The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1910-10-06

CuVlOus LII SUuufIuS OIicS0 HcCuo, W.
must consider the purpose for which
we are working; the whole problem is
one of cause and effect; facing of ex-
listing conditions, a reasoning of why
and wl,erefores and supplying by
natural processes the needs. No elab.
grated theories along scientific lines
can take the place of common sense
applied to this simple diagnosis, SIM
PIE because natural.
We are working to make men and
women responsible self-thinking in
viduals, better fitted because of their
training to 60 out to meet the COM
mon every day life; citizens who shall
become law abiding, self-respecting,
God fearing fathers and mothers who
shall lift the ideals of common living
among the masses. The goal of the
individual should be citizenship. The
problem for the institution then is to
fit most difficult individuals for their
highest usefulness or citizenship.
In this world of natural forces
working out their answering laws of
cause and effect, could its vic tims find
redress for wrongs not their own pun
ishment? 1t is safe to say that nine-
tenths of the girls needy of institu-
tional care are needy for lack of proper
home influences. The home is the
God-given right of every child. Those
deprived of it have been irreparably
wronged. For such, so deprived, pro-
ducts of the degenerate, the resource
less, the ignorant, and the poverty
ridden home, shall it be punishment
To her, from the conditions of birth a
social mistit, shall it be punishment?
Rather shall it not be opportunity9
That opportunity which shall best de-
velop her powers, that training which
shall best work out her individual
success?
Fortunate it is that the narrowness
of an unthinking public, which de-
mands in the delinquent child of the
institution an absolute standard
above which their own supposedly cir
sons and daughters are re-
quired, is passing. 1t is a product of
ignorance. The trained philanthropy
ist works with broader vision.
Granted that opportunity is the need,
how can the institution be made to
meet it? Again, the home and all
the moral force that the home and
parents represent found to be the
lack, how can the Institution be made
to meet the need? First of all must
be conditions to bring about the fam
lily life.
Wednesday I visited again our new
school site. 1t is place of activity.
On the spot where first l worked my
way through brush and timber four
buildings are rising, colonial in style,
light plastered throughout; save for a
sameness forced upon us by economy,
giving little impression of the insti-
tuition. These are only the beginning
Of the little community which will
our Minnesota home school
for girls, with it's family homes, play
grounds and gardens, farm and farm
hospital, chapel and other
needed buildings, community of
possibly 300 in the small family groups
referred to.
These cottages and all their living
processes will be arranged with an eye
to the home life. There will be the
big family rooms serving as sitting,
recreation and study rooms, plants,
pictures, pets and other home belong
ings giving them the livable in look,
the airy family dining room with it's
small round tables, the kitchen and
the pleasant sitting rooms of the Of
fcers, and the little room for each
girl in which she can have the oppor-
tunity to exercise her individuality in
the numerous small ways so dear to
the girls heart and in the retirement
of which at least once a day she can
find herself.
From the first hour of the girls
commitment there will be emphasized
with her the family as a unit, her re-
sponsibility as member of that fam
lily, the family's need of her, the pos
sible factor she may become in it, how
she should guard the honor of her fam
lily; that hers is an equally responsible
position with the officer; that she has
a work to do not only for herself but
for the others; that her reformation
depends after all upon herself. To
the outsider the four cottages going
up at Sank Centre, represent the
present growth of our new school, but
a larger growth than that is going on.
1t is down in Red Wing in the hearts
of group of girls ready to meet their
responsibility in it's shaping. To them
it is wonderful awakening, that
there is tremendous responsibility;
that the schools not ours, but theirs;
that it is largely for them to deter
mine whether it can become the place
for opportunity; that they can become
a part of an influence which shall go