tricts of great cities on Saturday and
Sunday nights, and by hundreds or thousands every other night. Fathers
and mothers, sisters, sweethearts and neighbors are ignorant of the
ruinous folly of several million American young men. I have counted them
passing one street corner in the center of Chicago's red light
district--red with the heart's blood of mothers, wives and babies--at
the rate of 3,500 an hour. These are the young men of whom we read,
"void of understanding" as the book of Proverbs fitly describes them.
They gather by troops at the harlots' houses and throng the streets of
shame without a blush. They are even ready to give reasons why they
should support these slaughter houses, not knowing that "the dead are
there and her guests are in the depths of hell."

One night I dreamed that I saw a young man stepping carelessly on and
off a railway track, near a curve around which the express train might
come thundering and screaming at any moment. Whether on the track or off
it, the young man was indifferent to danger and wanton in his movements.
But as I looked I saw in my dream, that there was nothing whatever above
his coat collar--he had no head. This explained his recklessness. A
hundred times I have told this dream to crowds of young men, to
illustrate the folly of men who have heads and do not use them--"void of
understanding." We have warned probably one hundred thousand of these
foolish young men.

The Bible is always with us and always foremost. But some who would pay
no regard to an open Bible in the street preacher's hand, instantly give
heed when they see the Revised Statutes of Illinois open at the criminal
code, and they listen carefully to the section which pronounces them
criminal if they patronize an evil resort.

We quote to them the great utterance of Judge Newcomer, spoken before
the Methodist Preachers' Meeting of Chicago, September 17, 1906, when he
said:

THE CRIMES OF YOUNG MEN.

"The great majority of criminals now are young men--an appalling crop of
them year by year. After seven and a half years' experience in the
state's attorney's office, during which I have dealt with six thousand
criminal cases, sending seven to the gallows and hundreds to the
penitentiary and reformatory, I believe that the chief causes of crime
among young men are: 1, Liquor; 2, Lust; 3, Drugs; 4, Bad associates. Of
these, liquor, bad as it is, is not the chief cause of crime among young
men. The chief caus