In this country it seems to be only the politician at the bottom, the man nearest the people, who understands that there is a growing disinterestedness taking hold of men's hopes and imaginations in every direction. He often plays upon it and betrays it; but he at least knows it is there.
The two points at which government is developing most rapidly at the present moment are naturally the two where it of necessity exercises ( 80) functions of nurture and protection: first, in relation to the young criminal, second, in relation to the poor and dependent.
One of the latest developments is the Juvenile Courts which the large cities are inaugurating. Only fifteen years ago when I first went to live in an industrial district of Chicago, if a boy was arrested on some trifling charge -- and dozens of them were thus arrested each month -- the only possible way to secure another chance for him by restoring him to his home with an opportunity to become a law-abiding citizen, was through the alderman of the ward. Upon the request of a distracted relative or the precinct captain, the alderman would "speak to the judge" and secure the release of the boy. The kindness of the alderman was genuine, as was the gratitude of all concerned; but the inevitable impression remained that government was harsh, and naturally dealt out policemen and prisons, and that the political friend alone stood for kindness. That this kindness was in a measure illicit and mysterious in its workings made it all the more impressive.
But so much advance has been made in so short a time as fifteen years, toward incorporating kindly concern for the young and a desire to keep them in the path of rectitude within the process of government itself, that in Chicago alone ( 81) twenty-four probation officers, as they are called, are paid from the public funds. The wayward boy is committed to one of these for another chance as a part of the procedure of the court. He is not merely released by an act of clemency so magnificent and irrelevant as to dazzle him with a sense of the aldermanic power, but he is put under the actual care of a probation officer that he may do better. He is assisted to keep permanently away from the police courts and their allied penal institutions.
In one of the most successful of these courts, that of Denver, the Judge who can point to a remarkable record with the bad boys of the city, plays a veritable game with them against the police force, he and the boys undertaking to be good without the help of repression, and in spite of the machinations of the police. For instance, if the boys who have been sentenced to the State Reform School at Golden, deliver themselves without the aid of the Sheriff whose duty it is to take them there, they not only vindicate their manliness and readiness "to take their medicine," but they beat the sheriff who belongs to the penal machinery out of his five-dollar fee. Over this fact they openly triumph -- a simple example, perhaps, but significant of the attitude ( 82) of the well-intentioned toward repressive gov ernment.
The Juvenile Courts are beginning to take a really parental attitude towards all dependent children, although for years only those orphans who had inherited at least a meagre property were handed over to a public guardian.
Those whose parents had left them absolutely nothing were allowed to care for themselves -- as if the whole body of doctrine contained in the phrase, "there is no wealth but life," had never entered into the mind of man.
Because these courts are dealing with the children in their social and everyday relations they have made the astounding discovery that even a penniless child needs the care and defense of the State.
The schools for Reform are those which are inaugurating the most advanced education in agriculture and manual arts. A bewildered foreign parent comes from time to time to HullHouse, asking that his boy be sent to a school to learn farming, basing his request upon the fact that his neighbor's boy has been sent to "a nice green, country-place." It is carefully explained that the neighbor's boy was bad, and was arrested and sent away because of his badness. After much conversation, the disappointed parent sometimes understands, but he often goes away ( 83) shaking his head, and some such words as these issue: "I have been in this country for five years, and have never gotten anything yet." At other times it is successfully explained to the man that the city assumes that he is looking out for himself and taking care of his own boy, but it ought to be possible to make him to see that if he feels that his son needs the education of a farm school, that it lies with him to agitate the subject and to vote for the man who will secure such schools. He might well look amazed, were this advice tendered him, for these questions have never been presented to him to vote upon. Because he does not eagerly discuss the tariff or other remote subjects which the political parties present to him from time to time we assume that he is not to be trusted to vote on the education of his child, although there is no doubt that the one thing his ancestors decided upon, from the days of bows and arrows, was the sort of training each one should give his son.
The fine education that is given to a juvenile offender may indicate a certain compunction on the part of the State. Quite as men formerly gloried in warfare and now apologize for it, as they formerly went out to spoil their enemies and now go to civilize them, so civil governments, while continuing to maintain prisons, have become ( 84) more or less ashamed of them, and are already experimenting in better ways to elevate and reform criminals than by the way of violence and imprisonment. We have already said in America that neither a gallows nor an unmitigated prison shall ever exist for a child.
