EVOLUTION IN REFORMATORY METHODS 265 



to the cottage or home idea, where the neglected boy may en- 

 joy the comforts and blessings of life that attend right living 

 and right doing. An institution to-day without its schools 

 and shops would be regarded with more or less suspicion. Our 

 modem institution surrounds the boy with advantages second 

 to none. His education in the school of letters is carefully 

 looked after, he being under the instruction of capa])le, pains- 

 taking teachers, who devote their entire time to his welfare, 

 and many institutions make education the standard by which 

 he may secure his release from the institution; the purpose 

 being to give every boy a good, common school education. 



I am impressed, however, with this idea, that in order to 

 have a well rounded man, we must have a well trained boy, 

 one whose hands have been taught to work in harmony with 

 his mind, becoming skilled in some useful occupation. In the 

 years gone by, the primary consideration of a reformatory in- 

 stitution was to create some sort of occupation that would 

 bring to the state as great a revenue as possible. ''How much 

 can a boy be made to earn?'* was the thought foremost in the 

 minds of those in authority. Think of it. The boys of the 

 state, the state's money invested in them, the state hoping at 

 some future time to have a return for this, which should be its 

 good citizenship, rather than to know they had by some rev- 

 enue creating occupation been made to partially compensate 

 the state for the money expended in their behalf. Such ideas 

 are degrading and debasing, making the labor of the boy the 

 primary consideration instead of his education and reforma- 

 tion. I am happy to state that such conditions no longer exist, 

 and nowhere within the United States to-day can be found an 

 institution where the labor of its boys is being contracted, as 

 was a fact in the years gone by. 



The state to-day is making a vastly different investment. 

 Boys are still being placed in reformatory^ institutions; the 

 state continues to invest her money in these boys. Why? 

 because of the fact that to-day the returns are a sufficient 

 guarantee to continue this, as from seventy to eighty per cent 

 of all the boys sent to institutions for correction, go out into 

 the world again reformed in the fullest sense of the term. 



Boys have now at their disposal skilled instructors, those 



