For some years past we have observed that hundreds—possibly thousands of unskilled laborers, many of whom are in the building trades, reach the dead-line about forty years of age. If they have lived intemperate lives and happen to be single or widowers, when winter sets in and they find themselves out of employment the only thing they can do is to apply to the Magistrate and ask to be committed to the workhouse as vagrants for three or six months. And many of them, after they have finished their time and secured their liberty are no better off, and painfully return to the Police Court for the twentieth time perhaps, to be the city’s ward in the workhouse. What else can they do, or die on the street from sheer starvation? This raises the question, what shall be done with our army of “tramp rounders” and incorrigibles? To continue to send them back to prison or workhouse for a few months is simply to prolong the evil and their own misery. Criminals are jailed and released in this county every year by the thousand, only to oscillate between prison and a brief season of liberty. When they leave the place of their confinement they seldom bid their keepers good-bye, only “au revoir.” When they come among their fellow men again they are not better. They have spent months or years in prison in idleness, and surrounded by vile companions, and they are no better. But why should they be allowed to endanger the life and liberty of society any longer after the experiences of the past? How long we can maintain such a system it is difficult to say. At any rate, the cost of maintaining our prisons is becoming enormous and the problem of what shall be done with “rounders” and hardened criminals, that prey upon society as soon as they get out of prison should be solved from a business and moral standpoint. We believe the time has come for this whole matter to be thoroughly sifted and a remedy found that will be commensurate with the present needs. The aim should be the moral reformation of the criminal; nor do we think any remedy will be adequate that falls short of this object. But in working for this end we must not exalt criminals into objects of popular pity. A few years ago a committee of the National Prison Association examined this whole subject and reported that every habitual criminal at large cost the State by robbery and spoilation no less than sixteen hundred dollars annually, and if in this State alone the taxpayers could be relieved of this burden it would be a saving of six million dollars a year. Unfortunately New York and vicinity have a large army of unemployed at all seasons of the year—even when we are blessed with what is called “good times.” This is especially true of multitudes who are employed in the building trades. As a rule, contractors who are excavating and blasting for new buildings can always find twenty times as many laborers as they usually need.