APPENDIX

[224]See "Government or Human Evolution," Vol. II, p. 181.

[225]See "Principles of Sociology," pp. 414-415.

[226]See "Justice," p. 127, by the author.

[227]The Unnecessary Curse of Sickness,World's Work, July, 1909.

[228]See Book III, Chapter II.

Human life depends upon food, clothing, and shelter. Only with these assured are freedom, culture and higher human development possible. To produce food, clothing and shelter, land and machinery are needed. Land alone does not satisfy human needs. Human labor creates machinery and applies it to the land for the production of raw materials and food. Whoever has the control of land and machinery controls human labor, and with it human life and liberty.

To-day the machinery and land used for industrial purposes are owned by a rapidly decreasing minority. So long as machinery is simple and easily handled by one man, its owner cannot dominate the sources of life of others. But when machinery becomes more complex and expensive, and requires for its effective operation the organized effort of many workers, its influence reaches over wide circles of life. The owners of such machinery become the dominant class.

In proportion as the number of such machine owners, compared to all other classes, decreases, their power in the nation and in the world increases. They bring ever larger masses of working people under their control, reducing them to the point where muscle and brain are their only productiveproperty. Millions of formerly self-employing workers thus become the helpless wage slaves of the industrial masters.

As the economic power of the ruling class grows, it becomes less useful in the life of the nation. All the useful work of the nation falls upon the shoulders of the class whose only property is its manual and mental labor power—the wage workers—or of the class who have but little land and little effective machinery outside of their labor power—the small traders and small farmers. The ruling minority is steadily becoming useless and parasitic.

A bitter struggle over the division of the products of labor is waged between the exploiting propertied classes on the one hand, and the exploited propertyless class on the other. In this struggle the wage-working class cannot expect adequate relief from any reform of the present order at the hands of the dominant class.

The wage workers are, therefore, the most determined and irreconcilable antagonists of the ruling class. They suffer most from the curse of class rule. The fact that a few capitalists are permitted to control all the country's industrial resources and social tools for their individual profit, and to make the production of the necessaries of life the object of competitive private enterprise and speculation, is at the bottom of all the social evils of our time.

In spite of the organization of trusts, pools and combinations, the capitalists are powerless to regulate production for social ends. Industries are largely conducted in a planless manner. Through periods of feverish activity the strength and health of the workers are mercilessly used up, and during periods of enforced idleness the workers are frequently reduced to starvation.

The climaxes of this system of production are the regularly recurring industrial depressions and crises which paralyze the nation every fifteen or twenty years.

The capitalist class, in its mad race for profits, is bound toexploit the workers to the very limit of their endurance and to sacrifice their physical, moral and mental welfare to its own insatiable greed. Capitalism keeps the masses of workingmen in poverty, destitution, physical exhaustion and ignorance. It drags their wives from their homes to the mill and factory. It snatches their children from the playgrounds and schools and grinds their slender bodies and unformed minds into cold dollars. It disfigures, maims, and kills hundreds of thousands of workingmen annually in mines, on railroads and in factories. It drives millions of workers into the ranks of the unemployed and forces large numbers of them into beggary, vagrancy and all forms of crime and vice.

To maintain their rule over their fellow men, the capitalists must keep in their pay all organs of the public powers, public mind and public conscience. They control the dominant parties and, through them, the elected public officials. They select the executives, bribe the legislatures, and corrupt the courts of justice. They own and censor the press. They dominate the educational institutions. They own the nation politically and intellectually just as they own it industrially.

The struggle between wage workers and capitalists grows ever fiercer, and has now become the only vital issue before the American people. The wage-working class, therefore, has the most direct interest in abolishing the capitalist system. But in abolishing the present system the workingmen will free not only their own class, but also all other classes of modern society: the small farmer who is to-day exploited by large capital more indirectly but not less effectively than is the wage laborer; the small manufacturer and trader, who is engaged in a desperate and losing struggle for economic independence in the face of the all-conquering power of concentrated capital; and even the capitalist himself, who is the slave of his wealth rather than its master. The struggle of the working class against the capitalist class, while it is a class struggle, is thus at the same time a struggle for the abolition of all classes and class privileges.

