have been their undoing. There is much of good in them yet; they have started wrongly. Right influences might put them right. The assortment of irresponsible individuals that from now on for nearly an hour claims our attention has joined the procession through the doorway of the Domestic Relations Court. There are wife-deserters and non-supporting fathers. Also among its number can be found a smaller group of sons and daughters who have forgotten or ignored the duty resting upon them to care for their aged parents.

Many of these men, weakened by indulgence in drink or lust, or simply discouraged by unemployment or sickness in the family, have grown insensible to the moral and legal obligations resting upon them for the maintenance of their wives and children or their fathers and mothers, until at last their dependents, driven to the point of desperation, have appealed to the court for relief. Many of these men love their families, but have simply become careless and selfish.

Then follow those whom jealousy of other men, justly grounded or unjustly alleged, has given the excuse for shirking the family responsibilities. Some are honest-faced fellows whom cankering jealousy has driven to desertion as a last resort. Their faces are bitter, disillusioned, sorrowful. They are willing to support their children, but their manhood revolts at harboring an unfaithful wife.

The next troop, a body of substantial-looking business men, are surprising to us. They hardly look like criminals. They are property-owners brought to court by inspectors of the Labor Department and other departments having to do with safety of buildings for factory workers. They are the owners of properties that have by recent legislation required alteration to make them legally safe and fit, or men who in erecting buildings have failed to comply with the law's requirements.

Most of these are honest, well-intentioned citizens with no criminal intent, who often correct the errors before the court finds it necessary to exact punishment.

Following are some who for the most part are honest, respectable-looking folk. They are men of all ages, youths, and women, largely foreigners. They are violators of petty ordinances. They are those who have been found littering up the parks with papers, women who have let their dogs loose in the parks, youths and those of older years who have torn branches from trees or shrubbery.

Others are janitors and janitresses who have violated some street-cleaning or health ordinance, like mixing garbage in the same can with ashes. Here is a troop of footsore Italians and other poor laborers who, in their over-thriftiness, have used street car transfers illegally. Here is a crowd upon whose faces indignation and shamefacedness are rivals. They have been called to court for spitting on the sidewalk or in the subway during a Health Department clean-up campaign, or summoned to court for smoking in the subway. There are many more of these petty offenders. The individual cases are petty and their arrest may seem oppressive. It is, however, a necessary part of the machinery that makes the city clean, safe, and habitable.

Next to follow are the twelve thousand children who have passed through the Children's Court during the year. They are as other children, though on the whole more poorly clad, and a large number of them look underfed. Some appear mentally deficient and dull. There are the newsboy type, the street urchin, the crowds of incipient gangsters, the slouching, listless ones, girls with brazen, devil-may-care faces, others tragically weakall children, but some schooled in hard experience beyond their years. Some are incipient criminals; about half are simply unfortunate in being without proper guardianship or parental supervision. These crowds of children are the early harvest of bad environment, heredity, misfortune, ignorance, criminality, and neglect. As they troop by us we can almost see the weight of the tremendous handicap on their slight shoulders.

A band of about three thousand vagrants follows, in whose numbers are the poor, old, helpless creatures that go mumbling about the streets for money for bread and a ten-cent lodging. Some show marks of former respectability. Then there are the fakers, hardy-looking individuals whose distorted psychology makes it easier for them to beg than to work. A number have false bandages or shamelessly display some infirmity, deformity, or bodily injury for sympathy. There are the unclean-looking

habitual frequenters of the bread-lines and the denizens of lowest depths of degradation and poverty. They beg or p from garbage during the day and resort at night to the fo back rooms of saloons, where they spend what they beg, sleep in chairs in the stale, vile-smelling dark corners with saw covered floors. They haunt the frequenters of the bar like t or roaches, begging drink, picking up cigar stubs, and drinki dregs.

