1860. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



453 



TO THE READERS OF THE NEW ENG- 

 LAND PARMER. 



Nearly ten years have now elapsed since my in- 

 troduction to you as the Agricultural Editor of 

 these columns, and during all that time the com- 

 munication between us has been harmonious and 

 unbroken. This communication has been per- 

 sonal, as well as through the press, for I have 

 from time to time visited you in every section of 

 the State, mingled with your families, replenished 

 my pen with your practices and their results in 

 my favorite art, and more than one hundred 

 times addressed you publicly in the endeavor to 

 promote its interests. 



In the progress of these events, the people of 

 my native State have several times called me, un- 

 solicited, to accept some public trusts. These I 

 have accepted, and, — without forgetting the great 

 leading objects of my life, the objects in which 

 you are so directly interested, — have endeavored 

 to discharge the duties of those trusts with 

 promptness and fidelity. 



One of the trusts thus confided to me was to 

 act upon the Board of Trustees for the State Re- 

 form School at Westboro', an ofRce to which no 

 compensation is attached. I entered upon its du- 

 ties in June, 1856. The law requires that I 

 should visit the Institution eigM times each year. 

 The record there shows that I liave visited it 

 twenty-Jive times each year, and the savie record 

 proves that once in each quarter I have made a 

 private and tlwrough examination of every de- 

 partment of the Institution, and that a report of 

 each of those examinations has been carrfvlhj 

 considered by the full Board, and its suggestions 

 or recommendations adopted or rejected, as they 

 tommcnded themselves to the judgment of the 

 Board. What / have done, each of the other Trus- 

 tees has also done, with scrupulous fidelity. 



On the 21st of July, three members of the 

 Governor's Council, namely, 



Eliphalet Trask, of Springfield, 

 J. M. Churchill, of Milton, 

 Jacob Sleepek, of Boston, 



made a short visit to the Institution ; they had 

 been there previously on the 6th of July, and then 

 ascertained that three boys were confined in some 

 wooden lodges, and this second visit was to in- 

 vestigate the causes and nature of that confine- 

 ment. I will not occupy spac'e in giving their 

 description of those lodges, or cf the alleged 

 treatment of the boys, for they have been laid be- 

 fore you in the papers of the day, as well as in 

 the news department of the Farmer. The refuta- 

 tion by the Trustees, of the Committee's charges, 

 has also been laid before you in the public pa- 

 pers, and it is not necessary for me to dwell upon 

 them here. 

 I have mingled pretty freely with the world 



through a period of half a century, and for two 

 thirds of that time have been actively engaged in 

 its business and cares, both of a private and pub- 

 lic character, and in all my experience, I have 

 never met a company of men that were, in my 

 judgment, so assiduously and conscientiously de- 

 voted to any public trust, as the Board of Trus- 

 tees of the State Reform School at Westboro'. 

 And tlie School to-day, in all its Depaitmcnts, un- 

 der an impartial investigation, will testify to this 

 devotion ! 



One or two charges made by the Committee, 

 and not alluded to by the Trustees, in thtir state- 

 ment, I will briefly notice. It is to be inferred 

 from the language of the Committee, that the Su- 

 perintendent M-as guilty of gross misconduct in 

 employing one of the boys to report the language 

 and conduct of others. With regard to this, I 

 will say, that such service is usually voluntary on 

 the part of the boys, and at any rate, is only re- 

 sorted to in cases cf considerable danger to per- 

 son and property. It forms nojjart of the system 

 of government of the Institution. 



Complaint is made that "no record is kept of 

 the causes or extent of punishment in the Insti- 

 tution." The truth is, there has been so little in 

 the nature of punishment inflicted, that it had not 

 occurred to the Trustees that a record was neces- 

 sary. By refining to the report of one cf my pri- 

 vate examinations previous to the fire, I find that, 

 although there were more than six hundred boys 

 in the School, there was not one in the correctional 

 department, and that it had been entirely unoccu- 

 pied for three months in succession ! In tlie ear- 

 ly days of the Institution it was the practice to 

 inflict corporeal punishment, but that practice 

 was abandoned by the present Board, and has 

 only been resorted to in a few instances of the 

 most flagrant misconduct. My preference has 

 been to deprive the rebellious of their personal 

 liberty, to feed them on a plentiful and whole- 

 some, but light diet, and "keep the door of mercy 

 open to them," and by that earnest persuasion, 

 evidence of which is contained in Rev. Mr. Himes' 

 letter, to induce them to return to duty. But as 

 the committee are horriflcd by this mode of pun- 

 ishment, and have suggested no other, it is a fair 

 inference that it would be more agreeable to them 

 to let the boys run riot, trample upon the rules 

 sanctioned and required to he enforced by the 

 Governor and Council, until all government was 

 lost and the School broken down and ruined by 

 its own internal dissensions. 



I beg my friends to look, for a moment, at the 

 very uncourteous attitude, (to use the mildest 

 term that will apply,) in which this committee has 

 placed itself. They went to the Institution with- 

 out giving notice to the Trustees, and there ex- 

 amined six of the most criminal boys, took their 



