The age-herald., 1900-07-01

are pressing. Tn the dormitory, there is room for one hundred beds The dining room and kitchen are to be furnished and the boys are to be clothed and fed The farm and farming implements purchased or donated. Nearly every State in the Union maintains an institution where its way ward boys are taught trade and given a chance in life. Within two years the north has given $700000 to reclaim the young negroes in Alabama alone, while the white children of the State are growing up in the State prisons. Ten years ago Tennes- sec opened a school and farm for the re- demption of her wayward children and of the 1,O50 who have been trained mentally. morally and physically, only thirteen have relapsed into the old life
 At the Alabama farm the methods that have been successful at other reformatories will be followed The boys will be taught a trade, and it will be that for which he has the greatest inclination to learn. When he leaves the school he will be a skilled workman as we'll as an honest citizen. The lands fertile and the superinten- dent said yesterday that the farm should yield vegetables enough to supply not only the demands of the schools but supply the market. The farm owns it's Devon cows, and small chicken farm has already been established. The fruits and berries have been preserved and there is already domestic atmosphere in the improYised dining room. The little corps of workers out there were doing landscabe gardening, and were at work in transforming bridge of rough logs into one of rustic beauty. While the actual work on the farm incl dent to the finishing of the buildings would have been to many demoralizing if such was the case, it was not apparent that the superintendent who made a place for the little group of recreants sent from the police headquarters ten days ago.
 In speaking with the superintendent in regard to the work of the boys, he said that they quickly showed the bent of their natures and became interested in special line of work. "If," he continued, "a boy prefers carpentry to making shoes or print ing to farming, he will be allowed to make his own choice.
 MT. Griffin brought a printing press from Nebraska. and it will be placed in the work shop and a school paper will be printed every two weeks. MT. Griffin will send this paper to the legislators, and all over the state, for he believes that paper gotten out by the boys in the school will increase the interest in their work
 MT. Griffin has long been identified with reform work in the West. For fifteen years he was a teacher in the Nebraska prisons, and his long experience in such work and his great success has made his coming to Alabama a matter of congratu- lation on the part of the Industrial School Board. He will be joined later by Mrs. Griffin who is of great assistance to him in the work. They have no children of their own. but their lives have been con stantly in touch and in sympathy with the homeless children abandoned by their parens or in other hopeless conditions.
 The classes of children that will be reached by the farm are as follows:
 Children who are begging or using
 any mere cover for obtaining money.
 Children abandoned by their parents,
 
 without means of support.
 Idle children who won't work or go
 to school and have no support
 Orphans without guardians or means
 to keep them from pauperism.
 Children whose mothers drunk ards, or lewd, or in prison and are
 without support or control.
 Children whose parents are drunkands
 and do not support and control them.
 Children arrested for crime and who
 appear beyond the control of their
 parents.
 Such children can be committed by
 any judge or by the parents themselves
 to the Reformatory until they. attain
 their majority.
 There have been so far ten counties in the state pledged to raise $100 annually for the support of the school, thereby allowing two boys for every county. At the next meeting of the Alabama Legisla-
  made if there is any thing in lobbying, for there is not a club woman in the state who will not lobby for the passage of the bill or a legislator who would not favor its passage But in the meantime the school building must be furnished. It is the de- sire of the board that each federated club in the state furnish a bed room, while if this suggestion was carried out the Indus- trial school would soon be comfortably equipped. The women of Birmingham should come forward at this time and leave no stone unturned that will assist in furnishing the reformatory. Its bare walls and empty rooms should appeal elo- quently to them, and while the reforma- tory is a state institution Birmingham women should feel a peculiar pride in its maintenance. The city should feel in measure a sense of responsibility in It's support and success Even with small individual contribution by the citizens the school and farm would be placed at once upon sef-supporting basis
 The need of the farm the value of such an institution to a state was eXemplihed in a child of the streets at police head quarters not long ago.
 If you don't take me in,' bit of a lad walled, 'Ill be sure to land in jail," but ten days ago he was taken to the Indus trial Farm. I was told yesterday that the police regarded him as the worst boy in the city. I had unconsciously picked him out of the group and 1 learned that his name was Jimmy" He was such little fellow that I found it difficult to believe that he had a past, and when later on he ran about the farm attending to various duties it was hard to associate him with the dark side of great city. So much for environment. He had in a weeks time made himself indispensable on the farm and the development of this trait, the knowledge that he was essential to some bodv had wrought a transformation not only in his physical appearance but in the little heart throbbing under the blue over all. On the way back it was then not the picturesque surroundings the sunny slopes that recalled. It was rather Jimmy who looked at us somewhat wistfully as we