The attempts to draw parallels between the fluctuations of the price of grain and those of the figures for criminality, according to the author, prove nothing, inasmuch as it is impossible to compare them with the statistics of wages and of forced unemployment. In fact any one who tries to show in this way the correlation between criminality and economic conditions, begs the question, that poverty is the principal cause of crime. Further, the hypothesis that the regularity with which human acts occur is fixed by the condition of the society in which they take place, is little by little giving way. From personal examinations, and from the information given by Ferri and von Oettingen (this proves that the literature of our subject is little known to the author) Dr. Kurella thinks he can draw the conclusion that insufficient food, caused by scarcity or low wages, does not cause the commission of crimes. Malnutrition may perhaps influence criminality indirectly; that is it may cause degeneration after some successive generations, which in its turn predisposes to crime. A priori it is incontestable that we cannot picture to ourselves a society, if established by the socialists, [131] in which cupidity, hatred, and the instinct of the oppressor, the principal motives of crime, will have been annihilated or deprived of their influence because of social institutions. Nevertheless it is of importance that Morrison, Garofalo, and Ferri [132] have, according to the author, shown that poverty is not a factor of crime. At the International Congress of Criminal Anthropology at Brussels, the attempt was made to defend the contrary, but, according to Dr. Kurella, without success. (According to him it can only be in case of being suddenly thrown out of work that a person hitherto honest commits a crime from indigence.) The necessity of the moment being consequently only rarely a cause of criminality, not only do the present social anomalies produce an increase of degeneracy, as has been said above, but also there are a number of persons who live in badly built and unsanitary dwellings, so that the family life is injured, and the development of feelings of honesty, modesty, etc., is interfered with. And it is also the social anomalies that strongly influence alcoholism, which is one of the important factors of crime.