The number of persons in prison has fallen from 12,000 to 5,000, and juvenile delinquents and offenders have declined from 14,000 to 5,000. This Mr. Lubbock attributes in his address before the Sociological Convention in Paris, October, 1894, to the extension of education. Kindergartens wherever established, have been found not only to directly improve the taste, the habits,—in a word, the character,- of those who attend them, but indirectly to raise the tone of the homes whence these children come. Cleanliness, order, a cheerier, kindlier spirit, and better manners are the fruits of the kindergarten instruction in the humble abodes where these kindergartners live. Boys' clubs, with their libraries, gymnasia, games, and entertainments, promise to transform juvenile life in the city's slums. Crime to many youth is largely a question of athletics. Juvenile gangs have been the out-working of the super-abundant steam with which the young are supplied. The youthful tough is the product of the tenement. The gang can be supplanted by the "club"; and that means not only the proverbial ounce of prevention administered wisely, but the organization of boys for healthful and morally improving purposes. In many neighborhoods in some of our cities once infested with "gangs" of lawless youth are now well-organized clubs, which hold their members to a manly, pure life, allow expression to all their instincts for sport and society, and imbue them with better ambitions. This saves the youth from criminal acts and habits. The "neighborhood libraries" are already being recognized as valuable and potent agencies in reforming and refining youthful life. Esthetic starvation is at the bottom of much of the dime-novel reading hitherto so pernicious in its effects. Put within reach good reading, and you will be surprised to see how eager is the desire for it. All this is genuine remedial work, and the results of it are such as to give promise of reclaiming juvenile life and of saving it from the influences likely to degrade it. We are on the eve of a marked revival of interest in this kind of work in behalf of youth, which needs only patience and systematic prosecution in order to affect its character and assure a brighter destiny.

How prodigious the task of training youth, of saving and shaping the young life on which the future weal of society depends! The trend of opinion and feeling is clear, strong, and decisive that this is work that must be taken up with courage and consecration. The air rings with the proof that social problems are supreme.

We are

our brothers' keepers. The condition of the submerged tenth concerns the other nine-tenths. We need to know how "the other half lives." We want an awakened civic and social conscience. Evil is wrought for want of thought. Exposure of wrong is a duty. To prevent the huddling of the poor in unhealthy rooms, to protect childhood and youth from the corrupting influence of bad literature, to provide for them the restraints, the recreations, the social training, the broader and brighter life that we can, if we be intelligent and earnest, is our immediate obligation. This is work which has about it a charm those who have taken it up speak of with glowing faces; and it will give us what Ruskin says he has long pleaded for, “a clean country, a beautiful people." The work of the twentieth century will culminate in a reconstructed society in new cities wherein flourish righteousness, peace, and plenty, and where youthful life shall be their pride and glory.

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE STATE TO JUVENILE DELINQUENTS.

BY M. G. FAIRBANKS, CONNECTICUT.

First, it may be well to take a retrospective view, and note the attitude which the God-fearing and law-abiding portions of the human race have ever held toward matters pertaining to the training and educating of children; and consider also that, as States and nations have become more and more civilized and Christianized, what has been the progress of human thought, what the ever-increasing conviction with regard to the duties and obligations which a State or community should assume and fulfil for the protection, training, and educating of its children and youth.

The earliest record of thought given to this subject is found in the Mosaic code of civil laws given to the Hebrew State. In their statutes mention is often made of the training and teaching of the children (as in Deut. iv. 8-10). By statute it was made a duty to teach the children the laws of God, and of their country as well, to the end that they might become good citizens, and the nation's life be perpetuated in prosperity.

Our Saviour inculcated the same great duty, when he said, "Suffer the children to come unto me, and forbid them not." How the primitive Church interpreted this command may be understood from the words of exhortation concerning the care of orphans.

Chastel, in his "Charities of the Primitive Churches," says, "Deserted, destitute, exposed children were in all respects to be cared for as the poor orphans."

In the admirable work entitled "The State of Prison and Childsaving Institutions in the Civilized World," by E. C. Wines, D.D., LL.D., we find much of the early history of child-saving work. He writes of the Emperor Constantine that he began the work of child-saving after his conversion from Paganism to Christianity. Numerous decrees were issued by him with the intention of assuring to them a paternal and protecting tutelage.

