CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE 293 



Some of these states have been quick to see the advantage 

 of the true farm village type of institution. Michigan acknowl- 

 edges her debt to Indiana in the plan and arrangements of cot- 

 tages on her 1,510 acre farm at Wahjamega, Tuscola county, 

 bought in 1913. Dormitories, dining-room and day room oc- 

 cupy the ground floor, and employees' quarters the second. An 

 old two-story hotel on the site, was remodeled into a cottage for 

 twenty- four patients. There are now living in cottages pro- 

 vided out of the original appropriation of $200,000 for the estab- 

 lishment of the institution, 155 patients. 



Illinois is laying out her village of 1,100 acres at Dixon on 

 the small group plan. No buildings for inmates are to be more 

 than two stories high, some of them being limited to one story. 

 All buildings are to be of fireproof construction. Iowa is dis- 

 tributing groups of cottages about her 1,144 acre farm. The 

 buildings for patients, both hospitals and cottages, are one- 

 story and of fireproof construction. 



The Indiana farm community for misdemeanants is a city 

 hewn from the wilderness. Already within its first year this 

 farm is actually emptying the jails of nearby counties. 



Indiana has long hated her jails. For a score of years in- 

 vestigations, newspaper exposure, commission reports and all the 

 artillery of denunciation availed nothing against these " agencies 

 of vice and training schools of crime." Now, by the simple ex- 

 pedient of providing a wholesome, bracing substitute, Indiana 

 is literally starving her jails and work-houses out of existence. 

 Some that heretofore aspired to a nightly population of eight 

 or ten now find themselves caring for only two or three. 



If the besetting evil of jails is idleness, the outstanding virtue 

 of this farm community is industry. Perhaps it was well that 

 the institution got its start when the ground was covered with 

 snow and there were only tents to live in. To work was the 

 only way to be comfortable, and the spirit then engendered has 

 been maintained. It is now kept before the minds of the pris- 

 oners in many subtle ways. " Positively no loafing" read signs 

 at a score of points, giving those who pass a sense of choice that 

 can have but one psychological effect a desire not to exercise 

 that choice. 



Perhaps it is the frontier character of the work that gives the 



