Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-03-30
THE BOYS AND GIRLS AID SOCIETY

THE BOYS AND GIRLS AID SOCIETY.
The Boys and Girls Aid Society of
San Francisco, through its official medium,
has expressed the desire to be aided to ac-
with some hundreds of acres at command,
that it may better teach its wards the true
value of labor, and instruct them in the
art of tilling the soil, and thus find for
them constant employment as a means to
their proper training for useful maturity
The late Charles Croker. with his ac-
customed liberality, provided for the Soci-
ty the handsome Home it now occupies,
and which is ample as central gathering
depot and temporary abiding place. For
the scheme of the Society is not to retain
its wards in an institution, but to sever
them from their old relations and condi-
tons by finding for them permanent
homes where they may have careful
parental guardianship and instruction in
useful industry. 1t is a right plan and
far superior to that the State has adopted
of providing an institution for homeless
children likely to develop, if uncared for,
into criminals. This is the view the
RECORD UNION has maintained these
many years, and that it has never seen
any reason for modifying. 1t has deemed
the plan of the Boys and Girls Aid Soci-
ETY. the proper system for the reclamation
of hayward children. Under it there is
no institutional uniform or badge to at
tach stigma to the ward of the Society.
On the contrary, the child is removed as
soon as the bent of its disposition can be
ascertained, to distant point, and secured
home under some kindly family, where
| it grows up without the world knowing
that it was ever considered public ward
| or likely to drift into the criminal class
| Massachusetts, proceeds upon this plan
and she has failed in less than three per
cent of all the cases she has taken in hand
But it is not always possible to secure
homes for the children as soon as desira.
BILE, and the Society is therefore anxious
| to procure some 600 acres of land where it
can keep the children while attached to
the central establishment and engage them
in useful employment away from the in.
f1uences of town and city life. The idea
is that if the boys can be placed in har.
mony with the great productive industries
of the State, viticulture, horticulture and
all the phases Of agriculture, they will be
the more readily received in the homes OF
the people and be the more useful as aids
to farmers and fruit-growers. Mr.. James
c. Kemp, writing upon this subject in
"Child and State" says,
| With the land in question the Society would
! be able to train and qualify the boys so thai
| twenty-five homes could be obtained where one
| can now, and with an almost absolute certainty
| of their giving satisfaction.
The boys are not, as a rule. really bad but
| they are frightfully ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS as a com
| paratively good man would soon become if un
| employed and without home for year OF
/ two.
! Such a farm should have the same sort OF g
| fence around it that other farms have, and the
boys should be held there by self-interest each
| having, say, quarter of an acre of ground al
| lotted him, on which to raise little crop, the
| product to be sold and money placed honestly
\ 10 his credit.
The family plan would be the most proper
| not over twenty boys living in one home, and
| they should be fed well, clothed well and
worked well.
Successful life is one of constant warfare; and
| hence the boys should have a soldiers training
| SO that when sent to a home or to work fol
wages they would know what work meant, and
| that it was the very opposite of play.
| The writer knows whereof he speaks for he
| has spent fifteen years in this work, has trav.
| eied the State over and over again, came here
| originally in 1919, and is absolutely sure that
| no matter how juvenile reform is brought about
IN the East the method he has mentioned is the
| only practicable one here. And, to sum the
| same up in a few words, it is to teach boys and
| girls to work at such employment as they will
| be sure to find here when qualified The mar
| or boy, girl or woman, whose hands are hont silly
employed, generally turns out right, and truly
this is all there is to it.
We are impressed with the force and
truth of Mr.. Kemp's remarks There are
acres enough in the State so situated as tc
meet the need of the Association; the
| only question is how shall this praise.
worthy society secure its complement Of
land Whoever donates the whole. OF
part of the land, will do a benefcent act
that will rebound more to his credit thar
the raising of monuments, or the building
of temples of art or the erection of great
commercial piles.
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