The private ownership of the land and means of production used for exploitation is the rock upon which class rule is built; political government is its indispensable instrument. The wage workers cannot be freed from exploitation without conquering the political power and substituting collective for private ownership of the land and means of production used for exploitation.

The basis for such transformation is rapidly developing within present capitalist society. The factory system, with its complex machinery and minute division of labor, is rapidly destroying all vestiges of individual production in manufacture. Modern production is already very largely a collective and social process. The great trusts and monopolies which have sprung up in recent years have organized the work and management of the principal industries on a national scale, and have fitted them for collective use and operation.

The Socialist Party is primarily an economic and political movement. It is not concerned with matters of religious belief.

In the struggle for freedom the interests of all modern workers are identical. The struggle is not only national, but international. It embraces the world and will be carried to ultimate victory by the united workers of the world.

To unite the workers of the nation and their allies and sympathizers of all other classes to this end, is the mission of the Socialist Party. In this battle for freedom the Socialist Party does not strive to substitute working-class rule for capitalist-class rule, but by working-class victory to free all humanity from class rule and to realize the international brotherhood of man.

The Socialist Party, in national convention assembled, again declares itself as the party of the working class, and appeals for the support of all workers of the United States and of all citizens who sympathize with the great and just cause of labor.

We are at this moment in the midst of one of those industrial breakdowns that periodically paralyze the life of the nation. The much-boasted era of our national prosperity has been followed by one of general misery. Factories, mills and mines are closed. Millions of men, ready, willing and able to provide the nation with all the necessaries and comforts of life are forced into idleness and starvation. Within recent times the trusts and monopolies have attained an enormous and menacing development. They have acquired the power to dictate the terms upon which we shall be allowed to live. The trusts fix the prices of our bread, meat and sugar, of our coal, oil and clothing, of our raw material and machinery, of all the necessities of life.

The present desperate condition of the workers has been made the opportunity for a renewed onslaught on organized labor. The highest courts of the country have within the last year rendered decision after decision depriving the workers of rights which they had won by generations of struggle.

The attempt to destroy the Western Federation of Miners, although defeated by the solidarity of organized labor and the Socialist movement, revealed the existence of a far-reaching and unscrupulous conspiracy by the ruling class against the organizations of labor.

In their efforts to take the lives of the leaders of the miners the conspirators violated State laws and the federal constitution in a manner seldom equalled even in a country so completely dominated by the profit-seeking class as is the United States.

The Congress of the United States has shown its contempt for the interests of labor as plainly and unmistakably as have the other branches of government. The laws for which the labor organizations have continually petitioned have failed to pass. Laws ostensibly enacted for the benefit of labor have been distorted against labor.

The working class of the United States cannot expect any remedy for its wrongs from the present ruling class or fromthe dominant parties. So long as a small number of individuals are permitted to control the sources of the nation's wealth for their private profit in competition with each other and for the exploitation of their fellow men, industrial depressions are bound to occur at certain intervals. No currency reforms or other legislative measures proposed by capitalist reformers can avail against these fatal results of utter anarchy in production.

Individual competition leads inevitably to combinations and trusts. No amount of government regulation, or of publicity, or of restrictive legislation will arrest the natural course of modern industrial development.

While our courts, legislatures and executive offices remain in the hands of the ruling classes and their agents, the government will be used in the interest of these classes as against the toilers.

Political parties are but the expression of economic class interests. The Republican, the Democratic, and the so-called 'Independence' parties and all parties other than the Socialist Party, are financed, directed and controlled by the representatives of different groups of the ruling class.

