The record-union., 1893-04-01
A RELIC OF IGNORANCE.

The San Francisco Bulletin can claim
the palm as the prince of stupidity,
cranky opposition and ancient and aban-
doned ideas. If there is any wise propo-
sitlon or any one progressive idea which
it has not snarled at, we have yet to learn
of it. The latest instance would be
amusing, were it not humiliating to
journalism.
The case is very simple. 1t is agreed
by every intelligence except the Bulletin
that the sole purpose of establishing the
Whittier School was to check the drift of
youthful offenders into criminal paths
in short, by reformation, through re-
moval from vicious environment, prevent
them from becoming confirmed criminals
and to convert them into useful citizens.
Now it is conceded everywhere, after
century of experience in all civilized
lands, that this end is not promoted if the
badge of Its disgrace, the uniform of its
offending, is continually worn by the
child. No boy or girl can be reformed,
or their self-respect cultivated, or led from
criminal ways, easily, if at ALL if there is
being hung about his or her neck the
placard, This is a thief" "This is
law-breaking lad," This is juvenile
burglar This youth is branded"
San Francisco tried that plan for years
in its Industrial School, the uniform of
which was an impossible barrier to re-
form, for the children placed in such in
stitutions cannot be drawn from evil and
led into good citizenship and upright
lives so long as they are heralded by the
livery of a reformatory as incipient Grim
inals. Society shuns such, good compan-
panionship is impossible to them, homes
and trades are closed to them.
Now, upon these statements there is no
division of sentiment among people who
have studied the subject, among penolo-
gists, nor among the managers of reform
atories and refugees for unfortunate and
criminally inclined children, who are less
tions which environ them. Hence it
was that the last Legislature struck out
of the title of the Whittier school the
words that branded its inmates with
shame. Hence it was that the law was re-
formed so as to require commitments to
be indeterminate, that the school manage
hou of tha 1aI
he attains his majority, place him in a
good home, secure for him helpful and
moral surroundings, and aid him by all
possible inducements to become an in
dustrious, law-abiding, and generally
good citizen.
This policy, be it understood, is the re-
suit OF experience, the best of teachers
and of guides. 1t is demonstrated to be
the surest, simplest means to prevent
criminally-inclined youths from becom-
ing incorrigibles; it proceeds upon the
doctrine that boy may be reformed,
may be trained into right ways and
peaceful and inoffensive habits, and that
it is best done by cultivating his self
respect contemporaneously with indus
trial exactions and conformity to rule
under strict discipline.
One simple and irrefutable proof of all
this is found IN the fact that at Whittier
lads and girls who wrote to friends, ,invari-
ably tore of from the school stationery
the printed words designating the school
as reformatory.
Now comes the Bulletin with its growl
still developed, in a vein intended to be
sarcastic but puerile and disgusting, and
condemns the changes referred to, speaks
of the school as "a State Rugby" of those
committed to the reformatory as young
gentlemen and young ladies'" for whom
there has been lack of '.jam-tarts;" that
/ the institution has been converted into