The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1902-06-03
WHY WE NEED A REFORMATORY FOR
YOUNG CRIMINALS.

week. has been so deplorably misled in
regard to the nature and objects of the
proposed Reformatory for Young
Criminals. He has an entirely erro-
neous conception of the principle of
the institution, and on this false i'm
preston rests the whole fabric of his
letter.
In the first place, our correspondent
is mistaken in thinking that the Re
formatory provides''an easy way of OBJ
tanning an education and living in the
shade" 1t would not make it easy
to get at being clothed, fed and edu-
Gated" Reform could not be effected
by such methods. The Reformatory is
a place for hard work, because from
the beginning of the movement it has
been recognized that the steady discip-
line of industrial training not only
means a trade for the boy, but devel-
ops will-power and "that steadiness of
nature which is the antithesis of Grim
inal nature" We remember hearing
this point very neatly emphasized by
DR.. John Graham Brooks, of Cam
bridge, Mass, in an address before the
Winston-SaIem Educational Confer
ence last year.
"The feeble will and lack of self
control, the easy yielding to the play
of every impulse, the hatred of per-
sistent and consecutive activity" he
said, care the commonest weaknesses
of this class. The whole scheme of
training is guided rigidly to the end
of strengthening the weakest links of
character. 1t is seen at last that no
preaching or praying, no giving of
good advice, no reading of improving
books, can make what these delin-
quents lack, namely, habits-habits of
continuous thinking and doing-hab-
its of controlling the muscles and the
will. These come only from the pa
tient repetition of activities that long
and well-ordered practice alone can
give"
Let us then drop, now and for all
time the mistaken idea hat the pro-
posed North Carolina Reformatory,
would provide an easy life for young
miscreants. Just as in other penal in
situations, the inmates would work
and work hard, but at trades that
would train both mind and body and
develop systematic and orderly habits.
This the mere tiresome physical exer-
ton of the routine work in prisons and
penitentiaries does not do.
x x x x x X X
The preventives of youthful deprav-
ity suggested by Mr.. Andrews are
very good. "Stop the loafing, and
give all the boys the right sort of
home-training," he says. But unfor-
~tunately these things cannot be ex-
pected this side of the Millennium. Not
all the legislatures and schools and
churches in Christendom can bring
them about. We have to accept the
fact that we have young criminals and
are going to have them, probably till
the last syllable of recorded time. We
wish that we did not have them, but
they are here, and our problem is,
What are we going to do with them?
The whipping-post, it might as well
be said right here, is out of the ques-
ton. 1t has gone with the stocks and
the pillory, and will never be re-estab-
lished. 1t is idle to discuss it, but it
may be said hat it would send the
young offender back to his old ~assOcia-
tions and old environment without
new habits or new influences. 1t could
but fail.
= = \ = \ =
There are then three methods of
dealing with the erring youth left open
to us.
Shall we let him go UNPUBLISHED, as
if often done in North Carolina at this
time, thus breeding in him a contempt
for law hardly less productive of mis-
chief than is the corrupting influence
Of prison assOciations-send him back
neither punished nor reformed. to CON
tinue his wild career?
Or shall we put him in the prison
or the workhouse to associate with
hardened criminals, learn new meth
DDS of crime, and come under the
worst influences that could possibly be
brought to bear on his young and plas-
tic mind; and finally return to his old
life with nature and habits either un-