A small body of unnatural creatures attract our attenti We note the ashen face and glassy eye of the drug f the effeminate mannerism of the sex pervert, the fanta movements or the dumb stolidity of the insane. The sight unpleasant, and we turn away.

The beefy, substantial-looking crowd that follows has be brought to court by the Health Department for violat health regulations. A number of them have been found ing food unfit for human consumption. There are wholes and retail merchants and representatives of food corporati used to sharp dealings. Some have deliberately endanger the public health for profit. There are the butchers, the por dealers, the fishmongers, the wholesale and retail fruit men, keepers of small stalls and milk stations, pushcart peddlerscosmopolitan representation of unscrupulous merchants. Inet pany with these are the cheaters in weights and measures, the robbers of the poor-coal dealers, grocers, produce merchan meat dealers, that fatten on petty dishonesty. Their meanre shines out through their beady pig eyes.

The gambling-house keepers, disorderly-hotel proprietors, th runners for disorderly houses, the panderers and creatures the live off the proceeds of prostitution, follow after. They vary type. There are the purple-faced, watery-eyed brutes; the sle bediamonded, plump-faced fawners; and the oily-haired, sall faced creatures-all shameless in their vicious business.

Hour after hour the procession has gone on through day into night until dawn is breaking. As the last of the file c men winds past, the tired mind fancifully pictures these cra tures as the many-sided personalities of vice slinking a before the light of day. But the procession does not end her

Down the street, emerging out of the shady mists of lifti darkness, come the ranks of the women offenders. There are the painted and befeathered women of the streets and keepers disorderly resorts, insolent in their display of shamelessness.

The habitually drunken women in their train are as revolti as they are pitiable. Some are ravingly delirious, some 2 repulsive in their filthy unkemptness, others are semi-respectate There are women and girls of low mentality, the feeble-minde with little moral responsibility.

At the end are the girls and young women who have fal for the first time. There are the headstrong and willful, the foolish and easily led-girls that should be saved from th own destruction. There are the unfortunate, the ignorant, the, pinched by poverty, that need protection and help.

In our imagination we have pictured as in a procession t criminals, petty offenders, and youthful delinquents that an ally filter through New York's criminal courts. We might p ture them again as a segregated community-a city gone wrot for if they were all segregated in one place they would ma a community as large as that of the third largest city of Ne York State.

But they are not segregated. They are a city within a city here in our great metropolis.

Their lives are closely interwoven with the lives of other Their wrong-doings, their offendings, their crimes, may affe the lives and property of all or any of us. In the marvelous varied and complex waves of influence they have their partinfinitely hard to trace, but ever present and potent.

In every large city there is this same procession, this sam forgotten army of the less fortunate, straggling through the courts. The difference between New York and most other Amer ican cities is that in New York some one has not only thought of them, but has intelligently tried to have them treated as human beings should be treated.

The Charity Organization Society of New York City was the first to crystallize these thoughts of helpfulness, of compassio and sympathy, into action. First, it initiated a legislative inves tigation into the conditions surrounding the treatment of these

Fortunates, and later formed a permanent committee to study ditions and change procedure and method of handling to best serve and rehabilitate the human material daily brought to - bar of justice in these courts.

This Committee on Criminal Courts, as it is called, is unique philanthropic endeavor.

Seven years have passed since it was originally formed. The anges that have taken place in that time at the initiation of 3 Committee with the help and co-operation of the city horities have come so logically and so sensibly that only when compare that which was with that which is do we get a true ture of what has been accomplished.

Previous to the time the legislative commission known as the ge Commission was formed, the magistrates' courts or police rts, before which all offenders must be brought either for al disposition in case of petty offenses or to be held for igher court in the case of more serious offenses, had been e Topsy. They just grew. The old justice of the peace arts fitted to rural districts had been multiplied in a patchrk way to meet the needs of a great city.

