All these figures, however, fail to give us any very correct idea of the amount of serious crime in the United States--the prison statistics, because they understate the matter, the statistics of convictions, because they overstate. A peculiarity about serious crime in the United States, it must be remembered, is that so many persons escape through the meshes of the law, and this is particularly true in the case of the characteristic American crime of homicide. An enterprising newspaper, _The Chicago Tribune_, has for years, with the help of the Associated Press, collected statistics of homicide and suicide in the United States. While these statistics seem relatively incomplete and inaccurate for the earlier years, since 1892 they present every appearance of great accuracy, and have not been seriously impugned. According to these statistics the United States has had for the last dozen years from six to ten thousand cases of homicide annually, including all cases where one person has killed another. In 1896 the number was 10,652, in 1899, 6225; in 1900, 8275; in 1904, 8482; in 1906, 9350; in 1908, 8592. The census of 1904 showed only 2444 persons committed to prison for homicide in that year, but these figures are not in conflict with those of _The Chicago Tribune_, because the census statistics omit the vast number of persons who committed homicide but who escaped, were not convicted, were killed, or for some other reason failed to show up in the statistics of commitment. Accepting _The Chicago Tribune's_ figures as relatively accurate, it may be remarked at this point that the number of homicides is far greater in the United States than in other civilized countries, with the exception of Italy, Spain, and some other countries of the Mediterranean region. England, for example, has only between three and four hundred cases of homicide annually as compared with our six to ten thousand, although England's population is about 30,000,000 as against over 80,000,000 for the United States. The greatest number of these homicides take place in the Southern and Western states, Texas leading, according to the statistics, with about one thousand homicides annually. This suggests that to some extent our high homicide rate is due to the survival of frontier conditions in a large number of the states, although it is probably even more due to American individualism and lawlessness, the tendency of every man to take the law into his own hands. There can be no doubt that the amount of serious crime in the United States is relatively high, although there is no reason to believe that the serious crimes against property are proportionate to the serious crimes against persons.