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Show THE JUDGE AND THE BOY. i . The recovery from the serious injuries which f Judge Lindsay of Denver received when a fast pas- j " senger train of the Chicago and Northwestern left , ! the track wili be welcome news to many who never had the pleasure of meeting him. It was he who founded the first juvenile or children's court, in v ' 1S99, to deal with conditions of j-outhful crime with which he had grown familiar while county judge in " Denver. Before his time the only method of treat ing wayward and vicious boys and girls was to send them to a reformatory, which was in practice simply : ; a. jail. The judge's experience on the bench satis fied him that the word "reformatory" applied to such institutions was a misname. Ninty per cent of the children that came before his predecessors on ' ' the bench were sent to the reformatory, where they were not reformed. So far in his ten years as court ' judge he has sent very lew bojTs to the reformatory. A case which he deems incorrigable he commits as ; a last resort. He makes out the necessary papers, gives them to the boy and tells him to go to the In dustrial School. Strange to say, not one of these ' , boys have "gone back" on the judge. Mr. Lindsay has a paternal talk with the youngster, then puts him on his honor and sends him unguarded to the school. He carries with him his committal and de-;.., de-;.., livers it to the warden who receives him. ; ; When the police bring a little incorrigable into l ' the court, the judge talks over the case, finds out the reason for the little fellow's misdemeanor, and ;' gives him advice. Then the young prisoner is given a card containing a long list of questions which must be answered every week and signed by the boy's teacher. Every Saturday the boy must 0 to ::":; : -y . s " the judge with his card and together they go over the questions and discuss hopes and fears. With some of the worst urchins he tells them that if they are not good, another judge man be appointed ap-pointed in his place and then he and they will have a hard time of it. This appeal to the little fellows rarely fails in producing .good results. In short, "Ben" Lindsay is a good judge of the human nature na-ture of the boy, and this may account for his success. suc-cess. The judge has written a readable book, to which he gave the catchy name the "Beast and the Jungle. Jun-gle. ' ' He is also the writer of a series of biographical biographi-cal articles now appearing in a leading American magazine. Another man who seems to know something about boys is Mr. George Martin, secretary of the Massachusetts Massa-chusetts State Board of Education, who has recently recent-ly contributed an excellent article on "City Boys" to the New York Tribune. Mr. Martin goes back to first principles and attempts to explain what a boy is by nature; that is what a boy wants to do as a result of inherited instincts from a thousand or more ancestors. He writes: "The boy finds himself under an irresistible impulse to measure himself against every external force, to test every limb, every organ, every function to its limit, and to do this every day. He gains in strength and abilitj', in power to handle himself to direct his energy in the most effective way. He comes gradually gradu-ally to learn his limitations, how far he can go in matching himself against the forces of nature, how much is worth while in his struggle for supremacy, what is the margin of safety in the risks he takes. All this, Mr. Martin assures us, is an essential element ele-ment for sucessful manhood. In the country it is comparatively easy for the boy to "obey his instincts. In this city he finds them thwarted on every side. There are trees,, but he must not climb them; stones, but he must not throw them; flowers, but he must not pluck them. That his natural instincts thus confined should burst out sometimes, and often in wrong directions, is only what we may expect. It is the duty of the city, Mr. Martin contends, to give the boy some wholesome whole-some substitute for the birthright of which it has deprived him. If this were done, he thinks there would be little need for children's courts. Before Judge Lindsay introduced his methods of dealing with incorrigable boys or Mr. Martin propounded pro-pounded his theory, Mr. W. L. Gill experimented with his "School City" in Philadelphia, and Mr. Ernest Thompson-Seton organized his nature study class for young "toughs." But all of these expedients expedi-ents are doomed to failure. With the passing of Judge Lindsay, the personality of the movement and the movement itself will perish. The experiments of Gill, of Thompson-Seton and the alluring theories of Martin are impracticable of accomplishment. Human nature has not changed since the days of Solomon. His proverbs, he himself tells us, are the fruits of his most profound meditations and of his most excellent wisdom. In the proverbs of Solomon we find rules for the conduct of persons in all conditions con-ditions ;-for kings, courtiers and men of the world; for fathers, mothers, servants and children. And here is what he advises for the boy: "Train up a boy in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." (Prov. XXII. 6.). And if the parents will not train up a child in the way it should go, then the school and the Church must do it. |
