The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-01-13
Youth Vieus
By HARRY CANNES
The PATTERSON Plan

y
to their elders as the super authori-
ties. To capitalism this is vital
thrust.
A scheme has been thought-up by
Walter w. Head of Omaha, Neb.,
which he calls the PATTERSON
ACKNOWLEDGMENT plan" Head COM
plains that fathers have not been
fraternizing with their boys and as a
result you have disobedience which,
carried to its logical conclusion, is
fatal to the existing order. His
scheme was destined to obscurity.
The business Rabbits are too busy
during the daytime with extracting
profits from their workers and at
night in getting over "that tired feel
ing" that are prone to, in the COM
pany Of some female devotee of
Terpsichore. The workers are only
too glad to get some sleep after IL
hour workday to be bothered listen
ing to the righteous grumblings OF a
couple or a dozen of impoverished
lads.
President Coolidge has son, and
he saw possibilities in the Patterson
plan-to capitalism-so he endorsed
it, in a letter to Head.
We can favor the plan, applied to
the workers. What can be more
revolutionary agitation among the
masses of young boys than to have
their proletarian fathers tell them
of the blessings of goading fore
man, of long hours at a health-de-
stroying machine, of the factory spy
who makes life miserable, of the
black despair of unemployment, of
the fear of old age under capitalism,
of low wages and unorganized masses
of workers competing with each other
for crust of bread?
But the plan will not succeed. The
proletarian fathers have no time. Too
much of the day is taken up in max
ing a living. When he is unem-
ployed, the worker is not in mood
to adopt the recommendation of
Coolidge, that the plan sis also in
tended to encourage" the boys, Ito
accept in larger way their response
bilities as citizens "
Workers Children in Jail Get
Brutal Treatment
The commotion aroused when one
i of the boy inmates of the Chicago
Parental Schcool Ga prison for boys)
was beaten to death has not yet died
down.
An investigation of the treatment
of the children in these institutions
who, without exception, are children
of the workers, reveals brutality
comparable with the slave-like ex-
ploitation Of the six year old children
in the mills and on the farm.
Every state in the United States
has one or more of these boy and
girl prisons that have no other excuse
for existing than to make life mis-
cradle for those children of the work.
J ers whose condition is the most I'M
bearable under capitalism. A great
percentage of the offenders of the
capitalist law that comprise the child
prisoners tell gripping tales of pow
erty and want. Thrown into the
vIlest sort of institutions, these chill
dren are trained for a life of crime
and shame.
Military drill and utter subservience
are part of the training of the chill
dren in penal institutions; and
great section of the gunner in the
United States got their first lesson in
such parental and reform institu-
tions.
1t is almost impossible to ascertain
the true nature of the base treat
ment of inmates (even though chill
dren) of these prisons as they are
threatened with the direst punish
ments when some fake investigation
is forced upon the ward healers in
charge of all of the state govern
ments.
The number of child and youth Of
tenders is growing at rapid rate.
All of these child institutions are
overcrowded, thus adding to the al
ready animal-like condition of the
youthful prisoners. Child labor is
one of the evils that is part Of many
of these prisons.
1t is a regular procedure of the
capitalist local authorities to initiate
an investigation when some child is
murdered by the inhuman monsters
in charge, but nothing comes out of
it as capitalism must have these in
stitutions as part of its system.