When a shrewd but genial editor called me up on the telephone and asked
me how I should like to write an article on the above lurid title, I
laughed in his--I mean the telephone's face.
"My dear fellow!" I said (I should only have the nerve to call him that
over a wire). "It would ruin me! How could I keep my self-respect and
write that kind of sensational stuff--Why do men kill? Why do men eat?
Why do men drink? Why do men love? Why do men--"
"Look here!" he interrupted. "I want to know why one man kills another
man. If we knew why, maybe we could stop it, couldn't we? We could try
to, anyhow. And you know something about it. You've prosecuted nearly
a hundred men for murder. Get the facts--that's what I want. Cut
the adjectives and morality, and get down to the reasons. Anything
particularly undignified about that?" And he rang off.
I arose and walked over to the bookcase on which reposed several
shelves of "minutes" of criminal trials. They were dusty and depressing.
Practically every one of them was a memento of some poor devil gone to
prison or to the chair. Where were they now--and why did they kill--yes,
why DID they?
I glanced along the red-labeled backs.
"People versus Candido." Now why did HE kill? I remembered the Italian
perfectly. He killed his friend because the latter had been too
attentive to his wife. "People versus Higgins." Why did he? That was
a drunken row on a New Year's Eve within the sound of Trinity chimes.
"People versus Sterling Greene." Yes, he was a colored man--I recalled
the evidence--drink and a "yellow gal." "People versus Mock Duck"-a
Chinese feud between the On Leong Tong and the Hip Sing Tong--a
vendetta, first one Chink shot and then another, turn and turn about,
running back through Mott Street, New York, Boston, San Francisco, until
the origin of the quarrel was lost in the dim Celestial mists across
the sea. Out of the first four cases the following motives: Jealousy--1.
Drink--1. Drink and jealousy--1. Scattering (how can you term a "Tong"
row?)--1.
I began to get interested. Supposing I dug out all the homicide cases I
had ever tried, what would the result show as to motive for the killing?
Would drink and women account for seventy-five per cent? Mentally I ran
my eye back over nearly ten years. What OTHER motives had the defendants
at the bar had? There was Laudiero--an Italian "Camorrista"--he had
killed simply for the distinction it gave him among his countrymen
and the satisfaction he felt at being known as a "bad" man--a "capo
maestra." There was Joseph Ferrone--pure jealousy again. Hendry--animal
hate intensified by drink. Yoscow--a deliberate murder, planned in
advance by several of a gang, to get rid of a young bully who had made
himself generally unpleasant. There was Childs, who had killed, as he
claimed, in self-defence because he was set upon and assaulted by rival
runners from another seaman's boarding house. Really it began to look as
if men killed for a lot of reasons.
One consideration at once suggested itself. How about the killings where
the murderer is never caught? The prisoners tried for murder are only a
mere fraction of those who commit murder. True, and the more deliberate
the murder, the greater, unfortunately, the chance of the villain
getting away. Still, in cases merely of suspected murder, or in cases
where no evidence is taken, it would be manifestly unfair arbitrarily to
assign motives for the deed, if deed it was. No, one must start with the
assumption, sufficiently accurate under all the circumstances, that
the killings in which the killer is caught are fairly representative of
killings as a whole.
All crimes naturally tend to divide themselves into two classes--crimes
against property and crimes against the person, each class having an
entirely different assortment of reasons for their commission.
There can be practically but one motive for theft, burglary, or robbery.
It is, of course, conceivable that such crimes might be perpetrated for
revenge--to deprive the victim of some highly prized possession. But in
the main there is only one object--unlawful gain. So, too, blackmail,
extortion, and kidnapping are all the products of the desire for
"easy money." But, unquestionably, this is the reason for murder in
comparatively few cases.
The usual motive for crimes against the person--assault, manslaughter,
mayhem, murder, etc.--is the desire to punish, or be avenged upon
another by inflicting personal pain upon him or by depriving him of his
most valuable asset--life. And this desire for retaliation or revenge
generally grows out of a recent humiliation received at the hands of
the other person, a real or fancied wrong to oneself, a member of
one's family, or one's property. But this was too easy an answer to my
friend's question. He wanted and deserved more than that, and I set out
to give it to him.