In the maintenance of class government both the Democratic and Republican parties have been equally guilty. The Republican party has had control of the national government and has been directly and actively responsible for these wrongs. The Democratic party, while saved from direct responsibility by its political impotence, has shown itself equally subservient to the aims of the capitalist class whenever and wherever it has been in power. The old chattel-slave-owning aristocracy of the South, which was the backbone of the Democratic party, has been supplanted by a child-slave plutocracy. In the great cities of our country the Democratic party is allied with the criminal element of the slums as the Republican party is allied with the predatory criminals of the palace in maintaining the interests of the possessing class.

The various "reform" movements and parties which have sprung up within recent years are but the clumsy expression of widespread popular discontent. They are not based on an intelligent understanding of the historical development of civilization and of the economic and political needs of our time. They are bound to perish, as the numerous middle-class reform movements of the past have perished.

As measures calculated to strengthen the working class in its fight for the realization of this ultimate aim, and to increase its power of resistance against capitalist oppression, we advocate and pledge ourselves and our elected officers to the following program:

1. The immediate government relief for the unemployed workers, by building schools, by reforesting of cut-over and waste lands, by reclamation of arid tracts, and the building of canals, and by extending all other useful public works. All persons employed on such works shall be employed directly by the government under an eight-hour workday and at the prevailing union wages. The government shall also loan money to States and municipalities without interest for the purpose of carrying on public works. It shall contribute to the funds of labor organizations for the purpose of assisting their unemployed members, and shall take such other measures within its power as will lessen the widespread misery of the workers caused by the misrule of the capitalist class.

2. The collective ownership of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, steamship lines and all other means of social transportation and communication and all land.[229]

3. The collective ownership of all industries which are organized on a national scale and in which competition has virtually ceased to exist.

4. The extension of the public domain to include mines, quarries, oil wells, forests and water power.

5. That occupancy and use of land be the sole title to possession. The scientific reforestation of timber lands and the reclamation of swamp lands. The land so reforested or reclaimed to be permanently retained as a part of the public domain.

6. The absolute freedom of press, speech and assemblage.

7. The improvement of the industrial conditions of the workers:

(a) By shortening the workday in keeping with the increased productiveness of machinery.

(b) By securing to every worker a rest period of not less than a day and a half in each week.

(d) By forbidding the employment of children under sixteen years of age.

(e) By forbidding the interstate transportation of the products of child labor, of convict labor and of all uninspected factories.

(f) By abolishing official charity and substituting in its place compulsory insurance against unemployment, illness, accidents, invalidism, old age, and death.

8. The extension of inheritance taxes, graduated in proportion to the amount of the bequests and to nearness of kin.

9. A graduated income tax.

10. Unrestricted and equal suffrage for men and women, and we pledge ourselves to engage in an active campaign in that direction.

11. The initiative and referendum, proportional representation and the right of recall.

12. The abolition of the Senate.

13. The abolition of the power usurped by the Supreme Court of the United States to pass upon the constitutionality of legislation enacted by Congress. National laws to be repealed or abrogated only by act of Congress or by a referendum of the whole people.

14. That the constitution be made amendable by majority vote.

15. The enactment of further measures for general education and for the conservation of health. The Bureau of Education to be made a department. The creation of a Department of Public Health.

16. The separation of the present Bureau of Labor from the Department of Commerce and Labor, and the establishment of a Department of Labor.

17. That all judges be elected by the people for short terms, and that the power to issue injunctions shall be curbed by immediate legislation.

18. The free administration of justice.

Such measures of relief as we may be able to force from capitalism are but a preparation of the workers to seize the whole powers of government, in order that they may thereby lay hold of the whole system of industry, and thus come to their rightful inheritance.

[229]By a referendum vote of the entire membership of the Socialist party in 1909 these three words, "and all land," were stricken out of the Socialist platform.

All who practice medicine among children and who study the question of infant mortality statistically are struck with the marked contrast between the death rate of the children of the poor and those of the rich. Clay estimates that in England in the aristocratic families the mortality of the first year is 10 per cent; in the middle class, 21 per cent; in the laboring classes, 32 per cent. This difference in the infant mortality of the various classes is most striking in the case of acute intestinal disease. Halle states that of 170 deaths from this cause investigated in Graz in 1903 and 1904 there were 161 among the poor, 9 among the well-to-do, and none among the rich. It may not be true in adult life, butin infancy money may purchase not only health, it may purchase life, since it puts at the disposal of the infant the utmost resources of science, the best advice, the best food and the best surroundings for the individual child. To relieve, or even greatly to diminish, infant mortality these basal conditions of modern city life—poverty and ignorance—must be attacked.

