There are six distinct categories of offenders in the United States to which may be assigned, as they are apprehended and classified, the great majority of our lawbreakers. They are: the occasional or petty offender, the tramp, the "backwoods" criminal, the professional criminal, the "unknown" thief, and what, for want of a better name, I call the diseased or irresponsible criminal. All of these different types are to be found on the railroads, and the railroad police officer must know them when he sees them. The largest class is that of the petty offenders, and it is in this category that are found the majority of the criminally inclined foreigners who have emigrated to our shores. It is a popular notion that Europe has sent us a great many very desperate evil-doers, and we are inclined to excuse the increase of crime in the country on the ground that we have neglected to regulate immigration; but the facts are that we have ourselves evolved as cruel and cunning criminals as any that Europe may have foisted upon us, and that the foreigners' offences are generally of a minor character, and, in a number of instances, the result of a misunderstanding of the requirements of law in this country, rather than of wilful evil-doing. I hold no brief for the strangers in our midst in this connection; it would be very consoling, indeed, to know that we ourselves are so upright and honest that we are incapable of committing crimes, and, this being proved, a comparatively easy task to lessen the amount of crime; but there is no evidence to show that this is the case. The majority of the men, women, and children that I found in jails, workhouses, and penitentiaries, on my recent travels, were born and brought up in this country, and they admitted the fact on being arrested. If the reader desires more particular information concerning this question, the annual police reports of our large cities will be found useful; I have examined a number of them, and they substantiate my own personal finding. In some communities the proportion of foreign offenders to the general foreign population is greater than that of native offenders to the general native population, but I doubt whether this will be found to be the case throughout the country; and even where it is, I think there is an explanation to be given which does not necessarily excuse the crimes committed, but, in my opinion, does tone down a little the reproach of wilfulness. The average foreigner who comes to the United States looks upon the journey as an escape; he is henceforth released, he thinks,--and we ourselves have often helped to make him think so,--from the stiff rule of law and order in vogue in his own land. He comes to us ignorant of our laws, and with but little more appreciation of our institutions than that he fancies he is for evermore "a free man." In a great many cases he interprets "free" to mean an independence which would be impossible in any civilised