San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1890-10-11
Two Kinds of Hunger.

From the Baltimore Sun.
One of the fruitful sources of crime
is the degree of poverty which ap-
proaches starvation. There are NOR
alists who try to excuse offenses COM
mitted as last resort by those who
have been reduced by hunger and
cold to deperate remedies. Without
entering into that difficult and deli
cate question, it is sufficient for the
present purpose to note the fact
that necessity Is recognized as a
common cause of crimes against prop
erty, and sometimes against persons.
A man who is starving in city filled
with riches, who sees his family suf-
fering for the want of food, his chill
dren dying perhaps, while charity
turns q deaf ear to his entreaties be-
cause it has been imposed upon,
forcibly seizes the food or the money
that will give them temporary relief.
Sometimes he meets with resistance,
and in a moment of passion or to save
himself from arrest he commits an
assault or perhaps murder.
Such are the crimes that
arise from the dire necessity, hav.
ing in them little, if any, element of
positive evil intent, but originating
il the instinct of self preservation.
One step beyond this grade of crime
is that which arises from poverty
almost as real-the inability to graf
ify ones acquired tastes or desires
The knawing Is as real as that of hum
ger itself, and to that terrible tempta-
ton hundreds and thousands are ex-
posed compared with one who suffers
from real hunger. The young man or
the young woman who has been
petted and spoiled, accustomed
to good living, furnished with
plenty of pocket money. brought
up to idleness, and then, through
any accident of life, is thrown
upon his or her resources, is in the
position of the man who is starving
for want of food. 1t Is needless to tell
the sad story of the young women &C.
cusuomed to good living, fond of fine
dressing, and exposed to the tempta-
sions arising from ill-paid labor on
the one hand and the promise of lux
urious living on the other If they
should yield to temptation. The
young man, whose case Is seldom
con sIdered, may be exposed to SINH
lar temptations. An indulgent faith
er and fond mother may leave him
in early manhood with no business
training, no means of earning q
livelihood, and with the tastes and
habits of q prince. 1t is an easy thing
to say that he should go to work to
support himself and should accept
such conditions of life as his meager
income may command. But 1t re-
auires strong moral constitution to
sustain him in such an effort. He Is
beset ny hunger as real as that of the
beggar for something he can not get
by his work, and he is tempted, like
the beggar, to take by force or Chi
cancery that which he can not hon.
estly earn. The temptations of lux
urious habits are seldom consid-
cred in prison sta tistics, but they
are as real as the temptations
of hunger, and they influence the
conduct of q far larger class of the
community than suffer from mere
want of food. Twice within q few
years, young foreigners of education
and good family have been convicted
on the continent of deliberately MUIR
derlng personal friends fer the sake OF
robbery, not from necessity in the Or
binary sense, but that they might
sustain themselves in the style Of liv-
ing to which they had been accus-
toned. No one can contemplate such
crimes without rejecting that the
general training of these young mon
to lives of luxry and idleness without
the means of sustaining themselves
had large part in the development
OF their crimes. Such an explanation
does not excuse the murders, but 1t
points a moral for parents and guar
dams that they would do we'll to
heed. No young person should be
permitted to grow up without that
moral training which is intended to
make self-respectful, self-supporting;
nor should they be allowed
to develop habits Of living beyond
their means to honestly maintain. If
mistakes should be made in this res
pect their victims will be exposed to
the same kind of temptations to
wrong doing that beset the miserable
wretches who resort to crime when
on the verge of starvation. There is,
of course, an absolute hunger, but
there is also a relative hunger that is
Just as imperious and exactlng.
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