Journal American Medical Association, Feb. 26, 1910.

Louis, etc. We owe it to our subjects to assure them the full and complete enjoyment of their rights; we owe that protection especially to that class of men who, possessing nothing but their labor and industry, above all others have the need and right of employing to the limit of their capacity their sole resources for subsistence.

We have viewed with pain the multiplied blows which have been struck at this natural and common right of ancient institutions, blows which neither time, nor opinion, nor even the acts emanating from the authority, which seems to have sanctioned them, have been able to make legitimate.

[After describing the vicious effects of the guild monopoly, it continues:]

... Some persons ... contend that the right of labor is a royal right, one that the Prince could sell and that the subjects ought to purchase. We hasten to place beside this another maxim:

God, by giving to men needs and making them dependent upon the resources of labor, has made the right of labor the property of all men, and that property is primary, the most sacred and most imprescriptable of all.

We regard it as one of the first obligations of our justice, and as an act in every way worthy of our beneficence, to emancipate our subjects from all their restraints which have been laid upon that inalienable right of humanity. Wherefore, we will to abolish the arbitrary institutions which do not permit the indigent to live by their labor; which exclude the sex whose weakness implies greatest needs and fewest resources ... which stifle emulation and industry and make useless the talents of those whom circumstances exclude from admission into the guild; which deprive the state and art of all the advantages which foreigners might furnish....

[230]Translation taken from "Turgot and the Six Edicts," by R.P. Shepherd, 1903, pp. 182, 186-7.

Declaring that "law-breaking is the easiest and the most lucrative business in New York for the work involved," Police Commissioner Bingham yesterday forwarded his annual report to Mayor McClellan.

After stating that law-breaking in the city is an easy and lucrative business, the Commissioner continued:

"Its profits for slight effort are enormous and law-breaking has been able to intrench itself behind such a rampart of legislation and highly paid lawyers that the forces of law and order are placed in the astonishing position of being actually on the defensive against the law-breakers. Law-breakers and their highly paid lawyers frequently fool even the courts into giving them protection against the police on the grounds of illegal interference, or oppression.

"The howl of innocence is never so loud as when raised by crooks, and this includes not only the actual criminals, but their friends and protectors, crooked politicians. How otherwise is it possible for prizefights to be held in New York city, in spite of the earnest efforts of the police to prevent them? How otherwise is it possible for places positively known by the police to be gambling resorts to be conducted, and to obtain injunctions restraining the police from interfering with them?

"The foregoing is far from saying that the police force of New York is incompetent, or not able to cope with the situation. The police force is competent, short-handed though it is. Its activity and efficiency are proved by the very resistance given it by law-breakers, for the better the work done by the police, the more stubborn is the resistance they meet with from law-breakers."

As an example of what the police have to cope with the Commissioner mentions the recent Sunday-closing incident, where a court decision was handed down, and enforced, and the Aldermen straightway amended the law. He then asks: "How then can the police execute the law, when there seems to be so much doubt as to what the law really is?"

Gen. Bingham continues:

"These points are necessary in order that scheming politicians may be deprived of any possibility of summarily getting rid of an honest commissioner and in order that the honest men of the police force may be encouraged. The men of the force to-day are not quite sure who is their real boss—the 'machine' or the police commissioner. If once satisfied that it is the commissioner, with a long term and only removable on publication of charges, they will obey him."

Legislation requiring persons who sell any sort of dangerous weapons to record the date and hour of the sale, and report it, with the name and address of the buyer, to the police, is suggested, as well as a daily report from pawnbrokers, giving the date, hour, and other particulars of their transactions. This, the Commissioner says, is the custom in other large cities.

