Thus the tramp cuts no figure as a railroad problem, much less menace, abroad. But with us it is the fact that railroads representing more than half the total mileage operated in the United States and Canada testify almost without exception to depredation, thieving, injuries, deaths, accidents to passengers or rolling stock, enormous aggregate costs to railroads or society, caused by the habitual illegal use of the railroads by vagrants. The number of "trespassers," from one-half to three-quarters of whom were vagrants, who are killed annually on American railroads exceeds the combined total of passengers and trainmen killed annually. Within four years 23,964 trespassers were killed and 25,236 injured, thus furnishing the enormous total of 49,200 casualties, with all the cost they involve. Only by the co-operation of the railroads with one another and of towns and cities with the railroads can this waste of life and property and this increasing peril to the safety of the traveling public be prevented. Much more stringent laws will have to be both enacted and enforced to prevent the trespassing, which puts a premium on vagrancy. One of the best effects of the strict prevention of free riding on railroads would be to keep boys from going "on the road" and becoming tramps. It is simply amazing to find little fellows of from 12 to 17 years of age, who have never been farther away from home than to some outlying freight yards, disappearing for several weeks and returning from Kansas City, or Cleveland, Omaha or New York, having all alone, or with a companion or two, beaten their way and lived by their wits while traveling half way across the continent. Once the excitement of the adventure is enjoyed, the hardship it costs does not seem so hard to them as the monotony of home or shop. The discipline of the United States navy has been the only regulation of this wandering habit which the writer has known to be successful. But the habit is more easily prevented than regulated. Massachusetts has taken the most advanced legislative action of all the states to this end. The Wabash and the New York Central railways suggest fine and imprisonment for trespassing upon railway tracks or rolling stock. BETTER LODGINGS FOR HOMELESS MEN.