Page:Houdini - The Right Way to Do Wrong An Expose of Successful Criminals.djvu/15

Rh character has placed them in positions of trust. Men who have led honest lives, when temptation came along and on paper they figured out that they could not lose—why, they stole and fell—into the clutches of the law. Disgraced, they are ruined for life, often ruining all their family. It is a terrible thing to have the finger of fate point at you with the remark, "His father is serving time for doing so and so," or "Her brother is now in his sixteenth year, and comes out in five years."

Such humble criminals as the area sneak thief, the porch and hallway thieves, and the ordinary shoplifter may be dismissed with a few words; their gains are miserably small, they live in abject poverty, and after detection (for sooner or later they are detected) they end their lives in the workhouse!

"If I could earn $5 a week honest, I'd gladly give up 'dragging' [shoplifting]," said a thief of this type to a New York detective; "but I can't stand regular work, never could; it's so much easier to 'prig' things." No avarice, but simple laziness keeps these thieves dishonest.

More lucrative are the callings of the counter thief, the pickpocket, and the "buzzer" or watch thief. Of those the pickpocket wins the largest returns. A purse hunter who knows his work would think he had wasted his time if he did not make $5 on an evening stroll. Race meetings and fairs may bring him in $100 to $150 a day, but an average day's makings amount to only $8 to $12.

The passing of bad money, as everyone knows,