My first inquiry was in the direction of original sources. I sought out
the man in the district attorney's office who had had the widest general
experience and put the question to him. This was Mr. Charles C. Nott,
Jr., (now judge of the General Sessions) who had been trying murder
cases for nearly ten years. It so happened that he had kept a complete
record of all of them and this he courteously placed at my disposal. The
list contains sixty-two cases, and the defendants were of divers races.
These homicides included seventeen committed in cold blood (about
twenty-five per cent, an extraordinary percentage) from varying motives,
as follows: One defendant (white) murdered his colored mistress simply
to get rid of her; another killed out of revenge because the deceased
had "licked" him several times before; another, having quarrelled
with his friend over a glass of soda water, later on returned and
precipitated a quarrel by striking him, in the course of which he killed
him; another because the deceased had induced his wife to desert him;
another lay in wait for his victim and killed him without the motive
ever being ascertained; one man killed his brother to get a sum of
money, and another because his brother would not give him money; another
because he believed the deceased had betrayed the Armenian cause to the
Turks; another because he wished to get the deceased out of the way in
order to marry his wife; and another because deceased had knocked him
down the day before. One man had killed a girl who had ridiculed him;
and one a girl who had refused to marry him; another had killed his
daughter because she could no longer live in the house with him; one, an
informer, had been the victim of a Black Hand vendetta; and the last
had poisoned his wife for the insurance money in order to go off with
another woman. There were two cases of infanticide, one in which a woman
threw her baby into the lake in Central Park, and another in which she
gave her baby poison. Besides these murders, five homicides had been
committed in the course of perpetrating other crimes, including burglary
and robbery.
Passing over three cases of culpable negligence resulting in death, we
come to thirty-seven homicides during quarrels, some of which might have
been technically classified as murders, but which being committed
"in the heat of passion," in practically every instance resulted in a
verdict of manslaughter. The quarrels often arose over the most trifling
matters. One was a dispute over a broom, another over a horse blanket,
another over food, another over a twenty-five cent bet in a pool game,
another over a loan of fifty cents, another over ten cents in a crap
game, and still another over one dollar and thirty cents in a crap game.
Five men were killed in drunken rows which had no immediate cause except
the desire to "start something." One man killed another because he had
not prevented the theft of some lumber, one (a policeman) because the
deceased would not "move on" when ordered, one because a bartender
refused to serve him with any more drinks, and one (a bartender) because
the deceased insisted that he should serve more drinks. One man was
killed in a quarrel over politics, one in a fuss over some beer, one in
a card game, one trying to rob a fruit-stand, one in a dispute with a
ship's officer, one in a dance hall row. One man killed another whom
he found with his wife, and one wife killed her husband for a similar
cause; another wife killed her husband simply because she "could not
stand him," and one because he was fighting with their son. One man
was killed by another who was trying to collect from him a debt of six
hundred dollars. One quarrel resulting in homicide arose because the
defendant had pointed out deceased to the police, another because
the participants called each other names, and another arose out of an
alleged seduction. Three homicides grew out of street rows originating
in various ways. One man killed another who was fighting with a friend
of the first, a janitor was killed in a "continuous row" which had been
going on for a long time, and one homicide was committed for "nothing in
particular."
This astonishing olla podrida of reasons for depriving men of their
lives leaves one stunned and confused. Is it possible to deduce any
order out of such homicidal chaos? Still, an attempt to classify such
diverse causes enables one to reach certain general conclusions. Out of
the sixty-two homicides there were seventeen cold-blooded murders,
with deliberation and premeditation (in such cases the reasons for
the killing are by comparison unimportant); three homicides due to
negligence, five committed while perpetrating a felony; thirty-seven
manslaughters, due in sixteen cases to quarrels (simply), thirteen
to drink, four to disputes over money, three to women, one to race
antagonism.
