The Marion daily mirror. (Marion, Ohio) 1892-1912, 1908-08-15
The MAN WHO PICKS

one of them, accuses him OF being a
thief and says: TGive me the goods"
"T have never known him to make
a mistake" says one OF the officials
in the House of Refuge.
Col. Barber is acting assistant sup
erlntendent and dlsciplinarian of the
House of Refuge on Randall's ISL
and, which is the New York state re-
formatory for youths between the
ages of ten and twenty-one There
are at present $40 boys. These boys
are of mixed nationaiities. They
represent many types of physical and
moral degeneracy, typifylng many
kinds of perverted morality. Few of
the boys look their real age. They
are mostly Of stunted growth. with
countenances plainly bearing tine
marks of vice, which even the very
young so quickly show, and in gen
eral may be SAID to depict the
''crooked' side of youthful humanity.
Most of them have grown up on the
east side Of New York City; many
have served periods of training under
the crime experts OF the slums and
are as skillful in the art Of conceal
Ing their i'll deeds as they are in
conceiving the msans wherewith to
execute them
The writer has made something Of
a study of prison and reformatory
| systems both here and abroad and
was particularly interested during
| recent visit to Randa1l's Island in the
methods of Col. Barber in handling
| the boys now under supervision and
training in the institution.
An offense has been committed, let
us say, the burglary of an officers
quarters or the theft of some small
property of the institution. Col
| Barber knows that such offense can
only have been committed by some
| of the boys of a certain division of
| the reformatory, according to the
| time when the offense was commit
| ted. He parades the whole division
has them up in line, and walks down
the ranks, scanning the countenance
of each boy. He Will select twenty
of them to stand forward from the
| rest and go down the line again. Then
he tells ten to stand out, then five
or six, then four. then two, and to
one of the two boys left his word
is "Give me the goods" or Where
are they?" And he seldom, if ever,
Is mistaken. The hoy hands over
the stolen property or tells where 1t
| can be found. If not the actual thief
the one selected always knows some
] thing about the offense and the con-
! federates are discovered and pun
ished.
| And Col. Barber attributes this 70
| intuitive powers. He allows, of
course, for the help experience gives,
] for the fact that he has been twelve
years engaged in the work, that he
knows the boys ana all about them,
and observes the particular criminal
tendencies of each. But he cannot
explain the exact power which en-
ables him to so confidently to say to
the last boy picked out from the
| crowd, "Give me the goods save
by accrediting it 10 some strange
intuition of the moment.
Experience and study have made
him expert at reading faces, and he
has become more or less of a crimin-
ologist in the scientific sense, but 1t
Is intuition that finally enables him
to detect the guilt In the face of the
boy who has committed the oifense
Many of those faces appear to the
average spectator TO be perfectly
brazen and hardened enough to stand
any examination but they are not in
scrutable to Col Barber, 1t Is not
that the boys fear him. They have
the kindest word for their discip-
llnarlan, and naturally a very solid
respect for him. They simply cannot
keep their guilt from him. He sees
through the eyes, deep down as IT
even their hearts were bare to him
and finally they confess.
They have been known to trick
| him Dy cOnSplIlhS W HaNV wv "'O''o
boy confess, so implike are many or
them in the peculiar JOY they find IN
doing ill-deeds, but they were not
successful "Oh, no. said Col. Bar
ber, e'you are not the boy" And
when he selected the guilty one the
trlckster was punished for wllful at
tempt to deceive, and his fellow con-
spirators with him.
| What moral perversion can ATTAIN
TO in misguided youth may be as
covered and realized by visiting such
an institution as that at Randalls
Island. One would imagine, on near
ing the records OF some of the iaus
that II took some special kind Oh
genius TO think out the wrong ueeus
of which they have been capable anu
M matter how much one may DC
prepared for things. the extent OF tne
mental and moral deprayity prevail
ing among such early youth can put
shock the visitor.
The writer visited the Discipllh
ward. where half dozen boys were