On the other hand, crimes against property, and still more
offences against property, show wide oscillations on account of
the variability of the special environment, which is almost always
in a condition of unstable equilibrium, as in periods of scarcity,
and of commercial, financial and industrial crises, and so forth,
whilst they are subject also to the influence of the physical
environment. Crimes and offences against property display
extraordinary increases in the severest winter seasons, and
diminutions in milder winters.
And this correspondence between the more general, powerful, and
variable physical and social factors of crime, as well as
its more characteristic manifestations such as thefts, wounding,
and indecent assaults, is so constant and so direct that, when I
was studying the annual movement of criminality in France, and
perceived some extraordinary oscillation in the crimes and
offences, I foresaw that in the annals of the year I should find
mention of an agricultural or political crisis, or an exceptional
winter or summer in the records of the weather. So that with a
single column of a table of criminal statistics I was able to
reconstruct the historical condition of a country in its more
salient features.
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