Reclassifying the seventeen murders according to causes, we have:
Six due to women, four to quarrels, five to other causes, and two
infanticides. Added to the manslaughters previously classified, we have
a total of sixty-two killings, due in twenty cases to quarrels, thirteen
to drink, nine to women, four to disputes over money, one to
race antagonism, five to general causes, three to negligence, two
infanticides, five during the commission of other crimes.
The significant features of this analysis are that about seventy-five
per cent of the killings were due to quarrels over small sums or
other matters, drink and women; over fifty per cent to drink and petty
quarrels; and about thirty per cent to quarrels simply. The trifling
character of the causes of the quarrels themselves is shown by the fact
that in three of these particular cases, tried in a single week, the
total amount involved in the disputes was only eighty-five cents. That
is about twenty-eight and one-half cents a life. Many a murder in a
barroom grows out of an argument over whether a glass of beer has, or
has not, been paid for, or whose turn it is to treat; and more than one
man has been killed in New York City because he was too clumsy to avoid
stepping on somebody's feet or bumping into another man on the sidewalk.
The writer sincerely regrets that his own lack of initiative prevented
his keeping a diary during his seven years's service as a prosecutor. It
is now impossible for him to refresh his memory as to the causes of all
the various homicides which he 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 the murderer; six killings
justifiable on the "higher law" theory only, but involving great
provocation, and thirty deliberate slaughters. The last clipping
recounted how an irate husband pounded a "masher" so hard that he died.
Leaving out the suicides and those killed while resisting arrest, there
remain one hundred persons murdered, not only by persons insane or
wild from the effects of liquor, but by robbers and burglars, brutes,
bullies, and thugs, husbands, wives, and lovers, and by a vast number of
people who not only destroyed their enemies in the fury of anger, but in
many instances openly went out gunning for them, lay in wait for them in
the dark, or hacked off their heads with hatchets while they slept.
It is, indeed, a sanguinary record, from which little consolation is to
be derived, and the only comfort is the probability that the accounts
of the first one hundred murders anywhere in Europe would undoubtedly be
just as blood-curdling. I had simply asked the clipping bureau to
send me one hundred horrors and I had got them. They did not indicate
anything at all so far as the ratio of homicide to population was
concerned or as to the bloodthirstiness of Americans in general. They
merely showed what despicable things murders were.
As to the reasons for the killings, they were as diverse as those
which Mr. Nott had prosecuted, save that there were more of an ultra
blood-thirsty character, due probably to the fact that the young lady
who did the clipping wanted (after one rebuff) to make sure that I was
satisfied with the goods she sent me. And this suggests a reason for
the large percentage of cold-blooded killings prosecuted by my
friend--namely, that Mr. Nott being the most astute prosecutor
available, the district attorney, whenever the latter had a particularly
atrocious case, sent it to him in order that the defendant might surely
get his full deserts.
The reasons for these homicides were of every sort; police officers and
citizens were shot and killed by criminals trying to make "get-aways,"
and by negroes and others "running amuck"; despondent young men shot
their unresponsive sweethearts and then either blew out their own brains
of pretended to try to do so; two stable-men had a duel with revolvers,
and each killed the other; several men were shot for being too attentive
to young women residing in the same hotels; an Italian, whose wife had
left him and gone to her mother, went to the house and killed her,
her sister, her sister's husband, his mother-in-law, two children, and
finally himself; the "Gopher Gang" started a riot at a "benefit" dance
given to a widow and killed a man, after which they fled to the woods
and fired from cover upon the police until eighteen were overpowered and
arrested; a young girl and her fiance, sitting in the parlor, planning
their honeymoon, were unexpectedly interrupted by a rejected suitor of
the girl's, who shot and killed both of them; an Italian who peeked into
a bedroom, just for fun, afterward rushed in and cut off two persons'
heads with an ax--one of them was his wife; a gang of white ruffians
shot and then burned a negro family of three peacefully working in the
fields; a man who went to the front door to see who had tapped on
his window was shot through the heart; a striker was killed by a
twenty-five-pound piece of flagging thrown from a roof; there was a gun
fight of colored men at Madison, Wisconsin, at which three were shot; a
gang of negro ruffians killed and mutilated a white woman (with a baby
