Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-11-09
SUNDAY MAGAZINE FOR NOVEMBER 9. 1sI.
WORTH WHILE FOLK
BOSS OF A CITIZEN FACTORY

money. In the South its the eradication of
the hookworm and the boil weevll. In New
England it is beneficent tariff. In the
Central States it alternates between a SUI
perior brand of hogs to eat the surplus corn
and a superior brand of rainfall to make
corn enough to feed the surplus hogs. On
the Pacific Coast-but, California having
settled its Japanese trouble to its own salts
faction, they are too busy getting ready for
the fair to bother with much else.
It's all a matter of geographical viewpoint,
then, this crying need of the Republic.
Suppose we try for a less insular viewpoint
from a man who has made a life study of
the problem. If you ask Judge Willis Brown,
formerly Judge of the Children's Court of
Salt Lake City, later Judge of the Parental
Court of Gary, Indiana, and now head of
Bows City, near Charlevoix, Michigan, you
will get your answer with the suddenness and
enthusiasm of a zealot.
The crying need of this Republic is better
citizenship. So says Judge Brown And
then he drives home the argument with
forceful illustration. Whether he IS lectur-
ing on the Chautauqua platform, matching
wits with the lawmakers at Washington,
where he has a bill intended to change the
whole attitude Of the law toward the boy, or
panning out the heart of one hayward boy
for the nugget of virgin gold that must lie
there, Judge Brown is always ready with
forceful, homely illustration.
"Why,' he will explode, with flash OF
his eyes, @why, when the State of New York
faces the most interesting political situation
in the history of the nation, the lmpeach-
ment of a Governor, | saw in New York
City the other day six men languidly con-
ming the bulletin board, while around them
hundreds were riotlng to see the score go up
for the next inning! Is that citizenship
And again, 1--WE are spending millions to
improve the breed of hogs. How much are
we spending to make citizens of our boys:o'
That is his lifework, making citizens out
of BOYS. He is the boss of the citizen fac
tory; his plant, Utah, for which he wrote
the model children's law; Gary, Indiana,
where he applied the parental court idea to
the public school system; on the Chautau-
qua platform, where he is constantly plead
ing the case of the boy; or In Boys City,
where he is working out his highly advanced
theories under ideal conditions. The raw
material comes out of the city slun1s, the
riffraff, the abandoned, the boys that are
generally classified under the head of jul
venile delinquents." The more delinquent
he is, the more anxious IS Judge Brown to
feed him into the cogs of the citizen factory.
/ he ClIlZcIl IdCIOlN, Ike lllOSI SlCdC III
dustries, began in small way. Its first
home was country schoolhouse in Oregon.
That was only a scant fifteen years after the
Boss was born in 1871 in Grundy County,
Illinois. His father was an itinerant Bap
fist preacher, and the jump from Illinois to
Oregon contained SO many intermediate
stops that Judge Brown does not even re-
member them all. Young Brown started
the factory with only one form of capital;
but that was the one asset he needed. He
understood boys. Even at fifteen he could
get right down to the bedrock of boy psy
chology And there he always found the
gold.
One experience from the Oregon school
will suffice to illustrate the fundamental
theory upon which his hfework has been
built 1t wasn't even a theory then. 1t
was Just downright boy knowledge.
Most of the boys in the school were older,
stronger, and tougher than he was. A con-
test meant defeat. He determined, at the
risk of throwing the school board into apo
plexy, to avoid this conflict by upsetting all
approved traditions of school discipline.
"Come to school when you please. Go
when you please" he told the astonished
pupils. "If you had rather go fishing today
than go to school, go fishing.
For few days that school was riot of
lawlessness. Then gradually the great under
lying principle began to bore its way home.
1t was this, "The school board pays me to