The Elbert County tribune., 1903-01-08

children by education than to punish
them afterwards as criminals, and yet
this sentiment has not made half the
impression upon school authorities
that II should make. II Juvenile de-
linquency is the chief cause Of crime.
want to add that truancy and idleness
tand the terms are rather synonym
ous) are the chief causes OF delinquen-
cy. Out of probably 800 children
brought into the County Court during
my two years there for offenses. not a
dozen, in my opinion, were regular in
school attendance or at work. when
taken in delinquency. These twin evils
of truancy and idleness must be guard
ed against with every power given by
the law IL we are to save any consider
able number of the children disposed to
evil tendencies. Every dollar spent
for such purpose is the wisest invest
ment the state can make. Study the
statistics and expense OF crime annual
Iy to the state and trace its source.
and you will not tolerate a denial OF
this proposition. Chicago has over
$50 900 school children. Denver $4,000:
yet Chicago has twenty-five truancy Of
fcers and superintendent of com
pulsory education, with forty-two paid
probation officers, not to mention vol
unteers In proportion Denver should
have at least five times the assistance
we have now.
The Industrial School.
The Industrial School at Golden is
purely and simply an educational in
stitution-just as any other public
school-and its superintendent ought to
be member of this association if he
is not. Yet when you consider there
have been five superintendents there in
about one year. you might have trouble
in keeping up with them.
Neither the university at Boulder
the Agricultural College nor the School
of Mines is OF half the Importance to
the state, its future and its citizen
ship that is the Industrial School at
Golden. The boys in your schools are
sent there when they won't obey at
home. but simply to better enable the
teachers there to do with them what
you or their parents could not do. The
teachers there ought to be the best pos
sible. They ought to have more pa
tence, more courage. more care. more
skill, more ability. If that were pos
sible. than can be found in any other
school, and they ought to be paid more.
-and they ought to be the leaders. the
advisers at the head and front Of this
very association, and the superintend-
ent of that school ought to be the best
that money can buy. and he ought to
get larger salary than the president
of our universities You send him that
which you are not able to handle. and
you land l mean by you all of US peo-
ple) expect him to make 1t good on
less pay and with less help and very
little encouragement or assistance.
Every homeless boy. every unfortunate
boy. every misguided, misdlrected
child. more often the creature of an
environment and a society he is not re
sponsible for, but which is rather re-
sponsible for him, I say to you is not
only as much entitled, but ten fold
more entitled. to have the public money
of this great state spent upon him
than that little per cent. of high school
and university boys and girls whom
the state now spends a hundred fold
more upon. | rejoice in spending mon
ey for the higher education. but l say
II you would reverse the process of
such expenditures you would not do a
one-thousandth part the injustice we
now do by the inequality thereof II
you would have good citizens you must
have those who would support them
selves. who are not going to be bur-
den on the community as criminal
loose in our cities or locked up at pub
iiC cApcubc III pIlbOub, III luSdDt
wards. or vagabond or mendicant.
! am sure that If some OF the sons
and daughters of the wealthy who
adorn and honor the society of our
high schools and our universities were
born in the same surroundings and
subjected to the miseries and environ
ments of some of the boys l have found
guilty Of burglary and larceny, they
would have been equally as bad, IL not
worse. Every taxpayer and citizen of
t.1s state. II he would only wake up
to it, has more direct interest in the
care of delinquent children and the
school boys in our state public school
in Golden than in any other two edu-
cational institutions in the entire state
No man can estimate the moral ruin
3 and the expense in dollars and cents
alone that one wayward boy becoming
n criminal can impose upon the state
All the good that twenty university
boys could do in lifetime would not
offset it. While, therefore, | should be
the last to criticise expenditures upon
our public high schools and universt-
ties, l do say that estimating the i'm
portance of such institutions to the
state. the disparity in such expendi-
lures upon children disposed to delin-
quency is disgrace to the state
Golden reforms many boys, in fact the
great majority OF them, as can safely
attest 1t fails to help some, and that
1t does In most of such cases Is rather
the fault Of the state than the boy or
the school. And to a more or less ex-
tent all that have said applies equally
to the State Industrial School for Girls
There ought to be some way to pun
ish an Official as a common criminal
who could be convicted of permitting
politics. as such, to control and die
tate his appointments in educational
institutions Of this character. Golden
is no more penal institution than this