prosecuted, but where he can do so the evidence points to a
conclusion similar to that deduced from Mr. Nott's record.
The proximate causes were trifling--the underlying cause was
the lack of civilization of the defendant--his brutality and
absence of self-control.

With a view to ascertaining conditions in general throughout
the United States, I asked a clipping agency to send me the
first one hundred notices of actual homicides which should
come under its scissors. The immediate result of this
experiment was that I received forty-five notices supposedly
relating to murders and homicides, which on closer examination
proved to be anything but what I wanted for the purpose in
view. With only one or two exceptions they related not to
deaths from violence reported as having occurred on any
particular day, but to notices of convictions, acquittals,
indictments, pleas of guilty and not guilty, rewards offered,
sentences, executions, "suspicions" of the police, "mysteries
revived," and even editorials on capital punishment.

A letter of protest brought in due course, but much more
slowly, one hundred and seven clippings, which yielded the
following reasons why men killed: There were four suicides,
three lynchings, one infanticide, three murders while
resisting arrest, three criminals killed while resisting
arrest, two men killed in riots, eight murders in the course
of committing burglaries and robberies, seven persons killed
in vendettas, three grace murders, and twenty-four killed in
quarrels over petty causes; there were twelve murders from
jealousy, followed in four instances by suicide on the part of