in her arms) and her husband; masked robbers called a man to his barn at
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and cut his throat; an Italian was
found with his head split in two by a butcher's cleaver; a negress in
Lafayette, Louisiana, killed a family of six with a hatchet; a negro
farmer and his two daughters were lynched and their bodies burned by
four white men (who will probably also be lynched if caught); a girl
of eleven shot her girl friend of about the same age and killed her;
several persons were found stabbed to death; a plumber killed his
brother (also a plumber) for saying that he stole two dollars; a
murderer was shot by a posse of militia in a cornfield; a card game at
Bayonne, New Jersey, resulted in a revolver fight on the street in which
one of the players was killed; bank robbers killed a cashier at twelve
o'clock noon; a jealous lover in Butte, Montana, shot and killed his
sweetheart, her father, and mother; a deputy sheriff was murdered;
burglars killed several persons in the course of their business;
Kokolosski, a Pole, kicked his child to death; and a couple of dozen
people were incidentally shot, stabbed, or otherwise disposed of in the
course of quarrels over the most trivial matters. In almost no case was
there what an intelligent, civilized man would regard as an adequate
reason for the homicide. They killed because they felt like killing, and
yielded to the impulse, whatever its immediate origin.
This conclusion is abundantly supported by the figures of the 'Chicago
Tribune' for the seven years ending in 1900, when carefully analyzed.
During this period 62,812 homicides were recorded. Of these there were
17,120 of which the causes were unknown and 3,204 committed while making
a justifiable arrest, in self-defence, or by the insane, so that there
were in fact only 42,488 felonious homicides the causes of which can
be definitely alleged. The ratio of the "quarrels" to this net total is
about seventy-five per cent. There were, in addition, 2,848 homicides
due to liquor--that is, without cause. Thus eighty per cent of all the
murders and manslaughters in the United States for a period of seven
years were for no reason at all or from mere anger or habit, arising out
of causes often of the most trifling character.
Nor are the conclusions changed by the figures of the years between 1904
and 1909.
During this period 61,786 homicides were recorded. Of these there were
9,302 of which the causes were not known, and 2,480 committed while
making a justifiable arrest, in self-defence, or by the insane, leaving
50,004 cases of felonious homicides of known causes. Of these homicides,
33,476 were due to quarrels and 4,799 to liquor, a total of 38,275 out
of the 50,004 cases of known causes being traceable in this, another
seven years, to motives the most casual.
It would be stupid to allege that the reason men killed was because they
had been stepped on or had been deprived of a glass of beer. The cause
lies deeper than that. It rests in the willingness or desire of the
murderer to kill at all. Among barbaric or savage peoples this is
natural; but among civilized nations it is hardly to be anticipated. If
the negro who shoots his fellow because he believes himself to have been
cheated out of ten cents were really civilized, he would either not
have the impulse to kill or, having the impulse to kill, would have
sufficient power of self-control to refrain from doing so. This power
of self-control may be natural or acquired, and it may or may not be
possessed by the man who feels a desire to commit a homicide. The fact
to be observed--the interesting and, broadly speaking, the astonishing
fact--is that among a people like ourselves anybody should have a desire
to kill. It is even more astonishing than that the impulse should be
yielded to so often if it comes.
This, then, is the real reason why men kill--because it is inherent
in their state of mind, it is part of their mental and physical
make-up--they are ready to kill, they want to kill, they are the kind
of men who do kill. This is the result of their heredity, environment,
educational and religious training, or the absence of it. How many
readers of this paper have ever experienced an actual desire to kill
another human being? Probably not one hundredth of one per cent. They
belong to the class of people who either never have such an impulse, or
at any rate have been taught to keep such impulses under control. 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."
The table on the opposite page gives the figures collected by the
'Chicago Tribune' for the years from 1881 to 1910.
In view of the foregoing it may seem paradoxical for the writer to state
that he questions the alleged unusual tendency to commit murder on the
part of citizens of the United States. Yet of one fact he is absolutely
convinced--namely, that homicide has substantially decreased in the last
fifteen years. Even according to the figures collected by the 'Chicago
Tribune', there were but 8,975 homicides in 1910 as compared with 10,500
in 1895, and 10,652 in 1896. Meantime the population of our country has
been leaping onward.
