lower in 9 out of the 17 cases that went up from the circuit court, and in three of these cases the Supreme Court reversed both the Circuit Court and the Court of Appeals. Fifth, it is by no means certain that the Commission was wrong and the court right. The fact is that the Supreme Court has not interpreted the law according to its manifest and wellknown intent, but in a narrow, technical way that has defeated in large part the real purpose of the act. It is an absurdity to rule that the law is valid and then to decide that the railroads may escape from the long-haul section by means of dissimilar circumstances created by themselves. And many believe it to be an equal absurdity to declare that the Commission may order the discontinuance of an excessive rate or unjust discrimination but cannot fix a reasonable rate. Take the Kansas oil rate for example. The railroads at the dictation of the Combine raised the rate from 10 to 17 cents. Suppose the Commission had ordered the roads to cease charging 17 cents, that being found to be unreasonable. The railroads could appeal and if after several years the case went against them they could make a rate of 163 cents. Then a new investigation could be begun, the Commission could make a new order, and after years in the courts the rate might come down another half-cent perhaps. And so on. Even if all the decisions went against the railroads it would take 105 years to reduce the rate to 10 cents again, calculating on the new basis of the average period of 71⁄2 years required for final litigation. Why not sum up the process in a single order for the tencent rate and if objected to by the railroads have one judicial contest and finish the business? By the indirect method of declaring one rate after another to be unreasonable the Commission has now the power at last to fix the rate. The proposition to allow it to name a reasonable rate is only putting in direct, brief, effective form the power it now has in indirect, diffused, and ineffective form.

The railroads might not act in the way described, but the point is that they could do so; there is no power in the law as it stands to-day to compel them to adopt a reasonable rate within a reasonable time.*

The Hepburn Bill, which has passed the House by a large majority, provides that the Interstate Commission, on complaint and proof that any railway rates or charges, or any regulations or practices affecting such rates are unjust, or unreasonable, unjustly discriminatory, or unduly preferential or prejudicial, may determine and prescribe what will, in its judgment, be the just and reasonable rate or charge which shall thereafter be observed as the maximum in such case; and what regulation or practice in respect to such transportation is just, fair, and reasonable to be thereafter followed. The order is to go into effect 30 days after notice to the carrier. And any company, officer, or agent, receiver, trustee, or lessee who knowingly fails or neglects to obey any such order is liable to a penalty of $5000 for each offense; and in case of a continuing violation each day is to be deemed a separate offense.

It is provided that the Commission may establish maximum joint rates or through rates as well as rates pertaining to a single company, and may adjust the division of such joint rates if the companies fail to agree among themselves. The Commission may also determine what is a reasonable maximum charge for the use of private cars and other instrumentalities and services, such as the switching services of terminal railways, etc. No change is to be made in any rate except after 30 days' notice to the Commission, unless the Commission for good cause shown allows changes upon shorter notice.

The Commission may petition the Circuit Court to enforce any order the railroads do not obey. And if on hearing "it appears that the order was regularly made and duly served, and that the carrier is in disobedience of the same,

*See The Heart of the Railroad Problem, Little, Brown & Company, Boston.

it is approved by the Federal courts. We are heartily in favor of the Hepburn Bill and would be glad to see far stronger regulative measures passed, but nothing more than a moderate palliation of the railway evils under which we suffer must be expected from such legislation. England with her rigid control has not been able to stamp out railroad abuses, and the lesson of English railroad regulation is that the subjecting of private railways to a public control strong enough to accomplish any substantial elimination of discrimination and extortion takes the life out of private railway enterprise along with its evils. Even Germany with all the power its great government was able

to exert, could not eliminate unjust discrimination until it nationalized the railways, and so destroyed the root of the evil, which lies in the antagonism of interest between the public on the one hand, and the owners of the railways and associated industries on the other. In this country, where the railroads exert much more control over the government than the government exercises over the railroads,* there is not much hope of eradicating fundamental evils with the toywhip of the regulative measures now pending and likely to be enacted by Congress. FRANK PARSONS.

Boston, Mass.

I. FUNDAMENTAL WORK FOR THE REDEMPTION OF THE ERRING YOUNG.

A

SHORT time since we called the attention of our readers to the great educational reform being inaugurated by Mr. Wilson L. Gill in the School City movement a reform as basic in character as that of Pestalozzi and Fröbel and more pregnant with promise for democracy than any advance step that has been taken since the dawn of the era of popular education. This month we invite the attention of our readers to the work of another true builder of a nobler civilization, a fundamental thinker who has brought brain and heart to bear upon solving one of the gravest and most important problems of society.

The work inaugurated and carried forward with splendid success by Judge Ben. B. Lindsey of Denver, Colorado, is of such a nature as to commend itself to

every true man and woman, to every believer in democracy. And just here we wish to point out a fact which cannot be too impressively or too frequently emphasized: Every great world-movement possesses a dominant or vitalizing ideal or master-thought which, however hidden it may be, is the mainspring of action. Now the master-ideal or moving and vitalizing spirit of democracy is justice illumined by love-it is altruism as contrasted with egoism. Its passion is for humanity, for the all, for the elevation, the prosperity, the development, the advance and the happiness of the whole people. The true democrat must of necessity be a lover of the race. He must be ready to work, to sacrifice, and if need be to suffer for others, work, sacrifice and suffer that all the people may enjoy the same opportunities and rights that he enjoys.

*See The Railways, the Trusts and the People, Equity Series, Philadelphia.

