This article aims to do nothing more than to open a window of hope. We shall need to change a great deal; but the poor man’s motor will probably help us to change. A good many monopolies have grown up because steam favored their growth; others are the fruits of general ignorance. Under the sway of ignorance, the trade-mark becomes a tyrant, a grasping monopolist. For example, there are no patents on sewing machines, but machines of certain firms, wearing a certain trade-mark, command a monopoly price. Any good mechanic can build a good sewing machine for ten dollars. There might be men in every town engaged in supplying the local wants in the matter of sewing machines. No large factories, no heavy transportation bills, no eloquent traveling agents would be needed. There are thousands of things to which the same rule will apply when there is a poor man’s motor and such a diffusion of intelligence that the poor man can make, and people will buy, the home-made articles. The empire of the trade-mark will disappear when the motor and the intelligence come along, and both seem to be coming. It will not be necessary—if the motor arrives—to herd people together like cattle, or to transport goods long distances. The workmen will carry their kits of tools to the villages and live independently and cheaply in the midst of their customers. Is this a dream? But why should it not come true? REFORMED CRIMINALS. The French government is considering a proposition to restore the custom of deporting criminals. It is remarkable that the practical argument on this subject is decidedly favorable to this system. The argument against it is a sentimental one. The unsettled question about punishments for other than capital offenses is, how to secure the reform of criminals. Under the best managed prisons, reform of a lasting kind is rare. The best management seems to succeed until the prisoner is set at liberty. Then the reformed man finds himself an object of suspicion to orderly people and of special interest and sympathy to the criminal classes. The former will not employ him and the latter will. The result is, in most cases, that he relapses into crime. Perhaps there is some hope that the better classes may improve in their habits; but unless they do, it is well nigh useless to reform criminals in prison. The poor men who come out into an unsympathetic world which does not believe in their reformation, and in which unreformed ex-convicts are numerous enough to keep the general distrust of their class alive, have nothing like a fair chance to begin the world over again. If there were any hope that prisons could be perfected so as to reform all convicts, public prejudice could be broken down; but it is too much to expect that the general public will acquire a habit of distinguishing between good and bad ex-convicts. This is the difficulty for which no device has yet been found which will take it out of the path of humanitarian prison discipline. No faith is more