considerable proportion of them will help to recruit the army of
crime. It is not destitution which will force them into this course,
but their up-bringing and surroundings.

In addition to homeless boys who steal from destitution, there are, as
I have said, a number of decrepit old men who do the same. There is a
period in a workman's life when he becomes too feeble to do an average
day's work. When this period arrives employers of labour often
discharge him in order to make way for younger and more vigorous men.
If his home, as sometimes happens, is broken up by the death of his
wife, his existence becomes a very lonely and precarious one. An odd
job now and again is all he can get to do, and even these jobs are
often hard to find. His sons and daughters are too heavily encumbered
with large families to be capable of rendering any effective
assistance, and the Union looms gloomily in the distance as the only
prospect before the worn-out worker. But it sometimes happens that he
will not face that prospect. He will rather steal and run the risk of
imprisonment. And so it comes to pass that for a year or two before
finally reconciling himself to the Union, the aged workman will lead a
wandering, criminal life on a petty scale; he becomes an item in the
statistics of offenders against property.

Habitual drunkards form another class who sometimes steal from
destitution. The well-known irregularity of these men's habits
prevents them, in a multitude of cases, from getting work, and
unfortunately, they cannot keep it when they do get it. Employers
cannot depend on them; as soon as they earn a few shillings they
disappear from the workshop till the money is spent on drink. It is at
such times that they are arrested for being drunk and disorderly. As
they can never pay a fine they have to go to prison, but long before