The following figures of arrests, etc., in the last year are given in the report:

Arrests MadeBy uniformed force192,680Detective Bureau11,416Total204,096

These figures refer to the Boroughs of Manhattan, The Bronx, and Richmond.

N.Y.Times, Jan. 5, 1908.

Dissenting opinionof Mr. JusticeMcKenna:

I am constrained to dissent from the opinion and judgment of the court. The principle announced, as I understand it, is that "a Circuit Court of the United States, when asked uponhabeas corpusto discharge a person held in actual custody by a State for trial in one of its courts under an indictment charging a crime against its laws, cannot properly take into account the methods whereby the State obtained such custody." In other words, and to illuminate the principle by the light of the facts in this case (facts, I mean, as alleged, and which we mustassume to be true for the purpose of our discussion), that the officers of one State may falsely represent that a person was personally present in the State and committed a crime there, and had fled from its justice, may arrest such person and take him from another State, the officers of the latter knowing of false accusation and conniving in and aiding its purpose, thereby depriving him of an opportunity to appeal to the courts, and that such person cannot invoke the rights guaranteed to him by the Constitution and statutes of the United States in the State to which he is taken. And this, it is said, is supported by the cases ofKerv.Illinois, 119 U.S. 436, andMahonv.Justice, 127 U.S. 700. These cases, extreme as they are, do not justify, in my judgment, the conclusion deduced from them. In neither case was the State the actor in the wrongs that brought within its confines the accused person. In the case at bar, the States, through their officers, are the offenders. They, by an illegal exertion of power, deprived the accused of a constitutional right. The distinction is important to be observed. It finds expression inMahonv.Justice. But it does not need emphasizing. Kidnapping is a crime, pure and simple. It is difficult to accomplish; hazardous at every step. All of the officers of the law are supposed to be on guard against it. All of the officers of the law may be invoked against it. But how is it when the law becomes the kidnapper, when the officers of the law, using its forms and exerting its power, become abductors? This is not a distinction without a difference—another form of the crime of kidnapping, distinguished only from that committed by an individual by circumstances. If a State may say to one within her borders and upon whom her process is served, I will not inquire how you came here; I must execute my laws and remit you to proceedings against those who have wronged you, may she so plead against her own offences? May she claim that by mere physical presence within her borders, an accused person is within her jurisdiction denuded of his constitutional rights, though he has been brought there by her violence? And constitutional rights the accused in this case certainly did have, and valuable ones. The foundation of extradition between the States is that the accused should be a fugitive from justice from the demanding State, and he may challenge the fact byhabeas corpusimmediately upon his arrest. If he refute the fact he cannot beremoved.Hyattv.Corkran, 188 U.S. 691. And the right to resist removal is not a right of asylum. To call it so in the State where the accused is is misleading. It is the right to be free from molestation. It is the right of personal liberty in its most complete sense. And this right was vindicated inHyattv.Corkran, and the fiction of a constructive presence in a State and a constructive flight from a constructive presence rejected. This decision illustrates at once the value of the right and the value of the means to enforce the right. It is to be hoped that our criminal jurisprudence will not need for its efficient administration the destruction of either the right or the means to enforce it. The decision in the case at bar, as I view it, brings us perilously near both results. Is this exaggeration? What are the facts in the case at bar as alleged in the petition, and which it is conceded must be assumed to be true? The complaint, which was the foundation of the extradition proceedings, charged against the accused the crime of murder on the thirtieth of December, 1905, at Caldwell, in the county of Canyon, State of Idaho, by killing one Frank Steunenberg, by throwing an explosive bomb at and against his person. The accused avers in his petition that he had not been "in the State of Idaho, in any way, shape or form, for a period of more than ten years" prior to the acts of which he complained, and that the Governor of Idaho knew accused had not been in the State the day the murder was committed, "nor at any time near that day." A conspiracy is alleged between the Governor of the State of Idaho and his advisers, and that the Governor of the State of Colorado took part in the conspiracy, the purpose of which was "to avoid the Constitution of the United States and the act of Congress made in pursuance thereof, and to prevent the accused from asserting his constitutional right under cl. 2, sec. 2, of art. IV, of the Constitution of the United States and the act made pursuant thereof." The manner in which the alleged conspiracy had been executed was set out in detail. It was in effect that the agent of the State of Idaho arrived in Denver, Thursday, February 15, 1906, but it was agreed between him and the officers of Colorado that the arrest of the accused should not be made until some time in the night of Saturday, after business hours—after the courts had closed and judges and lawyers had departed to their homes; that the arrest should be kept a secret and the body of theaccused should be clandestinely hurried out of the State of Colorado with all possible speed, without the knowledge of his friends or his counsel; that he was at the usual place of business during Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, but no attempt was made to arrest him until 11.30 o'clockP.M.Saturday, when his house was surrounded and he was arrested. Moyer was arrested under the same circumstances at 8.45, and he and accused "thrown into the county jail of the city and county of Denver." It is further alleged that, in pursuance of the conspiracy, between the hours of five and six o'clock on Sunday morning, February 18, the officers of the State and "certain armed guards, being a part of the forces of the militia of the State of Colorado," provided a special train for the purpose of forcibly removing him from the State of Colorado, and between said hours he was forcibly placed on said train and removed with all possible speed to the State of Idaho; that prior to his removal and at all times after his incarceration in the jail at Denver he requested to be allowed to communicate with his friends and his counsel and his family, and the privilege was absolutely denied him. The train, it is alleged, made no stop at any considerable station, but proceeded at great and unusual speed; and that he was accompanied by and surrounded with armed guards, members of the State militia of Colorado, under the orders and directions of the adjutant general of the State.

