The Massachusetts scheme promises well, so far as it goes. The trouble with it is that in this climate a farm provides work for only a small part of the year. From November to March other work would have to be found for inmates, and up to this time society has failed to agree upon any that would be satisfactory. Persons interested in charities and prison reforms are indorsing a plan for "tramp colonies," "forced colonies" and "free colonies." Into the one put criminals, or incurable tramps who are unwilling to work. The other would contain tramps who are unable to find work, neuropaths, cripples and those who are judged to be curable. Both kinds of colonies would be strictly agricultural, and their products would pay all expenses of operation and relieve the country of the enormous sums now required to be spent. But why confine this plan, admirable and satisfactory as it is, to tramps? Why not extend it so as to include criminals? Criminals cost honest taxpayers millions of dollars every year. Why not reorganize a system of confinement in such a way as to compel criminals to support themselves? But financial relief is not the only advantage. If habitual criminals--that is to say, criminals who have served two terms in the penitentiary, and then have committed another crime--were placed in a penal colony, remote from society and kept there for life, the moral tone of the country would at once be raised. The bad example of such men, which leads youths into crime, would be removed. The knowledge that there was no escape, that return was impossible, once an offender was sent to the penal colony, would deter many would-be criminals. The possibility that hardened criminals might propagate themselves would end. The penal colony is the one rational solution of the crime problem, which becomes more difficult and menacing each year. It will be adopted, sooner or later. THE YOUNG CRIMINAL HOW HE IS BRED IN CHICAGO. Chicago Raises Its Own Criminals. There is material in this subject for earnest thought. Men under twenty-five are responsible for 75 per cent of crimes committed in Chicago, and 50 per cent of robberies and burglaries are done by boys under nineteen. If that is true, then the idea many people have had that crimes in this city are mostly committed by a roving army of criminals, alien to Chicago and attracted hither by one cause or another, must be abandoned. If it is true, then Chicago itself is responsible for most crimes committed here. The men who are guilty have grown up in this environment, which has given them the evil impetus under which they act.