Most men start to make a living as boys from the ages of fifteen to eighteen.  They have no idea of what they ought to do or even of what they want to do.  Usually, so far as they have an ambition, it is to do something more or less spectacular that seems to have an element of adventure and not too disagreeable or hard; something like the work of a policeman, a chauffeur, or an employee in a garage.  Still, first and last, most boys and most men have no opportunity for choosing an occupation.  In fact, the boy is told that he is a man and must get a job long before he knows that he is a man or begins to feel responsibilities, while he still has all the emotions and dreams of a boy.

When he is told he must go to work he looks for a job.  He does not wait until he can find the one that fits him.  He cannot afford to wait and if he could, he does not know what job would fit.  He takes automatically the first place he can get, hoping to find a better one, which generally means an easier one, before very long.  It is hard for a boy to stick to work; too many things are calling him away.  Every instinct and emotion is urging him to play.  New feelings and desires are coaxing him from work.  His companions and the boy life in which he has a place urge him to leave his task.  Usually he keeps his job no longer than he can help and later looks for something else.  The chances are great that he will never find what he wants; that he has not had the preparation or training for a successful workingman’s career, whatever that might be.  He is a doer of odd jobs and of poorly paid work all his life.

He must have some calling and takes the easiest one, which is often a life of crime.  From this start comes the professional criminal so-called.  He may make a business of picking pockets.  If this comes to be his trade it is very hard for him to give it up.  There is so strong an element of chance—­he never knows what a pocket will contain—­it gratifies a spirit of adventure.  Then it is easy.  The wages are much greater than he could get in any other calling; the hours are short and it never interferes with his amusements.  It is not so dangerous as being a burglar or a switchman, for he can find an excuse for jostling one in the street-cars or in a crowd and thus reaching into a pocket.

The burglar is not so apt to be a professional; his is a bolder and more hazardous trade; if he is caught he is taken from his occupation for a longer time.  The great hazard involved in this trade and also the physical strength and fitness of those who follow it lead to its abandonment more frequently than is the case with a pickpocket or a petty thief.  Robbery is seldom a profession.  It is usually the crime of the young and venturesome and almost surely leads to early disaster.  Murder, of course, is never a profession.  In a broad way it is the result of accident or passion, or of relations which are too hard to endure.