The Washington times., 1920-08-20
nA!!oNA aAur THE WASHINGTON TIMES AYsYs1 e. !sz
RefOrmatOry Girls and ManiaCs
What Is Bad for One Is Bad for the Other.

OF the girls sent to reformatory, many under better
conditions Of education and surroundings would have been
admirable women admired and praised throughout e The
power there is in human being or machine, the
danger of harm baby carriage running wild does
little harm big locomotive of the track does great
deal of harm.
young woman with great energy of mind nerves. and
feeling of the track running in the wrong direction
menace
On the right track and the right surroundings she
might be great blessing |..
The distinguished and useful Florence Nightingale, who
opposed the wishes of her father and mother constantly
buied and made them do what she wanted them to
do, might have been simply "REFORMAToRY GIRL
it, born with all her energy and determination she had been
deprived of education and surrounded by evil influences
To this by way Of introduction be added one more
statement of fact.
1t is safe enough to club very dull horse with dull
and dull mind But club very highly strung ami
NAL and you are apt to have a runaway.
Reformatory girls rule highly strung; they are
dubbed too much hence the trouble in reformatorles
And hence the satisfaction in announcing that some
intelligence to have entered at least OF the
reformatories hitherto abomnably managed the
at Bedford New York
You read that the girls in Bedford will be allowed
receive their friends and friends urged to write them
You could not imagine any management except that OF
big devil, forbidding girls to get letters.
You read that the girls longer to be strung up
by the wrists to their cell doors and made to Suner physical
pain.
You read that they longer to have their heads
held under water until they almost choked that they
longer made to stand up while powerful stream of
cold forced against their naked bodies until they
drop exhausted.
You read that the influence of music will be tried in
place of the influence of physical pain and you read that
"a greater amount of sugar. which the girls to
will be added to their diet
When you read these details of civilized management
of public institution you imagine that you reading
about the old insane asylum in which Jack Sheppard the
English highwayman, allowed to visit his mother be-
fore he hanged He found his mother chained lying
on cold stone floor.
Many of these reformatory girls what the law calls
"crimnals' To be criminal usually to have al
brain badly formed
To be inmate of reformatory for girls usually
to have been publicly guilty of immortality walkng
the streets, and similar crimes.
You admire the beauty of civilization and its ustice
when you notice that there refomatory for the men
that every guilty when each of these reorma
tory girls first started her career of "crime"
Admitting you choose, that reformatory inmates are
innatey permanently and deliberately vicious criminal
thoroughly bad you would still think that the managers
reforatory would realize that physical brutality which
cannot conquer maniacs will not conquer girls of defective
minds locked up in their youth branded for fe pract
caLy deprived of hope