338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



crime is classified according to age, and percentages are calculated 

 based upon the total population for each age specified. The maximum 

 for male criminals is found in the period of twenty to twenty-five 

 years, with a percentage to the total population of that age of .7702. 

 Between fifty and sixty years tlie percentage drops to only ,1604. 

 The same law holds good for women, but with modified ratios. Com- 

 paring the two sexes, the following results are reached : the tendency 

 to crime, as exhibited in its actual commission, for males at all ages 

 until sixty, diminishes at the rate of 33,333 per centum. For females 

 under similar conditions of age, it diminishes at the rate of 25 per 

 centum. Keeping in view the liability to error in a search through 

 the obscure underlying forces which seem to regulate human conduct 

 in the aggregate, it nevertheless appears reasonable to expect an ex- 

 planation of this phenomenon to lie in the physical rather than the 

 mental conditions of the sexes at the terminal periods of life. In the 

 decade which was above distinguished as that of physical equilibrium, 

 the governing principles seemed to be the expression of mental forces ; 

 but, on reaching the sixtieth year of life, the conditions are reversed. 

 While in the former the conditions of waste and repair were equal, in 

 the latter the repair of the physical forces is exceeded by the waste. 

 This is a law which applies equally to both sexes, but with this dif- 

 ference in the result : the occupation and the crimes which belong in 

 such great excess to men are those which require more physical 

 strength than the occupations and crimes which are adapted to the 

 lesser strength of women. Let us take a familiar illustration : after 

 a man at sixty years of age has retired from the scenes of his labor in 

 the mine, or field, or woi-kshop, the wife of the same age, or older, is 

 yet profitably engaged in her lighter domestic duties. She is yet con- 

 tributing as materially to the comforts of her Jamily as during the 

 more active years of the husband's life. Now, while it is quite evident 

 that we must regard the cause of the sudden more near equality in 

 the proportion of the sexes which presents itself in the period of life 

 between forty and fifty years as due to psychical changes, the evi- 

 dence is yet stronger that the ratio of the more rapid decrease of 

 male criminals at the more advanced period of fifty to sixty years is 

 due to the cause I have named the rapid impairment of jDhysical 

 energy peculiar to the period. Since men greatly preponderate in 

 those phases of crime whicli demand strength, belligerency, and pub- 

 licity in the perpetration, the conclusion is legitimate that Crime 

 would rapidly decrease at the time of life in which these qualities are 

 wanting, or are impaired. If we examine the relation of men to the 

 orders of crime, in the perpetration of which these qualities are not 

 necessary, and in which strength may be replaced by caution, and 

 belligerency by cunning, as in offenses against the currency, and in 

 the sixth division of Mr. Nelson called " other offenses," embracing 

 the lighter shades of criminal conduct, we shall see that the propor- 



