The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-01-06

from the white-washed county jail. The
 number of children at Chauncey Is now l 320. aH Yfs,' Ak
 Reformation in these days is con l ducted, on a business basis. The au- | thorities of the Juvenile Asylum can | tell almost to a cent what 1t costs to make boy into good citizen. or the l S206 the boy costs the Asylum each
 year $145 is contributed by the city, l boys are committed by city authorities acting through the children's court. The balance Of the cost of making an honest man is contributed by the direc- tors of the Asylum and other friends and champions of the bad boy who, sociologists have discovered, Is more sinned against than shining, Since the Asylum was founded, the city of New York has invested in this work of re- formation about $4,132;000 a sum many times less than the city has paid out in the same period for policemen. court officers and jail wardens. In the same half century, private contributions to this work in the promotion of good, citizenship have aggregated S2,600,000. Thus nearly $7,000,000 has been spent on bad boys in one city In fifty years, and in the past few years the annual cost per boy has increased about $75.
 Does 1t pay? The Juvenile Asylum people, who conduct the work of refor- nation on business principles, have figures to show that the work is profit able. The boys who graduate from the Asylum are generally sent to homes in the West, and 1t is known that S5 per cent of these boys turn out well. A visitor now in the field has recently re- ported favorably on 92 per cent of the children visited, but this Is little bet ter than the average. The question, Does it pay? finds answer in numerous life histories which are brought to the attention of the Asylum authorities. A few days ago, they received a letter from a business man in an Iowa town who announced his election to the of- flee of county recorder. He wrote that he hoped the Asylum officers would be interested to hear about him because they had sent him to Iowa in 1887. Most of all," he wrote, "I remember those words of Abraham Lincoln which greeted me in the assembly room-"rel the boys of the New York Juvenile Asylum that they must value justice, truth and humanity If they wish to become useful and honorable men, l have often thought of those words. have tried to live up to them as Lin- coin wished us to do. I wish the boys who leave the Asylum would never forget them. Tell them to come West"
 Like all other business men, the au- thorities of the Juvenile Asylum study carefully the raw material from which they make the finished product, that of good citizenship. Close study of the bad boy problem reveals the fact that the delinquent haled to the ehildren's court Is lagely the victim of circum- stances--in this country sometimes a very young victim, for American courts can brand child a criminal at the age of six. In Germany the criminal age begins between the twelfth and eight eenth years, in Austria at the end of the fourteenth year and in England at the end of the sixteenth. In this city only boys under sixteen are sent to re- formatories. A boy a day over sixteen may be sent to jail stealing a street railway transfer check while a boy a day under sixteen may commit grand larceny and be sent to the Asylum to repent and reform. Judges agree that this system is working considerable harm to the youthful delinquents, and the study of the question made by those interested in the work of reform will undoubtedly lead to better things.
 In the study of the raw material for good citizenship, attention is paid to details which might at first seem to be trivial The experts in boy training, for example, understand the relation ship of teeth to morality. Ninety-four per cent of the children sent to the Juvenile Asylum have defective teeth, and a large proportion suffer from eye and skin troubles.
 How could they be expected to act normally under the circumstances? asks the experienced and sympathetic superintendent.
 So one of the first experiences of the new conner at Chauncey is that of being put in good physical condition. and to