Diminutive boys and even men with sunken cheeks and pale faces are taken to the Tombs almost daily charged with the crime. When you speak to them they freely admit that they lived for months by stealing. And in a great many cases they stole to get food for the family. The same is also true of boys and girls who work in stores and factories. When sorely tempted to steal they do so but only when hunger stares them in the face! In nearly all the places where young people work they pay such small salaries, that they are unable to save anything. After they pay their board what is left goes for clothing and carfare. But there is nothing for the proverbial rainy day.
But self preservation is said to be the first law of nature. “All that a man hath will he give for his life,” is as true to-day as it ever was. When men steal to preserve life they simply trample under foot a lower law to maintain a higher one. And it is the most natural thing in the world to fall back on the law of self-preservation when driven to the wall by hunger or other adverse circumstances.
The annals of crime in this city will show that the children of the poor at an early age are turned on the street, where they are left to steal or starve. I have found by careful observation that twenty-five per cent. of the boy criminals of New York started on their wayward careers when they were hungry. It was the old story, “Steal or starve.” And they stole and became criminals.
As long as you keep men and women busily employed crime is out of the question, but when they lose their job and feel the pangs of hunger, the criminal instinct comes to them with such force that they cannot resist it.
An ex-convict whom I have known for a number of years wrote me a letter of explanation after going back to the Penitentiary some months ago. “Sir,” said he, “there is no employment for an ex-convict. * * * * I was homeless and friendless * * * * * with me it was steal, starve or beg? I was too proud to beg. And I refused to starve in this land of plenty. When I could do nothing else I stole—when I suffered the pangs of hunger. What else could I do? And when placed in the same circumstances I will do it again.”
Not long since John Williams, sixty years of age, was arraigned in Centre Street Court, charged with larceny. He confessed his guilt. “I do not care what you do with me, Judge,” he said. “I was starving and it was either steal or die.” “Why don’t I work?” “Well, Judge, if you will get me a job, you’ll see how hard I’ll work. But nobody wants an old man like me.”
I knew a respectable man who resided in the vicinity of Tenth Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street; he was out of employment for about three weeks. By this time his family, which consisted of wife and five children, were in dire poverty. The fourth week he found employment at twelve dollars a week driving a truck. On Saturday the boss paid the man six dollars out of which he was to pay rent and feed his family for a whole week. The employer retained six dollars of his wages as security against loss while in his employ. In the middle of the week his funds were exhausted. When he came home Wednesday night his children were crying for food and he had none to give them. Then he remembered that he left a box of goods on the truck when he put his team in the barn. That night he broke the box open, took some of the goods out and pawned them and with the money bought food and fuel to make his family comfortable for several days. It is needless to say that before the week was out he was arrested charged with grand larceny.
A good Samaritan made an investigation of this man’s case the following week, found his family in great poverty and supplied their wants. Not only was it found that the man was no thief, but everything he said was true. He was driven to steal by his hard hearted employer who held back half his week’s pay when his family was in great need.
When all the facts became fully known the Court suspended sentence and sent him back to his family. The Monday following he went to work for an old employer who had always known him as an honest man.
When I spoke to this man about what he had done, he said, “I could not help it. My boss, who retained in his possession six dollars of my hard earned money, made me a thief. I did not want to steal but when I heard my children cry for bread it almost crazed me and I stole to satisfy their hunger.”