The Portland daily press., 1895-01-15


Boys After They are Discharged.
To the Governor and Council of Maine:
In presenting to you report upon the
work and needs of the Reform School,
it is pleasure to speak first of harrington
Cottage in which thirty, with mouse
father and mother, and teacher. have
been living for the past year and half.
This experiment-an experiment. IN
the Maine Rsform School-was thought
almost sure to fail by people without
knowledge of human nature, but it's sue
cess must convince the most skeptcal
that despite bad ancestry, poverty, av1l
surroundings, neglect and active abuse
our boys still have boys hearts respond
ing to the hand that knows how to touch
the keys of their spirits.
1t is good to go to harrington Cottage,
to note the boys growth in manliness,
their pride in their work and the atmos-
phele of home that characterizes the
place. All the harder does the question
press, Why not do for the hundred boys
what has been one for the thirty? The
ideal home in such an institution does
not make each family an isolated com
munity. In time to come these houses
will be homes only, and the children
will meet in common schoolrooms and
workshops as the children in our villages
do. In this way the spirit of American
citizenship will be taught and fostered.
in planning for the houses which
should be built the coming
year on the Reform School farm, the
Maine people have to consider whether
it is better to have a schoolroom and
teacher for each building. whether
one nouse shall be built al
cost of ten or fifteen thousand dollars,
or wbeher money may be better spent on
two or three, whether the home OF the
average welI-to-do citizen (such home
as a boy may hope to make for hlmsel1)
is not the best home for the Reform
School boy.
In the face of the rapid improvements
making in dwellings is 1t not petter 10
put UP less expensive buildings that Will
serve as homes for generation, and can
then, if desired, be used for other pur-
poses. than to have such an elephant as
the present main building on hand-a
building once admired, but which It's
best friends would be glad to have
vanish like Aladdin's palace-ln night.
tiers formed in it that are the ornament
of the State. In taking the boys out OF
the main building the suggestion IS
made that nobody knows how well the
worst boy may do until he is given a
chance, and here and there is boy, who
like Bruce's spider. needs slxty-nlne
chances. Let him have every chance
possible without injury to the other boy.
The trouble in the main building is
the crowding. The management of one
hundred boys from the best families in.
the State, packed together in such a
building, would probably call largely.for
repression, and repression is death to the
boy-well directed occupation Ire TO
body and soul. Taking forty to sixty
boys out of the house would leave room
for a gymnasium for those who remain,
and a boy needs to run, jump and climb
as much as he needs to eat. The school
room desks are the only places now Tor
the boys indoors when not; eating, sleep
ing, or at work-stormy days, holidays
and Sundays an inmoyahle CHAIR at
desk in a schoolroom,
Attention has been called before to the
lack of variety in occupations for the
boys in the large building. At the Whit
tier school in. California (they have given
their reform school one of the most Iowa
BILE names in AmericaD are carpenter,
tailor, shoe and blacksmith shops,
prints the institution paper. an electr!-
cal engineering plant. that the boys took
charge of for two months last winter,
and they have also Conservatives and
propagating houses, besides eighty acres
Of orchards. There boy is allowed to
choose where he will work!
MONOTONY OF LIFE
breeds discomfort, and leads our boys to
oil a
dom of their old lives. This is one of the
sharpest contrasts between the main
building, and the cottage. One Sunday
afternoon last summer I found one hun
bred boys in the yard at the main build
ing lying listlessly about, or listening to
each others srories-nothing to do. moth
ing to see but the sky above the high
walls of their prison. At the cottage
the boys were walking quietly about the
unfenced grounds, absorbed in catching
crickets or watching the growth of their
gardens, too happily occupied to think of
mischief or discomfort. Any lack of
material food in such an Institution
would meet with quick and sharp pro-
test from the State, but we seem very
slow tosundesratnd a boys real needs.
Many of these boys get little from gen
eral teaching; they want the personal
touch ChrlSG gave 10 6nOSe ne ueal6u.
Another great evil at the Reform
School is throwing together the young
children and lads fifteen or sixteen years
old. and far older in knowledge of sin.
This is bad enough for the little ones,
but even worse for the boys who become
teachers of evil.
There are children in the Reform
School who look filter subjects for a
kind erparten. 1t is poor business to
preach truth and honesty to these lads
If towns in the State are evading the law
relating to the age of commitment to
the school.
Neither is the school place for feeble
minded children. Both these matters
call for prompt and careful investigation
massachusetts has tried hard to make
a model reform school but finds it best
to remove the children to outside homes
as soon as possible. paying something
towards boys maintenance in case
his work does not wholly pay mis- way.
1t is claimed that keeping a child, even
under what is termed the Cottage sys-
tenn, tends to pauperize or institution
ize" him. He comes to feel that the state
will provide for him, long step towards
making tramp or a convict. Other