(i) Andrew Mearn's book showed why crime was more profitable than labouring in small underpaid factories.
(ii) A child of seven years old is easily known to make 10 shillings 6 pence a week from thieving.
(iii) Before he can gain as much as a young thief (a boy) he must make 56 gross of matchboxes a week or 1,296 a day.
(iv) It was only after the passage of the Compulsory Elementary Education Act in 1870 and the Factory Acts beginning from 1902, that children were kept out of industrial work.
