X.

Juvenile Delinquents.

PRACTICAL THOUGHTS ON REFORMATORY

WORK.

BY JAMES ALLISON,

SUPERINTENDENT CINCINNATI HOUSE OF REFUGE, CHAIRMAN COMMITTEE JUVENILE DELINQUENTS.

Every human being is born into the world a dependent creature. It has no power of self-support. For all those things which in a general phrase we call the necessaries of life, it must be sustained by some power wholly without itself. This fact in the relation of the creature to the world about it is not a crime, it is not a fault: it is simply a condition. It is a condition which will certainly continue for years, and which may continue for a lifetime. The relationships which nature has established make incumbent on those who brought this life into the world to provide for its support and maintenance during the earlier days of its life, or indeed during its entire life, if no other provision for its care is developed or discovered.

The child is dependent. Usually, its dependence rests upon a firm and secure support. The forethought and the toil of the parent provide for the needs of its offspring until that offspring is able to sustain all the responsibilities of its existence, and the dependent becomes independent. The independent creature is self-supporting: the dependent must be sustained by some power without himself. Like the two arcs of a quadrant, one is the complement of the other. The dependent condition plus the independent condition makes up the unity of life.

If, now, the power of support which sustained the dependency be removed or destroyed, the creature becomes, in the same ratio of

interference, destitute. The unsustained dependent person is the destitute person.

As there are degrees of dependency, there may be degrees of destitution. One may be destitute of proper and sufficient food, or of proper clothing, or of an appropriate shelter, or, when all the needful elements, with all the "necessaries of life," are deficient, the creature appears within the reach of our searching charities totally destitute. Total destitution may be, however, like total dependency, only a condition, not a crime. It is, in fact, only an unsatisfied dependency. Many a man has found himself in a state of temporary destitution, without food, in scanty clothing, and with nowhere to lay his head, on the morning after a destructive conflagration.

The destitution which we have referred to is a physical condition. The condition of homelessness involves something more. A person may have sufficient clothing, enough of wholesome food, a couch to lie upon, and a roof to cover him, and still be homeless. He may be, for example, not in a home, but in a prison. The true home is a moral atmosphere: homelessness is the lack of such a surrounding influence. It is not enough to say to the homeless, Be ye warmed and filled. The home life is for the soul, as food, raiment, and shelter are for the body.

Thus far we have spoken of conditions which lie without the man, affecting him deeply, seriously, but objectively.

But we are impressed with the conviction that, as the child grows up, there grows up within him, generously and abundantly, if he has been well and wisely trained, and in some degree, scantily and feebly developed it may be in those who have little training, and that perhaps of the worst, a moral activity. In each there grow the germs of truth, the knowledge of right, and the dictates and judgments of conscience. These elements of life and thought are subjective, in the child and of him. They exist in the soul of the well-developed child, and we insist that they ought to be present in the souls of even such as have opened their eyes and ears to the most debasing influences. If, searching for the germs of truth and right and justice in the soul of the child, we find them not, we count him as vile, degraded, untrustworthy. More than that, we insist that he is intrinsically vicious or criminal.

Out of our experience in the world about us, out of our inner consciousness of the life within us, assisted, many will insist, by a revela

tion made to us from a more exalted instructor, we frame an ideal of life, character, and manifestation. This ideal involves all the elements which we count worthy, such as honesty, fidelity, obedi ence, etc.; and it excludes all those which we reject as unworthy, such as meanness, mendacity, disrespect of the rights of others, etc. One character we approve as rounded, complete in its tendencies, if not yet in its full development. The other character we judge to be deficient in its elements and dangerous in its tendencies. deficient phase of character develops, it becomes vicious. Vice is the subjective quality of the creature. Destitution is the objective condition which environs him. The destitute person is not necessarily vicious, nor are vicious persons found only among the destitute. Destitution may furnish the soil in which vice generates and thrives, while vicious lives may find their largest opportunities amid the most generous surroundings.

When children and youth, whether destitute or the opposite, have developed in themselves so much of a vicious nature as manifests itself in overt acts contrary to the laws which the experience of man has found to be needful for the harmonious and safe life of the world in which they move, we characterize them as delinquent. In the absence of good elements and instinct in the heart of the child, we say he is deficient; in the presence of evil elements in his being, we say he is vicious; when inherent vice manifests itself in unlawful actions, we say he is delinquent.

