There are various other points at which our views are insensibly modified from things which one could not see unless one lived continually with working people. One of these is the view of the unemployed and the evolution of the tramp. Perhaps nothing is more pathetic than the man who is kept out of work through no fault of his own; and often in Chicago, since 1893, it has not been the fault of any one. He first begins to look for work with an enthusiasm which is almost pathetic. He gets discouraged, and looks less and less alertly; and he finally reaches the point where his self-confidence leaves him, and where he gets that devastating belief that there is no place in the world for him. Many men, I believe, desert their families, thinking that there is no need of them either in the family or the community. We all know, as little children, how nothing cut us so much to the heart as to be set aside, and told: "Run away. I am busy. I do not need your help." That is what the community does to such a man. The factories are buzzing, but none of them wants him. Nothing so deteriorates character and so brings out the faculties which make the pauper and the tramp as that sort of thing. You get a new tenderness for the unemployed,- for the man who cannot fit himself into society. A series of half a dozen accidents, happening to almost any one in this room, could bring him to such a position. It is not that he has not often a good mind. It is not that he has not a good trade. Just now Hull House is surrounded by dozens of printers who have been thrown out, owing to the introduction of the linotype. At least one of them whom I think of, though carefully brought up to a good trade, is going down very fast into the drunkard and the casual lodging-house man.

This is, I think, the only message which a settlement has for a. conference like this,- that they do see people from the point of view of the recipients of the charity which is extended. I do not wish to underestimate the friendly visitor. I often say that the people who constantly visit the poor often know more about them than the people who should be content to live in settlements and should not visit them.

It is nonsense to say that one cannot know the poor who does not live with them. You know the poor, if you take pains to know them; and you do not know the poor, if you do not take pains to know them. But what I would like to say is that, living eight years as I have, and seeing them early in the morning and all day long

and late at night, and not being able to get away simply because one is caught with his sympathies, with his imagination, with his desires, with his interests, he does get a point of view which, I think, comes only to us on any subject when we give it continuous attention. And, after the settlements have given this attention, they would indeed be very stupid to minimize the people who are engaged in charitable and correctional work. We need them at every possible point. In Chicago, for instance, we have a day nursery at Hull House. We would a great deal rather have some one else establish the nursery, and use our money for something else; but we have it because there are not enough nurseries in that part of the city. We have a free kindergarten, because we cannot get enough of them in the public schools of our ward. We have a coffee-house, from which we sell cheap foods in winter at cost,- not because that sort of thing is what the settlement started out to do, but because we feel the pressure for it. One of the residents goes every day to the court, and has the children handed over to her probational care when they are first arrested,—not because we want to do that, but because we have no children's court and no probation officer. We have no feeling with regard to the charities but one of hearty good. fellowship. But we do ask your help; and we ask, when we come to you with a point of view gained from long and continuous observation, that together we may study how to remedy some of the conditions which are so tenacious, and operate so constantly against the very poorest people. Let the settlement represent the sentiments of working people who have received no charity. It is so easy to stand. just on the line, and then to get across the line, and to have the public opinion of your neighbors and of the charitable societies think. of you as a pauper.

I have not that great fear of pauperizing people which many of you seem to have. It is the feeling with which you give a piece of bread or the feeling with which you take it which determines whether the transaction shall be a pauperizing one. We have all accepted our bread from somebody, at least until we were fourteen; and we have help all the time from all sorts of people. If we can only make the medium of giving friendly enough, if we can only make a real fellowship, it does not make any difference whether you give an old Latin grammar or a pair of shoes. I should feel very much ashamed if my neighbor next door did not come to me when she

wants money for her taxes, and borrow it from me as she would from any other friend. I should feel that I had been a failure as a friendly neighbor. Money is not so different from the rest of life, and shoes and soup need not be so different from books and pictYou can transfigure and transform them in the feeling of friendliness and kindliness. But you cannot do it wholesale. You cannot do it unless you really know people, and unless your feeling is genuine.

This may be the only right view the settlement has at such a conference, that its feeling for the poor is genuine, and that it gets a glimpse of charity from their point of view.

XIV.

Moral Reform in Ontario.

AN ENCOURAGING OUTLOOK.

BY J. J. MACLAREN, Q.C., LL.D.

In this Province we have about 2,500,000 people. 400,000 of these are in twenty-four cities and towns of 5,000 and upward. Of these, Toronto is the largest, with 200,000; next Hamilton, with 55,000. Four have more than 20,000; the others, between 5,000 and 20,000.

As to the origin of the people, the great bulk, probably over 2,000,000, are of English-speaking races. The other considerable elements are about 100,000 French Canadians, chiefly in the valley of the Ottawa, with about 20,000 west of us in the neighborhood of Detroit. There are probably about an equal number of Germanspeaking people in the Province. These, however, are not recent arrivals, but are chiefly descendants of the German-speaking people of the United States. Both of these classes are very thrifty, industrious, law-abiding, and do not present any special social problem.

Another point to be borne in mind in connection with our community is this, that, speaking broadly, we have no slums, no tenements, as the words are understood in your large cities, no immigrant population, so that many of the problems which are perplexing you, and toward which your efforts are directed, are to us unknown.

Another subject that I think is worthy of mention is that the observance of Sunday as a day of rest is more marked in Ontario than in any other community. I speak of it not only as a day of rest, but as to church attendance. One of our enterprising newspapers recently took a church census of this city, and the result was a surprise even to those who looked upon this as a church-going people. It was found that the aggregate church attendance on that

particular day was 65 per cent. of the total population, reckoning the two services held in the majority of them; that is, the aggregate church attendance was larger than the total adult population of the city, so that, even making allowance for duplicate attendance and the number of children under fourteen,- and, as a rule, our children under fourteen, like yours, go to Sunday-school, and not to church, the number attending service was something remarkable. We have no Sunday papers, no Sunday excursions. Excursions by steamboat or railroad are prohibited by statute. There is comparatively little Sunday labor, and no open shops, as a rule. The only exception is one that you may have noticed, and that, if you had been here two months earlier, you would not have seen,— Sunday electric cars. They are found only in Toronto and two or three other places in the Province. An act was passed at the last session prohibiting the running of these where there were not vested rights. The question whether they shall run in Toronto is a question before the courts.

With regard to charities and correction I may speak first of correction, and chiefly as to a few points in which I think our practice differs from the majority of your States.

In the first place, our criminal law is in the jurisdiction of our Federal Parliament instead of being with the separate states. Our judges, both of provincial and federal courts, are all appointed by the federal government and for life. Our police magistrates and lower judiciary officers are appointed by our provincial authorities.

Our magistrates are able to try many offences which are subject of indictment with you. Except for grievous offences the person committed for trial is asked whether he will be tried by speedy trial before a judge or whether he will elect to be tried by a jury; and the great majority elect speedy trial, so that our courts of criminal jurisdiction, where juries are summoned, have little to do. At the majority of the higher criminal courts there is scarcely a criminal to try.

With regard to other points we have not in this country the system of indeterminate sentences; but the magistrates and judges, when they consider it a suitable case, have the authority to allow the convicted party to go on suspended sentence. That is very generally used, and, I think, with good results.

Sentence for a definite term may be shortened by good conduct.