Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/404

400 thread through the North Atlantic Division at the rate of .04 per cent.; in the South Atlantic, 4.3 per cent.; in the North Central, 1.4 per cent., and 9.2 per cent, in the South Central, while the "wild and woolly west," contrary to the generally accepted reputation, gives us but 1.5 per cent, of homicides. It has improved in this respect since the date of the previous census (1890) which assigns to that section 27.8 per cent, and to the South Central 22.7 per cent, against its present 4.3 per cent.—a marked veering in the mercurial tendency accountable upon no known law in criminal anthropology.

The total number of homicides in the United States for the year 1904 is given at 10,744, as against 7,351 in 1890, an increase of over 20 per cent, during that period.

As a general rule, the excess of given offences in the southerly divisions is due to the preponderance of the negro element, 67 per cent, of minor offences being attributable to whites, and 83.8 per cent, to the negro race.

Among minor offences drunkenness adds its quota of interest to the general perturbation, oscillating from 5.0 per cent, in the South Atlantic to fever line in the North Atlantic Division at 32.3 per cent., and falling to blood heat at 21.6 per cent, in the North Central, thence to 3.8 per cent, in the South Central and gradually tapering off the mathematical debauch in 6.3 per cent, accredited to the Western Division.

The variation in crime in this respect is no indication of the frequency of the offence, however; it rather reflects the public policy of the given section as expressed in the manner and form of the punishment for this particular offence. There is no special table of the existing habits of the prisoners enumerated, hence no way of reaching