The delinquent youth may have committed an overt forbidden act. Nevertheless, delinquency is not certainly an evidence of a thoroughly vicious nature or habit. The forbidden act may have been committed through inadvertence or inexperience or forgetfulness. Delinquency is dangerous: it may ripen into crime, yet it has not necessarily reached the criminal stage. A quickened pulse is not always an evidence of fever.

Society finds these various classes of children and youth committed to its care,— nay, thrust into the support of its protecting arms. Its great maternal heart yearns over these destitute, homeless waifs. It must gather them into its fold, it must nurture, train, and discipline them, furnishing all of the home influences of nature's own familiar ties of birth and blood. It may not always succeed; but it must strive to keep the young lives from the evil, and the streams of their existence ever flowing sweet and pure.

The work of providing homes for the homeless and support for the destitute is comparatively easy. Loving hearts may do this. What for the delinquent? The question relates not so much to his destitution or his dependency, or to his objective condition, as to his own internal condition, his subjective character. There needs here a most careful diagnosis, an investigation which may take some time to complete. What is the matter with the youth? Is he essentially bad at heart, is he vicious, or is he only the victim of outward conditions, of untrained tendencies, of harmful opportunities? But, whether he is one thing or the other, the main elements of his salvation are a strong arm ruled by a wise head and guided by a loving heart, and occupation.

The régime for older, more experienced, more vicious examples must be left for discussion in another field.

The causes of destitution and delinquency among children must be sought chiefly in their dependency. The rule is that the child. is dependent upon his parents. If they are industrious, honest, and temperate, their own support and that of their children are normally secured. But these conditions do not always obtain. Instead there may be in the parents (1) intemperance, (2) misfortune, (3) death, (4) crime. In one or another of these ways the protective power of the parents becomes destroyed, and destitution follows. It is usual in this list to put intemperance first. A more thorough analysis would enumerate the causes of intemperance. The elements of social science are too complex to be covered in a single phrase. Causes react upon each other here as in physics. A slatternly wife and a drinking husband may present a case in which it may be difficult to distinguish between cause and effect. The only commodity which an immense proportion of our people have for sale is their labor. In what proportion of cases is this labor wisely disposed of? In what proportion is it, directly or indirectly, wastefully squandered? It may be that the speaker and his hearers would not agree if this question were opened and fully discussed, for in reasoning upon it many are influenced by sentiment rather than by argument, yet it might be well for both to consider it very thoroughly.

Using misfortune in its widest sense,- for drunkenness is misfortune, and crime is misfortune, it is quite certain that the destitution of children is caused generally, almost universally, by the

misfortune of the parents. The saddest commentary upon the foolish misbehavior of parents comes from the terrible consequences entailed upon the children.

The delinquency of children looks to other causes or comes through other channels. The child is not necessarily delinquent because it is destitute, although destitution is often the parent of delinquency. Delinquency is not confined to poor and destitute families. Vicious children sometimes appear in wealthy families, bringing gray hairs in sorrow to the grave. As previously suggested, the cause of such sad sequences may not always be expressed in a sentence. In many instances it may be traced to waywardness, selfishness, and disobedience, inculcated very early in life by fond parents who enjoyed the "smartness" of their offspring in their earlier days, and who recognized in a lively temper a most valuable element in character, forgetting that "he that ruleth his temper is better than he that taketh a city."

What are the remedies? One remedy is found in a large common home, known as a reformatory. And now the question arises, Should open dormitories or closed sleeping-rooms be used in reformatories for delinquent children?

In the family the tendency is toward separation. Each person has his apartment, or not more than two occupy the same room or sleep on the same couch. Benefits to character grow out of the measure of seclusion thus afforded. There is more of self-poise, perhaps more of self-assertion. The person learns to stand alone. His individuality is cultivated. It is possible, indeed, that such qualities may be too largely developed and become blemishes rather than benefits.

For adolescents it is doubtless better that each one shall have to himself a separate apartment, where, in general, he may be free from observation, and probably within the seclusion of a closed door. His own manly self-respect is developed thereby. It is something to every one to have a place, temporary and narrow though it may be, which he can claim as his own.

But the dependency of childhood enters into his hours of rest and sleep. Every kind parent maintains a watchfulness over his sleeping child. The tender mother sees that the child is covered from the chill night air, listens for sounds of restlessness or illness, and,