These courts, scattered throughout the city, were, in the main, undisputed preserves of corrupt politicians. Under the cover public indifference the poor, the unjustly accused, the unforhate, the weak and frightened, were shamefully exploited. The shyster lawyer, hand in glove with the clerks and the lice attendants, wrung from the distracted inmates of the tention pen the last dollar they possessed. In some instances eward politician went over the calendar each morning to signate those who were to be protected by his benign favor. The general atmosphere of the court-room was that of vulgar, rrupt oppression. The beefy policemen assigned to sinecure urt jobs through influence intimidated the respectable citizen, e timid, the ignorant, and the criminal with the same rude civility.

The trials were shameful in their lack of dignity and fairess. Often the accused was an entire outsider to the whole proeding, being unable to hear what was said against him, and ot given opportunity to say anything in his own defense. The courts were wretchedly housed in miserable and genery very noisy quarters.

There were no adequate records kept, no means of determing the old from the new offenders. The probation officers ere policemen with scarcely a notion of what the word proba

on meant.

Into these crowded, unwholesome courts every morning were awn, as in a vast net hauled from the depth of the underorld, the prostitute, the thug, the drunk, the pickpocket, the nderer, and their like. Together with these were herded the por, ignorant, unfortunate violators of petty ordinances, the isguided first offenders, the unjustly accused, the respectable izens, the poor forlorn women with their children seeking dress from deserting husbands, young, wayward, and unfornate girls and boys over sixteen years of age.

It was an outrage to respectable people, a shameful wrong the unfortunate and the ignorant, and general injustice and fairness to all.

To correct these evils the Page Commission drafted legislaon which it submitted with its report to the Legislature. This roposed legislation became law, and provided the framework or the organization and administration of these courts along lightened, scientific, and humanitarian principles. High-minded and zealous officials, with an earnestness and a ublic spirit too seldom found in American municipal affairs, orked intelligently and untiringly for the improvement of hings. They were given the support of public-spirited citizens the organized efforts of the Committee on Criminal Courts, ith a staff of paid experts. In fact, this Committee often ecame the leader in the study of conditions and the plans for mprovement.

As the result of the concerted endeavor of all, in marked ontrast to the former corrupt conditions, the inferior criminal ourts of New York are now conducted with a dignity and mpressiveness equal to that of the highest court in the State. The shyster lawyer is no longer a favored hanger-on. The ulgar police attendant has been replaced by courteous, intellient civilian attendants selected by civil service examinations.

The courts are better housed, and there is an atmosphere of decorum that speaks volumes to the foreigners who often get their only conception of our institutions through them.

Probation is being developed as one of the most effective means of reform. Civilian officers selected by careful civil service tests use their authority in a kindly, helpful way. They are the good Samaritans of the court, seeking by kindly guid ance to bring back to self-respect and usefulness those who by ignorance, willfulness, or misfortune have fallen into the hands of the law.

By use of the finger-print records and the field investigations by the Probation Department the court is enabled to become as wise as a serpent in the disposition of the hardened criminal, and helpful and kindly in the case of the erring and unfortunate first offender.

Comparative figures showing the percentage of each class of offenders discharged, fined, and sent to prison by each of the forty magistrates sitting in rotation in the various courts are compiled and published each year. These figures show great diversity of treatment of the same classes of offenders by the different judges. Comparison from year to year enables each judge to measure up his work with that of his colleagues. By this means personal eccentricities of magistrates are influencing their decisions less and an approach to a flexible standard of justice in these inferior courts is being attained.

Special courts known as Courts of Domestic Relations have been established to give relief to poor wives and children by compelling support from deserting and non-supporting husbands and fathers. The Children's Courts have been established, entirely separate from adult courts, with a large staff of probation officers, as the most effective means of reformation in bringing the children back to normal living in the community.

Other special courts have been organized to give expert treatment to special classes of offenders.

The Women's Night Court has been developed as the socialevil court and a salvage station to retrieve women and girls from lives of shame. A Traffic Court has been organized to hear all violations of traffic laws and ordinances. A Municipal Term Court has been established to hear all cases in which a State or a City Department is the complainant.