I submit that the facts in this case are different in kind and transcend in consequences those in the cases ofKerv.IllinoisandMahonv.Justice, and differ from and transcend them as the power of a State transcends the power of an individual. No individual or individuals could have accomplished what the the power of the two States accomplished; no individual or individuals could have commanded the means and success; could have made two arrests of prominent citizens by invading their homes; could have commanded the resources of jails, armed guards and special trains; could have successfully timed all acts to prevent inquiry and judicial interference.

The accused, as soon as he could have done so, submitted his rights to the consideration of the courts. He could not have done so in Colorado, he could not have done so on the way from Colorado. At the first instant that the State of Idaho relaxed its restraining power he invoked the aid ofhabeas corpussuccessively of the Supreme Court of the State and of the Circuit Court of the United States. He should not have been dismissed from the court, and the action of the Circuit Court in so doing should be reversed.

"Yes," said Debs. "The trusts are wiping out the competitive system. They are a stage in the process of evolution: the individual; the firm; the corporation; the trust; and so, finally, the commonwealth. By killing competition and training men to work together, trusts are preparing for the coöperative stage of industry: Socialism."

"Then you would keep the trusts we have and welcome others?" I asked.

"Of course," he answered, and Berger nodded approval.

"They do harm now," I suggested.

"Yes," said Debs, but Berger boomed: "No; not the trusts. Private owners of the trusts do harm, yes; but not the trusts."

"Well, but how would you deal with the harm?"

"Remove 'em," snapped Berger, and Debs explained: "We would have the government take the trusts and remove the men who own or control them: the Morgans and Rockefellers, who exploit; and the stockholders who draw unearned dividends from them."

"Would you pay for or just take them?"

Berger seemed to have anticipated this question. He was on his feet, and he uttered a warning for Debs—in vain.

"Take them," Debs answered.

"No," cried Berger, and, running around to Debs, he stood menacingly over him. "No, you wouldn't," he declared. "Not if I was there. And you shall not say it for the party. It is my party as much as it is your party, and I answer that we would offer to pay."

It was a tense but an illuminating moment. The difference is typical and temperamental; and not only as between these two opposite individualities, but among Socialists generally. Debs, the revolutionist, argued gently that, since the system under which private monopolies had grown up was unjust, thereshould be no compromise with it. Berger, the evolutionist, replied angrily that it was not alone a matter of justice, but of "tactic"; and that tactics were settled by authority of the party.

