Diminutive boys and even men with sunken cheeks and pale faces are taken to the Tombs almost daily charged with the crime. When you speak to them they freely admit that they lived for months by stealing. And in a great many cases they stole to get food for the family. The same is also true of boys and girls who work in stores and factories. When sorely tempted to steal they do so but only when hunger stares them in the face! In nearly all the places where young people work they pay such small salaries, that they are unable to save anything. After they pay their board what is left goes for clothing and carfare. But there is nothing for the proverbial rainy day. But self preservation is said to be the first law of nature. “All that a man hath will he give for his life,” is as true to-day as it ever was. When men steal to preserve life they simply trample under foot a lower law to maintain a higher one. And it is the most natural thing in the world to fall back on the law of self-preservation when driven to the wall by hunger or other adverse circumstances. The annals of crime in this city will show that the children of the poor at an early age are turned on the street, where they are left to steal or starve. I have found by careful observation that twenty-five per cent. of the boy criminals of New York started on their wayward careers when they were hungry. It was the old story, “Steal or starve.” And they stole and became criminals. As long as you keep men and women busily employed crime is out of the question, but when they lose their job and feel the pangs of hunger, the criminal instinct comes to them with such force that they cannot resist it. An ex-convict whom I have known for a number of years wrote me a letter of explanation after going back to the Penitentiary some months ago. “Sir,” said he, “there is no employment for an ex-convict. * * * * I was homeless and friendless * * * * * with me it was steal, starve or beg? I was too proud to beg. And I refused to starve in this land of plenty. When I could do nothing else I stole—when I suffered the pangs of hunger. What else could I do? And when placed in the same circumstances I will do it again.” Not long since John Williams, sixty years of age, was arraigned in Centre Street Court, charged with larceny. He confessed his guilt. “I do not care what you do with me, Judge,” he said. “I was starving and it was either steal or die.” “Why don’t I work?” “Well, Judge, if you will get me a job, you’ll see how hard I’ll work. But nobody wants an old man like me.”