When he came out of prison he was determined not to commit another crime. He walked the streets for five days looking for employment, but nobody wanted him, he was too old. Walking along Second Avenue one evening he became exhausted, then desperate and broke a plate glass window that he might be sent to prison where he would get enough to eat. When he was discharged I met him at the prison door. I tried to get him employment but nobody wanted him, then I sent him to Newark on his way to Philadelphia among his friends who would save him from further imprisonment. In both cases poverty drove him to crime to get food. He was not a criminal from choice but only from circumstances. This last case which I am about to relate was the most pitiful of all. The man lived with his wife and four children in the neighborhood of East Fortieth Street near First Avenue. He was a painter by trade and had been out of employment four weeks. On the first of March his wife gave birth to a child. On the third day afterwards his home was fireless and foodless. On the morning of the fourth day his children cried for food, then he became desperate. He tried to borrow money but nobody would loan him anything, not even a quarter of a dollar. That morning he stood at the Grand Central Depot ready to steal if he got the chance, but there were too many policemen there watching his movements. Then he walked down to Thirty-eighth Street and Park Avenue where he stood watching the people. In a few minutes he saw a lady come along dressed in furs. In her hand was a small wallet. He followed her down the steps into the tunnel, snatched the wallet and ran. But he could not run fast enough as he was weakened from lack of food and was soon captured. It was proved in Court that the man was not a thief; that he was driven to do the crime because of the dire poverty in his home. It was a social rather than a criminal question, but the judge thought he would make an example of this unfortunate and gave him ten years’ imprisonment. I asked him in prison why he had taken such chances; he replied, “I was cold and hungry and my family were in such desperate circumstances when the temptation appealed to me, I could not resist it. That’s all.” In a large number of cases I have found that men and women were not thieves by choice. They were before the law guilty only technically for some crime, but were driven to it by social conditions and man’s inhumanity to man! When you come to judge all such “criminals” be charitable, and put yourself in their place and ask, What would you do under the same circumstances?