Thousands of young men work in this City as clerks, bookkeepers and salesmen in stores and offices. In most cases the salary is very small—enough barely to live on. Some of them, however, insist on going to the theatre and other places of amusement. Then they enter society, not necessarily what is called the “four hundred,” but society that is above their own social standing. They have an insane desire to dress like millionaires, and as they cannot do this on the small salary they receive, they feel compelled to steal their employers’ money to keep up a false appearance. Many young men are in prison because they stole money to “gamble on margins.” For a time they used their own small salaries, when that gave out they forged a check or raised the figures on which to secure ready money. They tried to get rich quick. There is the case of a young man in Jersey City who was arrested while he was being married, after having stolen from his employers $6,000. The marriage ceremony and the entire occasion looked as if he belonged to a royal family. The young man was a broker’s messenger on ten dollars a week. His work was to carry the daily balances to the Clearing House. On his way to that institution he was able to change the figures on the balance sheet and pocket the money. In a year he had over six thousand dollars in his own name. He is now in prison for his crime and has long since discovered that “The way of the transgressor is hard.” Another young man who was the assistant teller in an uptown bank stole $40,000 and the only excuse he gave was that others were doing the same thing. He afterwards confessed that he had to do it in order to keep up “style;” he lived like a millionaire in fine apartments on the upper west side; his wife dressed in the best furs and jewelry that his ill-gotten gains could furnish. Another young man stole over ninety thousand dollars from a city institution and fled to parts unknown. When an investigation was made it was found that he had lived in an elegant apartment on the West Side and besides kept a team of horses and a woman whose diamonds were a marvel to the community. Another thing that imperils the prospects of the young men, is bad company. The old saying is still true, “A man is known by the company he keeps.” “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise; but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.” Every self-respecting young man should shun the idler, the loafer, and the skeptic. During the past few years, I have asked hundreds of young men, whom I have met in prison, what led them into crime, and they invariably replied, “_Bad companions._“ When the police of New York are asked to look for law breakers, they usually find them among the gangs of loafers and hoodlums that hang out around the saloons and other vile dens in the city.