Amador ledger. (Jackson, Amador County, Calif.) 1875-19??, 1906-12-07

ment from. the boys' at Whittier
state school, and establish new in.
stitution at some other place.
The entire farm and equipment at
Whittier are needed fer the deIin-
quent boyhood of California under
sixteen years of age, or will be needed
until the several counties and cities
OF the state have awakened to reaIiz-
alton of the value of truant schools
for preventing 6boys from becoming
delinquent. A more thorough segre-
CATION and classification of Whittier
boys are needed than can be had
under existing conditions.
The work of reforming a wrong
headed gill is so different from that
of boy that 1t is asking too much of
one management that it shall perform
both functions.
L submit to the people of Cali
fornia that an experiment that has
been conducted for fifteen years with
out furnishing satisfactory results has
been conducted long enough. 1t Is
time to try something else.
The Failure Not Total.
Those who have thoughtfulIy mea-
'sured Whittier school for girls have
found it wanting, but this is not say
ing that its failure is total, or that it
has done no good. Many girls have
gone out from Whittier to behave
themselves reputably thereafter, just
as more than half the prisoners sent
to that schocl-for- crime known as
San Quentin prison go out from there
never to be heard from, criminaIly,
thereafter. One jolt was enough for
him.
All the Whittier school girls want
to go home. They can go home
within reasonable time if they be-
have themselves, and IN many cases.
perhaps most, that condition prece
dent is sufficient. They have felt the
hand of the law upon the shoulder.
and have not liked the grip of 1t. 1t
brings them to their senses, but that
works no radical reformation in the
character of the pupil and does not
send the pupil out much better
equipped to battle with the forces of
evil. The stain of commitment is
inflicted without supplying the COM
pensating washing out of that stain
by work mete for repentance. They
are made sorry for the punishment
rather than for the sin.
The Limitation of the School.
The faults l find with the Whittier
School for girls are, in the main, as
follows.
1. There Is no proper segregation
of the morally perverted form the
merely hayward, the unchaste from
the stubborn. the leader from the
led, the younger from the older and
more hardened The buildings are
there for it, but there is in the
no realizing sense of the
Importance of such segregation and
2. There is no adequate Industrial
training and trades teaching. There
are cooking and sewing to be sure,
but no cooking or sewing schools.
nothing making an unremitting de-
mand upon the half dormant intel
Iectual life of the pupil. There
should be, and could be, if the
necessity we're keenly felt, schools
for cooking, sewing, dressmaking
and millinery, and to this end the law
should not only permit articles to be
made for all the women on the
ground, but for outside custom SO
far as necessary for a full training in
doing real things.
3. There is little in the way of
instruction in those accomplishments
which mean so much In the life of
every girl and which contribute so
much toward establishing in her mind
a heathful self-respect, always funda-
mental in developing robust moral
C haraoter.
4. l have upon my visits to this
institution failed to find adequate
of a full realization OF
the Significance of the task in hand,
and also that esprit de corps, and
that conservation to noble service
which l hold to be inseparable from
any true reformatory work.
l used to think that one could not
reasonably hope that state institu-
ton could rise to the exalted ideal |
have attempted to set forth, but
have bad reason to- change my opin-
ION. This high end can as we'll be
attained in a state institution as else
where, if the job be turned over to
some capable woman and left abso-
lutely in her hands, to. choose h,r
own assistants and work out the pro-
blem in her own way, supporting her
III ali redsouauie euorts anu InWdrt-
ing her In none. 1t is the only way,
Product of Broken Homes.
The thlyty-seven girls at Whittier
state school are not essentially
different from outside girls. Three
fourths of them are from broken
homes and are unframed, undis-
uItaught and unsafeguard-
ed during those tempestuous years
when youth is a perpetual intoxlca-