Hence it is futile to try to
explain that some men kill for a trifling sum of money, some
because they feel insulted, others because of political or
labor disputes, or because they do not like their food. Any
one of these may be the match that sets off the gunpowder, but
the real cause of the killing is the fact that the gunpowder
is there, lying around loose, and ready to be touched off.
What engenders this gunpowder state of mind would make a
valuable sociological study, but it may well be that a
seemingly inconsequential fact may so embitter a boy or man
toward life or the human race in general that in time he "sees
red" and goes through the world looking for trouble. Any
cause that makes for crime and depravity makes for murder as
well. The little boy who is driven out of the tenement onto
the street, and in turn off the street by a policeman, until,
finding no wholesome place to play, he joins a "gang" and
begins an incipient career of crime, may end in the "death
house.
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