NUMBER OF MURDERS AND HOMICIDES IN THE UNITED STATES EACH
YEAR SINCE 1891, COMPARED WITH THE POPULATION
NUMBER OF NUMBER OF
MURDERS AND ESTIMATED MURDERS AND
YEAR HOMICIDES IN POPULATION HOMICIDES
THE UNITED OF THE FOR EACH
STATES UNITED STATES MILLION OF
PEOPLE
1881......1,266..........51,316,000..........24.7
1882......1.467..........----------..........27.9
1883......1,697..........----------..........31.6
1884......1,465..........----------..........26.7
1885......1,808..........56,148,000..........32.2
1886......1,499..........----------..........26.1
1887......2,335..........----------..........39.8
1888......2,184..........---------...........36.4
1889......3,567..........---------...........58.0
1890......4,290.........62,622,250...........68.5
1891......5,906..........---------...........92.4
1892......6,791..........---------..........104.2
1893......6,615..........---------..........99.5
1894......9,800..........---------.........144.7
1895.....10,500.........69,043,000.........152.2
1896.....10,652..........---------.........151.3
1897......9,520..........---------.........132.8
1898......7,840..........---------.........107.2
1899......6,225..........---------..........83.6
1900......8,275.........75,994,575.........108.7
1901......7,852.........77,754,000.........100.9
1902......8,834.........79,117,000.........111.7
1903......8,976..........---------.........112.0
1904......8,482..........---------...............
1905......9,212..........---------...............
1906......9,350.........---------................
1907......8,712..........---------...............
1908......8,952..........---------...............
1909......8,103..........---------...............
1910......8,975.........91,972,266...........97.5
Total......191,150
We are blood-thirsty enough, God knows, without making things out any
worse than they are. Our murder rate per 100,000 unquestionably exceeds
that of most of the countries of western Europe, but, as the saying is,
"there's a reason." If our homicide statistics related only to the white
population of even the second generation born in this country we should
find, I am convinced, that we are no more homicidal than France and
Belgium, and less so than Italy. It is to be expected that with our
Chinese, "greaser," and half-breed population in the West, our Black
Belt in the South, and our Sicilian and South Italian immigration in the
North and East, our murder rate should exceed those of the continental
nations, which are nothing if not well policed.
But of one thing we can be abundantly certain without any figures at
all, and that is that our present method of administering justice
(less the actions of juries than of judges)--the system taken as a
whole--offers no deterrent to the embryonic or professional criminal.
The administration of justice to-day is not the swift judgment of honest
men upon a criminal act, but a clever game between judge and lawyer, in
which the action of the jury is discounted entirely and the moves are
made with a view to checkmating justice, not in the trial courtroom, but
before the appellate tribunal two or three years later.
"My young feller," said a grizzled veteran of the criminal bar to me
long years ago, after our jury had gone out, "there's lots of things in
this game you ain't got on to yet. Do you think I care what this jury
does? Not one mite. I got a nice little error into the case the very
first day--and I've set back ever since. S'pose we are convicted? I'll
get Jim here [the prisoner] out on a certificate and it'll be two years
before the Court of Appeals will get around to the case. Meantime
Jim'll be out makin' money to pay me my fee--won't you, Jim? Then your
witnesses, will be gone, and nobody'll remember what on earth it's all
about. You'll be down in Wall Street practicing real law yourself, and
the indictment will kick around the office for a year or so, all covered
with dust, and then some day I'll get a friend of mine to come in
quietly and move to dismiss. And it'll be dismissed. Don't you worry!
Why, a thousand other murders will have been committed in this county by
the time that happens. Bless your soul! You can't go on tryin' the same
man forever! Give the other fellers a chance. You shake your head? Well,
it's a fact. I've been doin' it for forty years. You'll see." And I
did. That may not be why men kill, but perhaps indirectly it may have
something to do with it.