The use of the summons has been widely extended, so that now, with the exception of cases of grave moral turpitude, persons are handed a court summons instead of being summarily arrested and locked up.

Double trials, with the incident hardship to the poor unable to get bail and with waste of citizens' and officials' time, have been eliminated in thousands of cases of petty misdemeanors by giving the magistrates broader power to dispose of them summarily.

Central bureaus of records have been established. The work of the courts has been centralized and co-ordinated under a board of magistrates and boards of justices for the Courts of Special Sessions and Children's Courts, with a chief magistrate and chief justices as executive heads of departments.

Much has been said by American and foreign commentators on the corruption and inefficiency of our municipal governments. The cause of this lies in our public indifference and lack of interest in municipal affairs.

The story of the improvement in the New York inferior criminal courts can be the story of any department of any American city's government if a group of intelligent, publicspirited citizens put their shoulders to the wheel, arouse public sentiment, study conditions, and devise means of improvement. The Charity Organization Society, under the leadership of Lawrence Veiller, did this for New York. The Russell Sage Foundation furnished the funds for expert service.

Other men and other organizations can do similar services for other communities. Some communities are making a beginning in their courts. Others should follow until our land is rid of the old evil-smelling police courts with the corrupt political boss, the weak, rubber-stamp judge, the bullying attendant, corrupt clerks, and shyster lawyers. Our courts of the poor would then be clothed with a dignity, kindliness, and intelligence that would restore to lives of usefulness many of the members of that vast forgotten army of the misguided unfortunate and erring petty offenders against our laws.

THE NEW BOOK

This department will include descriptive notes, or without brief comments, about books re by The Outlook. Many of the important books: have more extended and critical treatment

FICTION

Foe-Farrell. By "Q" (Quiller Couch). T Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch has not many a day written a story which hos the attention so closely as this. It is esse tially a study of hate and of the transis mation of character by hate. Thus, in: way, Foe becomes Farrell and Farrell b comes Foe. The man who hates his ene so intensely that he refrains from man solely because he wants to do someth worse invents a sort of psychological ture which is cruel, even though it be v deserved. But his methods react on self, and his standards of life and cal weaken, while the other man, vulgar, ish, and dishonorable, attains a ceru amount of dignity and character under suffering.

Sir Arthur takes an impish delight: violating every law of the unities of struction. The machinery of the tale is: sort of "Arabian Nights" scheme, unc which a British colonel in the trenches. reminded of a true story by a scrap newspaper he takes up, and relates it, à every night, in the dugout. This is a capi scheme, but Sir Arthur, having invented: practically forgets it At one time the st takes a purely farcical turn, and that t of a wild night spent in avoiding the po is preposterous-but it is also fun Finally the author settles down to his ra purpose. In his analysis of the hu heart there are strains of subtlety skill which remind one of Stevenson in t Master of Ballantrae."

Mashi, and Other Stories. By Sir Rabini nath Tagore. Translated from the Orig Bengali by Various Writers. The Mac Company, New York. $1.50.

Promise of Air (The). By Algernon Bla

wood. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $13 This is not as fantastical as many Mr. Blackwood's remarkable stories. ( the other hand, it does not take hold oft imagination as strongly as some of: predecessors. It preaches in a delicate fanciful way the Gospel of the Air in t sense that human consciousness and ef should be free and light and have a certa birdlike detachment from the heavy, pr tical, earthly affairs. Like everything M Blackwood has written, the manner & style are admirable.

Soldiers Both. A Novel. By Gustave Guiche Translated by Frederic Taber Cooper. Frederick A. Stokes Company, New Tat $1.40

Way Out The By Emerson Hough, Mastras D. Appleton & Co. New York. $1.50 Mr. Hough's new story deals with mountain feud in Kentucky, and shows t effect of the war call on the mountaires who abandon their old enmities in patri endeavor for America.