Excerpt from Criminology, Crimes and Criminals

My objects in publishing this lecture are, First, a desire to comply with the requests of hundreds who have heard it delivered (under the title of "Crimes and Criminals"), and Second, the with to give it as wide a hearing as possible.

It is not my purpose to offer an apology for criminals, big or little, but to explain something of the cause or causes that lie back of, and hence becomes responsible for what we are pleased or forced to call crime.

I "dedicate" this lecture, First, to the working class as a whole. It is the members thereof who, when they violate the capitalistic code of law or morals, become the "criminals" that excite such general indignation; and Second, to those individuals, men and women lower down, the "little criminals who fill the penitentiaries," for thus the "majesty of the law is sustained," and the big thieves, those "higher up' are kept respectable. The legal thefts of the desirable are called financiering and shrewd business. Their graftings are protected by technicalities and further crimes. Their murders are condoned. Their lack of morals excite more mirth than indignation and they are soon forgiven and forgotten. When the rich do wrong it is, of course, due to "human weakness," and we must be "charitable;" but when members of the working class do the same things, even though on a smaller scale, it is due to innate depravity and downright individual cursedness, and they must be "punished."