The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1909-10-27
FROH OTHER PENS
HOME MISSIONARY wORK.

Wonder how many of the good peo-
pie in this country have taken into
serious consideration the necessity for
home missionary work, especially in
cities. We do not mean religious
work alone; but looking at it purely
from that standpoint, it may be SER
iously doubted If men and women may
be permanently benefited spiritually
acter that throttles their better ma
ture.
It may be doubted il it is possible
to make good citizen of one whose
surroundings are the antipodes OF
sanitation and of cleanliness. 1t was
John Wesley who said that "cleanli-
ness is next to goodness" and he
might have put it stronger, none too
strong, had he said that without clean
Illness there can be no goodness.
The good people OF no city can do
anything much better for themselves
and for those who are less fortunate
than to look to the betterment Of their
neighbors of the slums. Get rid OF
the slums by teaching the inhabitants
thereof to renovate them and to sur
round themselves with environment
that will impress the children with the
pleasures of home.-Knoxville Journal
and Tribune.
WALKING RAILROAD TRACKS.
To the average American in country
districts, the railroad is additionally a
convenient highway for the pedestrian.
This is one reason why the present eff
forts of railway managers to check
trespassing on their property meet
with opposition. Another is that farm
ers fear that the driving of tramps
from the railroad lines will simply let
them loose upon the country roads. 1t
vas in this sense that a Grange in
Blair county, Pennsylvania, recently
passed resolutions of protest against
the plan to prevent Migrants from
travelling along the track to reach
the large eities5' Yet the danger to
life and limb from allowing free ac-
cess to the right of way, though most
states have laws against 1t, is coming
more widely to be felt. Nearly $4,000
trespassefs were killed on American
railways during the past ten years, and
as many more injured. Here we have
one explanation of the black showing
which our railroads make, as compar-
ed with those in England and on the
continent. There walking along the
rails is sternlv forbidden and almost
unknown. Even our free-and-easy and
devil-may-eare people are waking up
to the fact that they, too, will have to
abandon the custom. Though dear to
the liberty loving it is deadly to them,
New York Evening Post.
AN IDEAL THAT FAILED.
A member of the commission APP
pointed by this government to lnVestf-
gate conditions in Liheria, following
the protest of the negro public on the
west coast of Africa that Franee and
Great Britain We're encroaching upon
its territory, gives most discouraging
report. It has long been recognized
that this experiment in repatriating
the negro in Africa, undertaken by tie
National Colonization society in 1916,
had been a dispiriting failure, SO far as
any approach to realizing the ideals OF
its promoters. But the accounts now
given of the actual present day cendi-
tions are of interest.
OF the 1000, 900 inhabitants about 40
900 are said to be descendants of civil
ICED negroes, the others being natives
The minority, it is said, has neither
been absorbed by the majority, nor has
it Influenced to any considerable extent
the majority. The natives remain IN
the interior about as they We're, and the
| 10000 subsist around the coast. The as
sertion that the result of the expert
ment has been a combination of white
and negro vices is denied: but there
has been practically no progress Elk
ploitation of the country's resources
has been confined to primitive trading
| in the natural products. little or no at
tempt being reported Of any other IN
dustry.-Pittsbllrg Dispatch.