Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-08-30
WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH THEMr

1t appears to be the general opinion, that,
in restoring the Reform School for Boys, some
notifications of the old system must be intro
duced. Those who say the institution has
proved failure, do not speak carefully What
they say is either more than they mean or
more than they ought to mean. The idea
which gave existence to the Reform School
was born Of reason and right feeling. Not in
Massachusetts will it he treated as sentiment
tai fancy or folly incapable of outlasting
pleasant dream. 1t has not failed; it can not
fail ; and it will not in our day be exchanged
for any barbaric notion or usage of deficient
civilization. If the first attempt to realize it
has not been perfect success, if the system
adopted was defective, if in this case, as in so
many others, we could not escape the neces-
sity of learning from experience, there is no.
thing in all this that should surprise or dis
courage us. We shall try again in wiser
way, and with better results.
Most of us will admit now, that the estab-
hshment of the State Reform School was not
managed as perfectly as it might have been;
that the system adopted for introducing boys
to the institution, as well as for managing
them when there, was not the wisest; and
that in several respects there was failure to
realize the purpose of the school, if not ten
dency to thwart it. We did much better in
establishing the Industrial School for Girls;
and it is not likely that we shall fail to make
the restored institution for boys great i'm
mr. on ire Az
system of classification seems indispensable;
a different mode of conducting the daily life
of the boys,-something more nearly APP
preaching the family arrangement,-is of the
first Importance; and, in some way, provision
must be made to exclude those whose proper
place is, not the Reform School, but the House
of Correction. Some boys of fifteen and six
teen are really older and more incorrigible
in crime than some transgressors of fifty; and
this is one of the facts which can not be safely
disregarded. Boys of that description should
not be sent to the institution; and when any
such are discovered among its inmates, there
should be some ready method of dismissing
them from it to more appropriate quarters.
The purpose of Reform School is to be-
friend friendless children, to interfere between
them and the perils of their position in society,
to take in hand the neglected who have none
to manage them properly, and, by means of
friendly associations and wholesome discipline,
to rescue them from the ways to crime and ru-
in. 1t should not be treated as one of our
penal institutons,-as a mere state prison for
boys. 1t should not be thought of in this way,
for its meaning is entirely different and what
ever contributes to give it this look should be
avoided with the most sedulous care. 1t is in
tended, not for hardened adopts in viainy,
but for boys who are as yet novices in crimi-
nal behavior, and who may be controlled and
led Alright by the agencies of wisdom and kind
ness And here is the reason why five hun
dred or six hundred boys should not be herded
together in one company, and why it would be
30 much better to have for them system
of separate households, with more domestic
and homelike arrangements, like that adopted
for the girls at Lancaster. They should be
made as far as possible to feel in the institution
that they are at home among those who care
wise gentleness and love, SO there is no infiu-
ence so magical in the heart of an outcast or
friendess child, as the feeling that is awakened
on finding himself in the hands of those who
truly sympathise with his feelings, and seek
to do him good. Let this truth shape our sys-
tenn of management and we need not be appre-
hensiye of its failure.
The Boston Daily Advertiser proposes
scheme which seems to us to forget entirely
what needs to be done. That journal favors
the establishment of a state nautical school as
part of the next arrangement; the school to
be organized afloat, and supported at the ex
pense Of the state. The Advertiser thinks
that such school would diminish the diff
West6orolgn RI The boys lately kept at
tuition to manufacture seamen, is not new in
Boston. 1t has been heard of before, several
times, and once it made some progress in a
legislative committee An institution of the
kind, established by means appropriate to its
purpose, and provided in a proper way with
suitable pupils, would very likely have good
uses 1t might render an excellent service to
the merchant marine of Boston. But we see
no reason why the state treasury should sup
port it; and, certainly, there are very grave
reasons against making it a part of our Re-
form School for boys. When it is found i'm
possible to manage the matter properly with
out the aid of "prison ship" we may as well
give it up altogether.
To diminish the difficulty" of the case is
not precisely what we need; at any rate, it is
not all we need. Our business with the Re-
form School system is to make it as successful
and admirable as possible; and, surely-while
we are considering with much solicitude how
we can make it more humane and friendly,
and give it methods and results more like
what we see in the wisely managed family
none OF us should be in mood to listen with
much favor to this suggestion of escape from
difficulty by means of a nautical school. If
the old quarters in Westborough were mis-
take,-if the facilities and conditions there
afforded neither accommodations nor scope
for that more domestic and family-like
organization which seems 80 necessary,
how would it be with prison ship moored
in Boston harbor, and ruled by such men and
such methods of discipline as are usually found
shipboard7 To the boys imprisoned in that
ship, it would presently seem more like hell
than home. No, we cannot accept this
scheme; we cannot listen to it, for it is an Of
tense to all the aims and sympathies by which
Rafs. Ali. Ill.