"We (Socialists) are the inheritors of a civilization," he proclaimed, "and all that is good in it—art, music, institutions, buildings, public works, character, the sense of right and wrong—not one of these shall be lost. And violence, like that, would lose us much." Berger cited the Civil War: "All men can see now that it was coming years before 1861. Some tried to avert it then by proposing to pay for the slaves. The fanatics on both sides refused. We all know the result: slavery was abolished. But how? Instead of a peaceful evolution and an outlay of, say, a billion, it was abolished by a war which cost us nearly ten billion dollars and a million lives. We ought to learn from history, so I say we will offer compensation; because it seems just to present-day thought and will prove the easiest, cheapest way in the end. And anyhow," he concluded, "and besites, the party, it has decited that we shall offer to pay."

From the article by Mr. Steffens,Eugene V. Debs, inEverybody's Magazine, Oct., 1908.

Tramps, professional and amateur, and trespassers of both sexes and all ages, are simply swarming over the railroads east of the Mississippi River, forming a very serious problem for both railroads and State Governments, according to reports which O.F. Lewis has received from most of the great roads of the East, and recently published inCharitiesandThe Commons. Mr. Lewis finds from these reports that the railroad tramp and trespasser evil is on the increase, with roads and States through which they pass unable to check it, and one road, the New York Central, declares that half of the loss and damage claims currently paid by railroads may be ascribed to robberies committed by tramps and trespassers. Much of this increase in trampdom is ascribed to the effects of the panic and the hard times, which threw thousands of men out of employment.

"Most of the railroads," says Mr. Lewis, in summing up the replies received to the questions he sent out, "report a very noticeable increase in vagrancy on their lines. The Central Vermont says 75 per cent, the Chicago & Eastern Illinois 50 per cent, the Great Northern 200 per cent. Great increases are reported by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, the New York Central, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia & Reading, and many others. The Northern Pacific reports more vagrants travelling than ever before.

"A decrease is reported on the Central of New Jersey, the Cumberland Valley, Chicago, Indiana & Southern, and on the Missouri Pacific. Emphasizing the increase on the Pennsylvania, President McCrea states that four times as many arrests were made for illegal train riding in June, 1908, as in June, 1907.

"Stealing foodstuffs, stealing rides, stealing handcars, threatening and injuring trainmen, placing obstructions on tracks, stoning freight crews, setting air brakes, and robbing ticket offices, are typical offences."

As bearing on the question of, literally, "Who pays the freight?" the following is from the New York Central's report:

"We are required by law to charge all of the costs arising out of the operation of the railroad to operating expenses, which constitute the loss of the services rendered. Among these expenses are loss and damage due to the effects of trespassing and the acts of trespassers. Inasmuch as the definition of a reasonable rate has been stated to include the cost of the service and a reasonable return upon the value of the property employed, it inevitably follows that our charge to the public includes these elements of cost. It may, therefore, be said that in the end the public pays, but we would prefer to eliminate this source of cost as far as practicable."

Many railroads ascribe the increased number of vagrants to "hard times," resulting in the reduction in the number of men employed throughout the country.

The report is frequent that more "honest out-of-works" are stealing rides and trespassing. President McCrea reports that "not many of the illegal train riders are vagrants, but men out of employment." The Southern Pacific reports that "the type of trespasser is as a whole better."

With striking frequency the railroads report the majorityof illegal train riders to be young men and boys. The ages "18 to 25" are often mentioned. The Central Railroad of New Jersey says they can be considered as the coming generation of tramps.

Answering the question, "Do you believe in a State constabulary to coöperate with the railway police in prosecuting vagrants?" twenty-three railroads replied "yes," five replied "no," and sixteen either had not considered the matter thoroughly or made no reply. The State constabulary is favored mainly by trunk lines that are troubled by vagrants.

N.Y.Times, Feb. 14, 1909.

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