Victor Hugo says, “He who opens a school closes a prison,” which is true if that school teaches the morality of the ten commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, but not otherwise. In Great Britain in 1880 the number of pupils in the schools increased to 3,895,324, while the prisoners numbered only 30,719; but the greatest decrease in the prison population is seen in 1899, when the school pupils numbered 5,601,249, while the prison population fell to 17,687. That is to say, the prison population decreased 38 per cent. while the population of the country increased 11 per cent. Notwithstanding all that may be said, it is our humble opinion after years of observation that criminality is largely the result of ignorance, idleness and indolent habits. Since I have been in the habit of visiting reformatories I have often thought of Isaac Watts’ philosophy, “Satan finds mischief for idle hands to do.” It is the young loafer and idler who is around the streets night and day “killing time” that gets into trouble. Whenever parents rear their children in idleness they simply sap the foundations of personal character and fit them for criminality. A report of the Elmira Reformatory shows that of thousands of persons who were received into that institution since it was first opened over 83 per cent. are classed as laborers and idlers. For more than fifty years it has been said that a greater advance in education would reduce crime to a large extent. But this is only true in part. Secular education does not reduce murder, forgery, grand larceny, embezzlements and other heinous crimes. There must be moral education. Indeed, such offences are usually the work of well educated men. Those best able to judge will not deny that the most dangerous person to-day is the educated crook. He plans crime scientifically, at the same time exercising the greatest care. Indeed, he makes it a business, and, as is sometimes said, goes into it for all he is worth. The college graduate behind the bars is becoming very common. At the present time nearly all of our large prisons have doctors, lawyers, editors, teachers and others of keen minds and large professional experience. Some of the articles found in the Star of Hope, the State Prison paper, show a wide range of reading, and could only be written by scholars. And at the lowest calculation, most of our large prisons contain from five to ten per cent. of college graduates, and the number is rapidly increasing. One of the most scholarly men that I ever knew came from a little town in Massachusetts. He was so exceptionally bright that had he put his native talents and energies into an effort to keep the Ten Commandments, instead of aiming continually to plunder his fellow men, he might have been a Morgan or a Rockefeller. The man of whom I speak began life as a school teacher, then a clerk in the office of a country attorney. After this he became a full-fledged lawyer, and drifted into politics.