120 THE JUKES. 



amorphosing bad habits into good has yet to be gathered and 

 formulated into educational axioms. 



Family System. In this field, it is not premature to say that 

 the family system of discipline for penal institutions must take an 

 important place, especially for the young in Reformatories. It 

 enables the managers, by a skilful selection of temperaments and 

 dispositions which shall healthfully react on each other, to segregate 

 those who suffer from similar deficiencies, so that the defects of 

 one shall not become a demoralizing example to the rest, and to 

 group such natures as present well-organized habits so as to be- 

 come exemplars to those who lack those special habits, thus to 

 consciously organize, by artificial means, an environment in which 

 the convicts themselves will become instruments for each other's 

 regeneration. The present deplorable condition of the prison 

 system in our State justifies the question : Shall the Elmira Reform- 

 atory be this opportunity and become a new departure, or be a base 

 repetition of the present failure ? It has been said that the family 

 system is, after all, a modification of the congregate. This criticism 

 is equal to that of the man who said, when looking at a beautifully 

 modeled statue, made in clay taken from the road which he had 

 traveled to visit the artist's studio : " Well, after all, this is only the 

 mud I trod on." The point is not the material, but the use that is 

 made of it : and if the family system is admitted to be a modifica- 



J J 



tion of the congregate, the difference between them is the difference 

 between mud and art. 



