n 4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



on this subject are very crude. Punishment very severe and the 

 same for every folly and crime satisfies them for a while, but the 

 time surely comes when some one suggests the possibility of miti- 

 gating circumstances, and finally, after hours of discussion, punish- 

 ment is graded. Then some one has the thought that, after all, pun- 

 ishment is not the word to be used, or, indeed, the idea to be carried 

 out in a club, and that the various penalties paid for breaking laws 

 (suspension or expulsion usually) should merely be regarded as a 

 means of self-defense by the club, and as the natural consequence 

 of crime by the offender. Little by little, from a crude and brutal 

 or sentimentally weak set of laws, grows a constitution not only 

 written in the correct form, but containing much truth and justice. 

 But in starting a new club it is better for the director not to give the 

 club a perfect constitution, for it is only the years of discussion and 

 experience out of which that perfect constitution is evolved, that 

 helps the boys. All the good that comes from club life must come 

 slowly and gradually so gradually that all the minutest details 

 of the machine of government are known and understood by the 

 boys, and acknowledged by them, one by one, to be necessary. Fig- 

 uratively speaking, and perhaps stretching the idea a little to make 

 the meaning clear, they have broadly in the two hours of the club's 

 session, and in detail in the three years of club life and growth, lived 

 through all the stages of man's development, from his simplest at- 

 tempts at law-making thousands of years ago to the complex machin- 

 ery by which we are governed to-day. By understanding the neces- 

 sity for every law as it is made, the boys become willing law-keepers; 

 they become intelligent ones also, for they see that constant watch- 

 fulness and thoughtfulness are necessary to keep those laws up to 

 the ever-growing and changing requirements of humanity. 



Although the ultimate authority is, of course, vested in the 

 director, in the Junior Good Government Clubs the boys are encour- 

 aged to stand on their own feet, so to speak, and to make decisions 

 on all questions themselves, as it is believed that in this way their 

 characters will be strengthened and their reasoning powers devel- 

 oped. The director of " No. 1 " goes so far as to tell her boys that 

 she does not claim infallibility; that if they see any untruth in 

 what she tells them, or any flaw in her logic, it will not signify dis- 

 respect or impertinence to argue against her, just as they would if 

 they disagreed with an ordinary member. Indeed, more than once 

 has the director humbly given in to the superior judgment of one 

 of the boys. However, it is sometimes more convenient if the boys 

 have not the habit of making points of order against her. 



The importance of letting the boys see the natural consequences 

 of wrong-doing is inestimable, and it is because of this that the de- 



