EVOLUTION IN REFORMATORY HETHODS. 



BY LYMAN D. DRAKE. 



[Lyman D. Drake, superintendent of the Iowa industrial home for boys, has been in 

 charge of that institution since 1904; previously he was for sixteen years head of the 

 manual training school at Boonville, Mo. ; Mr. Drake's theory is that the delinquent 

 juveniles should be taught useful trades, and he has put these theories into practice 

 by teaching such trades to more than 1,000 boys who have been under his direction.] 



Time writes many changes and has written them rapidly. 

 This is true of institutions for juvenile delinquents, and the 

 methods being pursued at present compared with those of the 

 incipient days of so-called reformatories impress us with the 

 rapid strides being made in this progressive age. 



Questions of economics and others of equal importance 

 have claimed much of the best thought, and not until within 

 the past quarter of a century has the social problem claimed 

 more than passing attention and the scientific research neces- 

 sary to the securing of best results. The achievements in this 

 particular have been scarcely less than those attained by the 

 arts and sciences. Each stimulated to greater activity in 

 consequence of some material advancement, so that to-day in 

 our retrospection we are filled with joy and satisfaction at the 

 sight of nearly one hundred magnificent institutions, which 

 are devoting both time and energy to the restoration of the 

 delinquent children of our land. 



We must begin our investigation by going back to the 

 seventeenth century, when the San Michale at Rome held the 

 juvenile for restraint without thought for the welfare of the 

 youth other than his confinement. Conditions did not im- 

 prove with the establishment of other institutions, and not 

 until late in the eighteenth century did the institutions of 

 England and France of a similar character show any improve- 

 ment. 



Early in the nineteenth century there came a ray of light 

 and hope to the delinquent boy and girl, and this must be 

 attributed to the wisdom of Dr. Wischern of Hamburg, Ger- 

 many, who created Das Rauhe Haus in the year 1833, this 

 institution being the first of the open institutions for the de- 



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