In the days of bank burglaries--now much less frequent, owing to
the protections that science has provided for money vaults--it
was not often that a single robbery was reported; they “came in
battalions.” This was not because the same gangs engaged in many
different enterprises, but because a universal similar impulse
permeated the minds of the criminal class devoted to these
forms of guilt. A curious study might be made of the causes
of epidemics of crime. In superstitious times all evils were
attributed to the influence of adverse stars. This may have been
an approach to scientific truth, or its advanced shadow. The
causes of meteorological change must be the causes lying back of
the pervading disposition at times witnessed to commit peculiar
classes of crime. A suicidal atmosphere must have its origin in
some of the secret springs of nature. Advanced speculation has
recently attributed cyclones, earthquakes, and other terrestrial
disturbances to great changes in the surface of the sun or
in the superheated ether surrounding it. A theory quite as
plausible as this might attribute epidemics of crime to similar
influences, by which weak reasons are overthrown and murderous
intents are kindled in excitable minds with destructive
tendencies. There are causes for all things in life and nature,
and no study of such causes is in vain.--Chicago _Journal_.
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