naturally not be able to maintain itself unless it corresponded to the innermost nature of the criminal. The old national capitals—Venice, Madrid, Paris, London—still possess ancient traditions of this character; but the colossal growth of the modern industrial towns has given rise, in addition, to the existence of a criminal world without traditions, one which knows little or nothing of the three leading features of the ancient tradition—thieves’ jargon, tattooing, and soutenage. Southern Italy and Sicily have preserved criminal organizations in the Camorra and the Maffia, out of which there has developed a systematic taxation of the propertied classes, and which even possess Parliamentary powers. Side by side with the ancient thieves’ jargon, almost venerable in view of its genuine antiquity, as shown by numerous words and phrases derived from the Hebrew and Romany tongues, there has arisen the ever-changing speech of the canaille, to which contributions are continually furnished, first, by prostitutes, through whose intermediation is effected a contact between the most diverse classes of society; secondly, by submerged individuals originally belonging to the upper classes; and, thirdly, by the artist world. These jargons are naturally in a perpetual flux. They possess their classic writers, as does, for instance, the argot of contemporary Paris in the talented Bruant, to whom every new variation of the jargonization of speech streams down from the summit of Montmartre, and whose songs are diffused throughout France from thousands of small music-halls, just in the same way as François Villon, four and a half centuries ago, disseminated the jargon of his day in shameless but inspired songs. Now, unquestionably, every argot possesses a criminal psychological interest. The canaille will take the new-coined word to its heart only when the thing or the relation described by this word expresses something of great or supreme importance to the blackguard or the cheat. To the burglar, the baby is important principally as a “screecher,” so he accepts this new-coined word. To the thief, in the same way, the fingers are “hooks,” or, in the argot of Poland, _grabka_—that which grips. To the naturalism of the vagabond, the cook from whom he begs may be most aptly described as _finkelmusch—finkel_ being the fireside, and _musch_, a Hebrew word for the vulva.