only penitentiary building not used solely for a hospital. She has passed through all the evils of the lessee system and now combines farming and manufacturing. The farms are for the same purpose as those in Alabama and Georgia. Most of the convicts are employed in a large cotton mill. Their labor only is contracted for, the State retaining complete control of them. The management of the convicts is vested in a board and the warden is the chief executive officer.

North Carolina maintains a large penitentiary, conducts manufactures, operates three farms, and leases some convicts. It includes every phase of the Southern methods. The lease system has been gradually abolished, for the same reasons as in other States: it is more profitable to the State to work its own convicts, and they are more humanely treated. The women and less able men are kept within the walls, while the boys and other convicts are on the farms. North Carolina is the only State that still leases or hires convicts to railway companies. There have been few fierce conflicts in this State; it has been a gradual change from the lessee system. In outward form the penitentiary resembles Northern institutions, but its management and discipline are upon a much different basis and are somewhat lax.

With reference to Virginia almost nothing need be said. Her system dates back to the days when mutilation was a common penalty. The white criminals were first confined in the county prisons. She has the oldest prison building, modeled after Thomas Jefferson's ideas. The lease system existed in this State also. Its present method consists of farming and manufactures, which are conducted upon the contract plan, the institution retaining control of the convicts. The main industry is the manufacture of shoes. Virginia combines some of the evils of the old system with the more advanced practises, and presents incongruities that show that tradition and progress are still at war.

It will be seen that all the Southern States have had the lease system, and that all but Florida have abolished it. The State farm is popular, but the States seeking large revenues

still cling to some form of the contract system. It will be seen also that the freeing of the slaves was the cause of the establishment of the lease system, and only the growing away from the slavery ideas is making the more humane changes possible.

The University of Chicago.

FRANCES A. KELLOR.

A CONVERSATION

WITH

ERNEST H. CROSBY

EMBODYING PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS OF

COUNT TOLSTOY AS PHILOSOPHER, PROPHET, AND MAN.

Q. Mr. Crosby, as one of the American pilgrims who have journeyed thousands of miles to far-away Russia in order to see the great apostle of renunciation, and as a student of his works, you are, I think, among the best qualified of our countrymen to speak of Count Tolstoy and intelligently interpret his social and religious views. Hence, I hope you will tell us something of the man and his theories. What were your impressions of Count Tolstoy? We always like to know whether the prophet who bids us seek the heights has himself journeyed along the steep, rugged, and brier-strewn pathway; whether he is consistent; whether he is a doer as well as a teacher of the higher law. Of course, we know that the illustrious author and philosopher has made what the world considers a great sacrifice, but beyond this is he, in his daily life, in his home, and among his humble neighbors, all that we have pictured him from his writings?

A. Count Tolstoy has often been charged with being inconsistent, and I do not suppose that he would claim that he is consistent; but from my own observation when I visited him at his home at Yasnaia Poliana I should say that he is one of the most consistent men in the world. To abolish at once all the distinctions which centuries of rank, privilege, wealth, and education have made between a man and his neighbors was an undertaking of no small difficulty, especially when

his family only agree with him in part. Tolstoy's food and raiment are as simple and inexpensive as those of the peasants around him. He does all the cleaning, sweeping, and chamberwork connected with his own room and person. As far as he can, he has banished all luxury from his house. When I was there, there was not even a rug or carpet on any floor that I saw. With the exception of a few family. portraits, a piano and a guitar, and some shelves of books, there was nothing visible in the house except necessaries. The service at table was simpler than in many an American poor man's house. He was not well during my visit of two days, and I did not see him engaged in manual labor; but it is well known that he does as much of it as his age and health permit. He told me that he preferred plowing to any other manual work. Like the peasants, he was accustomed to lead a horse with a harrow, while plowing with a onehorse plow. A pair of boots made by the Count are exhibited at the Museum at Moscow. They are doubtless better adapted to a museum than to the human foot, but they show the earnestness of his endeavors to cope with the disadvantages of his education as a man without hands or muscles.

The question of consistency recalls Count Tolstoy's advice to me on that subject. "Speak out what you think," he said, "and you will be furnishing weapons against yourself." It is certainly true that criticisms of inconsistency have the effect of making a man redouble his efforts to be consistent.

I think I have said enough to show that Tolstoy approaches so near to absolute consistency that no American would be likely to find fault with him on that score. But this is not true of the Russians. They are, I think, the most logical people in the world. Persuade a Russian that autocracy is a bad thing, and the chances are that he will at once begin to manufacture bombs for the Czar. Convince him that private wealth is wrong, and in half an hour you may find him on the street-corner with his pockets turned inside out, distributing his money to the poor. We Americans are not built upon that plan. We sometimes get new ideas too, and

more or less revolutionary ones at that, but in our prudence we usually think them over for thirty, forty, or fifty years, as the case may be, and death at last relieves us from responsibility. You may remember the story of the Irishman and the parrot. He heard that parrots lived to be two hundred years old; so he bought a young one to see if it was true. Our ideas usually survive us, like the parrot, and we never put them to the test. There are advantages on both sides, in the Russian and in the American system. The American is less likely to go off at half-cock, and the Russian is more likely to make valuable contributions to practical ethics.

In judging Count Tolstoy's consistency we must also remember that he is a non-resistant. So far as he can persuade his wife and children to do away with superfluities, he has his way; but when Madame Tolstoy puts her foot down his very principles require him to yield. This undoubtedly accounts for the piano and the guitar. I have sometimes thought that it would be a good plan to have one of the parties a non-resistant in all marriages. As far as my observation goes, it would usually be the husband.

But on one point Count Tolstoy is very strong. No inconsistency on the part of any man, no apparent inability to live up to his ideals, should induce him to modify those ideals or weaken his principles an iota. Opportunism, compromise, even if they find their way into your life,—must leave your principles intact. He gives as an illustration the case of the straight line. No one has ever drawn a straight line. It does not exist in Nature; yet I must not for this reason alter by a hair's breadth my idea of a straight line. It is true that I shall always draw crooked lines; yet by sticking to my ideal I may approximate the standard more and more. But if in despair I make a crooked line my ideal, there is no hope for me.

The question of consistency is in the last resort one of sincerity, and no one can see Count Tolstoy, as I have seen him, without being convinced of that. The whole man is in his frank, serious, kindly face. Although he is dressed like