This, then, is the real reason why men kill—because it is inherent in their state of mind, it is part of their mental and physical make-up—they are ready to kill, they want to kill, they are the kind of men who do kill. This is the result of their heredity, environment, educational and religious training, or the absence of it. How many readers of this paper have ever experienced an actual desire to kill another human being? Probably not one hundredth of one per cent. They belong to the class of people who either never have such an impulse, or at any rate have been taught to keep such impulses under control. 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. Yet of one fact he is absolutely convinced—namely, that homicide _has substantially decreased in the last fifteen years_. Even according to the figures collected by the Chicago _Tribune_, there were but 8,975 homicides in 1910 as compared with 10,500 in 1895, and 10,652 in 1896. NUMBER OF MURDERS AND HOMICIDES IN THE UNITED STATES EACH YEAR SINCE 1881, COMPARED WITH THE POPULATION