Labor, Strikes, and Crime
By Editor
It has not been very long since the discontented armies of the unemployed, reaching up into the thousands, were disturbing Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and other cities of the nation. At the present time, the three great states of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri are advertising for an aggregate of one hundred ten thousand men. Kansas needs forty thousand, Oklahoma forty thousand, and Missouri thirty thousand. The wages will run from two dollars to three and a half a day and board. Men who actually desire to work will have no difficulty in finding employment, at least until after the harvest season is past. And if those who labor would save their money instead of spending it, as so many do, for drink, they might avoid being driven into the army of the unemployed. THOSE who have been keeping account of the cost of the Colorado strike, find that thus far sixty-six persons have been killed, forty-eight wounded, and that the expense to the strikers, the mine operators, and the state has already aggregated twelve million dollars. The sufferings and the tortures that have grown out of this thing can not be computed in dollars and cents, and is not fully measured by the number of lives lost or of individuals wounded. If such scenes and conditions as have prevailed in Colorado represented isolated cases, it would not be so bad; but the whole world is threatened with similar scenes of strife and anarchy—only they will be intensified. ON May 15, two masked men held up the "Oriental Limited," on the Great Northern Railway. The combination mail and baggage car was detached from the train, and run some four miles away, where it was rifled. Train robberies are becoming more and more common. Even mere boys are engaging in the business of holding up city street-cars, as well as regular trains. Lawlessness and daring desperadoes are on the increase, and that regardless of the fact that to control this sort of thing, some of the strongest men are exerting the mightiest efforts the world has ever known. The mere study of these facts ought to create very sober reflections. NEW YORK's legislature is expected to pass a bill that will submit to the people, through the referendum, the question of authorizing an expenditure of some thirty million dollars in the development of the state's charitable institutions. There are said to be thirty-two thousand feeble-minded people in the state, while the institutions designed for them can accommodate only about forty-nine hundred of these, and about forty-five hundred are in institutions not properly fitted for their care. This leaves over twenty-two thousand of these unfortunate defective and feeble-minded people at large. Statistics show that this class is increasing more rapidly than normal beings. THE town council of Montclair, New Jersey, has introduced an ordinance that provides against the sale of impure, adulterated, or misbranded liquor; against the use of glasses not thoroughly cleaned after being used; and it empowers any member or authorized agent of the board of health, or any two residents of the town, to file a complaint. The liquor dealers of the country ought to be able to see that the strongest and best element of society is determined to put that so-called "business" under the ban. CADET F. BOWLES was recently killed at Annapolis, Maryland, by a band of "hazing" fellow students. Why is it that our civilization can not outlaw all such barbarous things? Why should any school permit anything in the nature of hazing? There is nothing manly or educative connected with it, and of all places, the school should be the very last to tolerate it. ON June 8, the ocean-going ship, the Alliance, of four thousand tons displacement, belonging to the Panama Railroad Company, successfully passed through the Gatun Locks into Gatun Lake in the Panama Canal, and returned to her dock at Cristobal, without a hitch to mar the great event.