Concerning the supreme importance to the State of child-saving work, Dr. Channing said in 1841: "Society has hitherto employed its energy chiefly to punish crime. It is infinitely more important to prevent it. What I want is, not merely that society shall protect itself against crime, but that it shall do all that it can to preserve its exposed members from crime, and so to do for the sake of those members as for its own. It ought not to breed monsters in its own bosom. If it will not use its prosperity to save the ignorant and poor from the blackest vice, then it must suffer, and deserves to suffer, from crime.

"If the child be left to grow up in utter ignorance of duty, of its Maker, of its relations to society, and to grow up in an atmosphere of profaneness and intemperance, and in the practice of falsehood and fraud, let not the community complain of its crime. It has quietly looked on and seen him, year after year, arming himself against its order and peace; and who is most to blame when at last he deals the guilty blow? A moral care over the tempted and ignorant portion of the State is a primary duty of society."

In "Ginx's Baby" occur these lines, pregnant with truth: "While prisons and criminal laws and prison discipline call loudly for reform, and appeal strongly to benevolent hearts and wise heads, the best reform that can be secured in reference to penitentiaries is to deplete them of their inmates by saving the young from vicious and criminal courses. The real problem is not so much to improve prisons as to abolish them, not so much to make them better as to make them useless."

These citations simply remind us that the history of the past affords not only the precedent, but the basis, for well-founded conviction that the State, by civil laws, should not only make it possible for children of all ages, without reference to age, race, or condition, to receive proper care, protection, restraint, training, discipline, and a liberal education, moral, religious, and intellectual, but should make it impossible for a child to be born and reared in our enlightened land without receiving the same.

To what extent the State has a right to interpose in the family relations, for the benefit of the child, has ever been a question upon which legal authorities have to some extent disagreed.

It was said by Plutarch that "Lycurgus resolved the whole business of legislation into the bringing up of youth. He looked upon it as the greatest and most glorious work of the lawgiver. He considered the children not so much the property of their parents as of the State, and that each man was born not so much for himself as for his country."

To-day we may confidently affirm that the most enlightened minds and the most eminent legal authorities agree that, in the light of Christianity and of an advanced civilization, the State is under obligation to see that the child of the poorest citizen be so restrained and disciplined, and so instructed in the great principles of right and wrong, and receive such an education, as shall fit him to discharge intelligently the duties and responsibilities of good citizenship.

It is justly claimed that parents having adequate means should give to their children a liberal education. Shall the State, with ample means, give to those children over whom she has assumed control less than a truly liberal fitting for life's duties? Should the State measure her duty by the inability of the poor?

The time to begin the work of child-saving is long before any specially wayward act is committed; it is with the prattling child who is allowed, for any reason whatever, to fall into the company of vicious associates.

In a Sunday-school journal for March, 1895, the following statement was made: "The civil authorities of several countries of Europe have been gradually led to recognize that there are many cases in which the State must take the training of children upon itself.

"In 1802 Robert Peel secured the act regulating the work of chil

dren. In 1839 Russia and Austria did the same. France followed in 1841. A step long in advance of that was the admission of the principle of forfeiture of parental control, under given conditions, by Russia, Poland, Portugal, Italy, and Switzerland. The exercise of parental power has in Germany become subject to the supervision of a public guardian. England claims in the name of the queen, through the lord chancellor, a control above that of a father. Spain acknowledged this principle in 1889."

A republican government must see to it that the boys who are to make the men who are to make the laws are so educated as to cast their votes intelligently, that the girls who are to be the mothers of the sons are tenderly cared for, fully protected, wisely directed, and liberally educated. We shall fall behind other forms of government if we fail to lead in this work rather than follow.

The measure of the interposition that the State may rightfully extend in behalf of the child is doubtless that which is adequate to give to every child such moral, religious, and educational advantages as are necessary for its truest development. The State is subserving its own interests, as well as those of the child, when it provides that which is withheld, because of the poverty, ignorance, viciousness, or blunted moral sensibilities of the parent. This being true, certainly it is the unquestionable duty of the State to care especially for juvenile delinquents, who are more to be pitied than blamed. They are the product of untoward circumstances, of evil environments. And some are under the curse which visits the iniquities of the parents upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

Dr. Wines expressed a truth not yet sufficiently recognized, when he said, "The two master forces which have heretofore opposed, and still oppose, the progress of prison discipline and reform in our country are political influence and instability of administration, which stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect." This is none the less true of our juvenile reformatories, where the management is more or less controlled by political interests. Politics should never have any controlling hand whatever in child-saving, reformative, or prison work.

In the United States the method generally adopted in caring for juvenile delinquents is through State institutions. Would it not have been better, had the form so uniformly adopted in England been more prevalent with us,-private corporative management, combined