In order to come to some definite conclusion as to the cost, Mr. Smith quoted statistics from representative cities, New York, Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans. SOME STARTLING FIGURES. New York, during the year 1899, paid from the public treasury for items wholly due to crime the sum of $12,988,804. Then he mentioned many other expenditures which were partly chargeable to crime aggregating $7,889,259, making a total of $20,778,083. In comparing these figures with the population of New York, Mr. Smith concluded that crime in the American metropolis cost the people about $6 per capita annually. In San Francisco it ran about $5 per capita, and in other cities mentioned from $3 to $3.50 per capita. The excess in New York and San Francisco, was partly explained from the fact, that the figures quoted included county taxation. The speaker then gave comprehensive statements, from which he gathered conclusions as to the cost of crime in the rural districts, adding that a very conservative estimate would be $1.00 per capita per year. Estimating that the present population of the country was 75,000,000 and that 40 per cent. lived in cities of above 8,000 inhabitants, he placed the total cost of crime at $150,000,000 per year. To this he added $50,000,000 from federal and State taxes, making the total $200,000,000 per year. These figures, said Mr. Smith, inaccurate as they may seem to be, prove that crime is by far the largest factor with which political economy has to deal. The only other item of expense that comes near to it is the maintainance of the public schools, which for the same year aggregate about $139,000,000. But the enormous expenditure mentioned is only for the prevention of crime. The city of New York expends each year an enormous sum for maintaining its fire department, but that is not the only expense caused through the existence of fires. No possible statistics can be compiled to give an estimate for the cost of property stolen and the suffering caused by crime. These facts are real, not estimated. THE AVERAGE STEAL. To obtain an estimate of this cost, however, the speaker said that $1,600 per year was the amount of money stolen by the average habitual criminal, and it was certainly a conservative estimate; there were at present 100,000 prisoners in confinement, of whom 40 or 50 per cent. were habitual; but this did not represent the cost of drunkenness which, he said, is generally crime in its most debased form, nor the cost of crime which was never detected. Adding up all these items of expense chargeable to crime, the speaker produced the enormous sum of $600,000,000 per year, which, he said, exceeded the value of the cotton or wheat crop. Any help for the future must come by regenerating the people by Christianity.