FARMING FOR EX-CRIMINALS.

According to Salvation Army officials of England, there is something about farming which alters the criminal mind. Just what it is they do not profess to know, but they do know from experience that tilling the soil makes a better man of the ex-convict. Land-owners in the suburbs of London have become interested and have sold the Army numbers of small tracts. These tracts, in turn, are rented on easy terms to released prisoners with an arrangement by which the latter are further enabled to buy them outright. Thus far nine hundred men who have worn the stripes have been bettered in this way. So successful, in fact, has the scheme proved that the people of London are actually beginning to see in these farmers a means of supplying a deficient vegetable market—for London, like American cities, is suffering to an extent from the high cost of living.

There is room aplenty in America for farm colonies of ex-convicts. Considering the results obtained in England, the scheme would seem worthy of experiment on a scale sufficient to prove its merit or demerit.