EDITOR'S TABLE. 



271 



shareholders. There is an opportunity 

 for honest and well-meaning citizens to 

 consult and act for the benefit of the 

 great national corporation. There is 

 also an opportunity for others to plot 

 and plan for their private benefit, to be 

 secured at the cost and to the injury of 

 the corporation. A combination may 

 be formed to elect a corrupt directorate 

 or executive with the expectation that 

 it will be the submissive creature of 

 those who invested it with power. 

 Some will be prepared to imperil the 

 very existence of the nation in order 

 that they may carry certain selfish pur- 

 poses of their own into effect. Thus 

 every general election and, indeed, 

 every phase of political action affords 

 an opportunity for the practice of po- 

 litical justice or of political injustice; 

 and to say that any particular deter- 

 mination of the electors or of a legisla- 

 tive body is just because it commanded a 

 majority of votes is as absurd as to say 

 that in a physical encounter right must 

 rest with the conqueror. 



" What are yon going to do about 

 it," say some, " if the people mani- 

 fest a complete indifference to these 

 considerations?" We can do nothing 

 about it, we reply, but uphold the true 

 principle, and trust that the apparent 

 " foolishness of preaching " may in the 

 end prove wiser than the wisdom of our 

 practical politicians who wield votes 

 precisely as they might wield clubs. It 

 is all a question of the moral growth of 

 the people; and we can not but hope 

 that the time will come when even the 

 average citizen will understand that 

 right is not made by majorities, but that 

 majorities are happy when they are able 

 to discover what right is, and pay it the 

 homage of their support. 



TRAMP COLONIES. 



There appears to be an epidemic of 

 schemes for reforming shiftless people 

 by wholesale. The latest reported is 

 a proposal by a Mr. Heller, of Newark, 

 N. J., to establish seven colonies, in as 



many States, for the benefit of old and 

 unemployed people and tramps. The 

 chief feature of the scheme is to be the 

 reformation of tramps. Work is to be 

 provided for those who will work, and 

 Mr. Heller evidently expects that a large 

 part of them will. He doubtless actu- 

 ally believes what the tramps say of 

 themselves, and accepts the familiar 

 "can't get work" whine for absolute 

 truth. This belief is squarely contra- 

 dicted by well-known facts. Plenty of 

 work can be had now, without any 

 colony machinery, by those who will 

 work. During the past summer workers 

 have been called for all over the United 

 States, to gather in this year's bountiful 

 harvest. No tramp could extend his 

 travels to twenty miles outside any largo 

 city without coming across farmers who 

 would be glad to give him fifteen or 

 twenty dollars a month and board for 

 faithful work. In a recent book on 

 Crime and its Causes, the author, Will- 

 iam Douglas Morrison, who is an Eng- 

 lish prison official, puts the number of 

 vagrants who are willing to work at 

 not much over two per cent. To con- 

 firm his view he quotes the following 

 striking testimony from M. Monod of 

 the Ministry of the Interior in France: 



According to M. Monod, a bcnfivolently 

 disposed French citizen wished to know the 

 amount of truth contained in the complaints 

 of sturdy beggars that they were willing to 

 work if they could get anything to do or any 

 one to employ them. This gentleman entered 

 into negotiations with some merchants and 

 manufacturers, and induced them to olFer work 

 at the rate of four francs [eijrhty cents] a day 

 to every person presenting himself furnished 

 with a letter of recommendation from him. 

 In eight months seven hundred and twenty- 

 seven sturdy beggars came under his notice, 

 all complaining that they had no work. Each 

 of them was asked to come the following day 

 to receive a letter which would enable him to 

 get employment at four francs a day in an 

 industrial establishment. More than one half 

 (four hundred and fifteen) never came for the 

 letter ; a good many others (one hundred and 

 thirty-eight) returned for the letter but never 

 presented it. Others who did present their 

 letter worked half a day, demanded two francs. 