Whenever we find true democrats-men who understand the great principles underlying democracy, who believe in them and live them as did Jefferson and Lincoln-we find men with a passion for the rights of all the people, men whose hearts go out in loving kindness to all, but especially to the unfortunate, the weak, the oppressed and the down-trodden with the same great love and yearning that were manifested by the Prophet of Nazareth.

On the other hand, whenever we find men who stand for class-government and privileged interests, we find men in whom the secret wellspring of action is egoism, men who exhibit that infidelity in regard to moral idealism that is fatal alike to the cause of justice, to the rights of man and to the triumph of democracy. Hence in proportion as commercialism advances; in proportion as privileged interests become dominant in business and political life; in proportion as reactionary concepts and class-rule ideals permeate government, we see indifference to the rights of others and especially callousness in the presence of the weak and the helpless if they stand in the way of the advance in wealth or power of the representatives of privileged interests and reactionary ideals. Moreover, when egoism flourishes we see little attention given to fundamental reasoning along social, economic or ethical lines. There may be a great show of interest in palliative and superficial remedies for acknowledged wrongs and widespread misery, and much ostentatious charity, but there will be little earnest work for justice, little of that love of man displayed that sinks all thought of self for the weal of the people. When we find workers for a nobler civilization who are fundamental philosophers, we find men who are at heart altruists, apostles of justice, democrats, using the term democrat in its broadest and noblest signification as meaning one who opposes class-rule, privileged interests and whatsoever is inimical to free institutions.

And so it is with Judge Lindsey. He is a true democrat in that he places the interest, the happiness and the uplift of all the people above all considerations of self or of any class; and he is preëminently an apostle of justice, with the breadth of vision of a true philosopher instinct with that all-consuming love that has marked the lives of earth's noblest and greatest benefactors.

Some years ago his attention was called to the methods pursued by the state in the treatment of juvenile offenders. The more he studied the matter the more thoroughly he became convinced that the attitude of the state toward offending children was marked by a brutal indifference to its most sacred charge and an ignorance or shortsightedness that represented the extreme of folly, because it fostered crime and thus entailed great expense on society while lowering the morals of the community. He believed that an entirely different course would save to the nation annually thousands of boys and girls who under the prevailing treatment were becoming hardened criminals-a curse to themselves, a menace to society and a great expense to the state. He believed that while every consideration of economy and of ordinary business wisdom imperatively demanded a radically different method of treatment, above and beyond all this there rose the demand of justice to the child, to the state and to civilization, which the old treatment of the young offenders ignored. He saw that where property was concerned the state was zealous in protecting the interests of the child, holding that the child was irresponsible till he arrived at his majority and appointing guardians for his property interests; but at the same time, in most commonwealths, the child of ten who committed an offense against the law was held accountable and punished for the same, while the parents whose carelessness and indifference in many instances made them the responsible criminals were ignored by the department of justice. His experience in deal

ing with crime showed him that the young were in a vast majority of cases the victims of environment, the plastic instruments whose downward inclination was due largely if not chiefly, to improper, careless or negligent home influences; bad associations on the street and careless indifference on the part of government and society together uniting to make them transgressors before they had arrived at the age when the character is formed or they have any adequate realization of moral relations. More than this: he was satisfied from a study of the problem, supplemented by close personal observations, that children around whom home and state threw their combined protecting care in a loving manner would rarely become other than honorable and useful citizens. The great need of the child was the correcting so far as possible of environing conditions, reinforced by moral stimulation authoritatively yet lovingly enforced by the state. Crime cannot be justified and society must be protected, but if the children be regarded as victims rather than as responsible moral agents, and the state keeps in mind the awful responsibility devolving on it in the presence of a human soul, and if it recognizes the wisdom and policy as well as the duty of saving the child as a self-respecting member of society instead of through an indolent, short-sighted, brutal and ignorant course making him an enemy of society and a curse and expense to the state, one of the greatest and to civilization most fundamentally important victories of modern times will be won.

Now to demonstrate the truth of his enlightened conclusions, which it will be noted are in perfect alignment with the ethics of Jesus, Judge Lindsey consecrated his life. Legislation was secured necessary to make the parents responsible for the misdemeanors of the children. This was a great victory. Next the Judge addressed himself to the attitude of the state toward the offending child, introducing an innovation that was thoroughly revolutionary in character. Keeping in

view the fact that the young are largely irresponsible victims, he has made the School Court a genuine state confessional, where the young have learned to know that they will receive loving, sympathetic and strengthening counsel and advice in all efforts to atone for wrongs and to become strong, brave, self-respecting men and women. The Judge never lets the child feel that crime is to be justified, but he also always makes him see that in him, the representative of the state, the weak or offending one has a loving elder brother who understands the trials and temptations that beset the offender and who stands ready to save him from disgrace and prison and to help him upward and onward.

Heretofore the state has been concerned with the reclamation of stolen property and the punishing of criminals, without any due regard to the salvation of the little offenders. As a result children have been arrested, disgraced, imprisoned and allowed to mingle with hardened criminals; and often the slight offender has through this cruel and unjust process become a confirmed law-breaker, a menace to society, a constant expense to the state, and a curse to his family and to himself.

the

All this, so far as Denver is concerned, is past, and the results that have followed have more than justified the most sanguine expectations of Judge Lindsey and his co-workers. Hundreds upon hundreds of children have been saved to the state without the humiliation and degradation attending the old methods. Hundreds of children are to-day among brightest and most promising of Denver's young citizens who under the old system would have been in reform-schools or prisons, or Ishmaelites of civilization, embittered by the deep conviction that the state was their enemy and with the feeling that they had little or no chance of a fair show in life.

The course pursued by Judge Lindsey has demanded work, patient, tireless, loving service such as only an apostle of