guilty under this act, and so long as such person shall comply therewith to the satisfaction of the court the sentence imposed may be suspended."

No other feature of the whole system is so much an innovation, or so much an evidence of the strength of modern sentiment. It justifies our hope that soon we shall be able in a hundred respects to construct and reconstruct apparatus for dealing with the juvenile delinquent entirely on the basis of utility and common sense and independent of useless traditions either in principle or method. 8. The Court and Private Interest. "Every reform," says Emerson in his Essay on History, "was once a private opinion, and when it shall be private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age." It is too easy to get into the beaten path of things. It is easy enough to get out of it also, but to only the few who hardly find content in the beaten path. It is the private opinion, the conviction of such spirits that insistently makes its way into the life of others in the group, that formulates itself in Juvenile Courts, and new laws and probation systems. The legal protession at the beginning set itself against the reform almost by necessity, as did the police. Both are accustomed to look for fault and delinquency and crime; the child-saver is looking for everything else. Individuals with the teaching and the saving spirit wherever they happened to be, espoused this cause. Clubs with energy and means to expend, judges who saw the error of fitting the child into adults' clothing, charities associations and children's societies of all sorts added their private conviction, bore the brunt of the reform and the construction and the expense until such time as private opinion should be "private opinion again" and everywhere. Such is the general history of the movement. Balls, bazaars, fairs, subscriptions, petitions, publication-all sorts of influence have been brought to bear wherever necessary in order to legalize private opinion into public institution. Even now the State proclaims its only partial conversion in failing to provide adequate means for the management of the system. Probation officers must yet be privately paid, the expense of caring for children in many cases is likewise neglected, surely, in view of ceaseless waste and misexpenditure of public moneys, not for lack of funds, but for lack of inclination.

Yet we can conceive of nothing so fortunate as all this. It is the cause that attracts to itself strong advocates who are willing to crusade for it, who find opposition and in meeting it find their cause growing upon them and giving them a great message, that finally is founded substantially. The judges and the lawyers who opposed once are the strongest advocates for the very reason that they know the value of the idea that conquered them. And it is of inestimable worth to have had the advertising of this form of child saving among so many individuals. The Juvenile Court lobby has extended far beyond legislative halls, and the lobbyists. have been actuated by the consciousness of right and the call of

long-suffering childhood. When, even with such rapid development, we grow impatient that juvenile life is made to wait upon red tape and undue conservatism, we may be quieted with the thought that there is nothing to fear so much as a movement getting beyond its average observers, or becoming crystallized into a form to be laid aside because men have not seen it in the process of crystallization. Or when we are tempted to think of the unforgivable crime of not having distinguished between the juvenile delinquent and the adult criminal through the centuries, it is well to reflect that it is the appreciation of the enormity of this very offence that has made this institution one of the most popular and significant in recent history, and in a comparatively brief period.

THE PROBATION SYSTEM

1. Origin. The probation system is a Topsy-like creation; it "just grew." How futile for this State or that to claim precedence in this matter, identifying legislative approach to it with origins! When we find the first administrator of the law whose heart and decision registered a protest against clamping the criminal procedure over juvenile life, holding it rigidly in a mold too small and altogether unfitting, we shall have found the source of this mighty flowing. Perhaps that protest and like protests resulted only in the dismissal of the cases in want of alternative possibility, but the legal mind is too keen and merciful and impartial notwithstanding its weaknesses to overlook infringement of law. Revolt is never completed until there is revolt to something as well as away from something. The judge who revolted against sending a child to company with criminals in jail, in that very act proved the existence of the spirit which made him turn about and help to provide for the child's welfare by some means not yet legal. He went beyond the law he was sworn to administer in releasing the child who might be technically guilty of wrong, and he went outside the pale of things legal for a remedy. Either he himself, not as judge but as private citizen, exercised the rights always accorded to greatheartedness, and entered upon a campaign of saving the child to wholeness of life, or he co-operated with those who as private citizens or institutions were committed to such service. "Every reform was once private opinion." Yes, and every reformer a prophet-prophet of gradual acceptance of protests and final formulation and application of something better. The early principle of discernment or lack of discernment, responsibility or lack of responsibility on the part of the child in his act, seen in French and German codes was prophetic of probation. Likewise were the principle of the suspended sentence during satisfactory behavior, the indeterminate sentence, separate confinement of juveniles and adults in prisons and the same thing extended in the establishment of reformatories. Historically, probation has come to us not as one of the series of devices but as a principle; not the isolation of the child from the society he has offended or which has harmed him, but the application of good to him through the direct medium of lives sympathetic to those in the formative period. If we may prophesy, strictly on the basis of the history of child status and child treatment and with a view to the actual turning of the attention of the race back upon its children, we

may allow all sorts of variation in method, unlimited extension in application, and yet insist that in principle, whether we name it probation or patronage or education or religion, we cannot advance-we can be no more than parental in our attitude at best. And that is enough. When we get this sweep of things, how un important it seems whether it was Judge Sanity of the City of Puremont of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts or Judge Kindly of Spotless Town who first informally applied the probation idea to some youngster who was fortunate enough to "get caught swipin' things!"

In the United States probation was operative in some form and to some extent in a number of the older communities before Juvenile Court laws made specific provision for it on a much more extensive plan. New York paroled children to individuals and to the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children for twenty years prior to our present laws. Statutory provision for the step was made in Massachusetts as early as 1878 and 1880, and at least as early as that Michigan covered practically the same. ground through its State Board of Charities and Correction. 1 Illinois and Indiana were both groping for light and relief, experimenting and preparing the way for advanced legislation.

But "probation" has within a half dozen years taken on a very definite character. The impossibility of dealing with the child under the criminal law became so patent to so many people, and especially the disposition of the cases which actually need some oversight became so problematical that some departure was inevitable. It was wrong in principle to simply turn loose the child who had offended. There were no institutions entirely answering the purpose, and the treatment in those institutions which could receive the small minority of the children tried was very expensive and not adequate to any more than the small minority. The whole trend of the day was against "institutions." How would men do? The very thing that not only the Courts and the Boards of Charity and the Child Saving Societies had been seeking more or less consciously, but that the spirit of the age demanded! The Judge could not follow the child as he left the Court, not guilty in a measure that would justify incarceration in jail or detention in a reformatory, but not so guiltless or well environed but that his departure, unguarded and technically vindicated, left a burden on the mind of the Judge. What he could and did do is very aptly expressed by Dr. C. R. Henderson, always in the forefront in the study of the sociology of the delinquent group: "An old proverb ran thus: 'God could not be everywhere, so he made mothers.' The judge cannot be everywhere, so he must have probation officers."

The child is "paroled," released on probation usually for an indefinite period, with the understanding that good conduct will end in his release from probation and the oversight of the Court,

I Charities, Jan. 7, 1905, p. 331.

and that failure to behave properly will make him liable to return to the Court and to final disposition of his case just as if he had not been paroled.

2. Probation Officers. The probation officer, of supreme worth in the system of child-saving, has had to justify himself. At first there was seldom a way made for his appointment, and the public purse-strings are still closely drawn against him. Even Illinois, leader in many respects in the affairs of juvenile delinquents, does not yet pay him as such. The mayor of Chicago details policemen to this duty and the city pays them as policemen. There are also volunteers and still others paid by philanthropic organizations. In a few States his appointment is mandatory and in a few he is paid from the public treasury. In more States no provision whatever is made for his appointment. Others leave it optional. Office is held ordinarily during the pleasure of the appointing body. Often the Court appoints, sometimes the governor does so. In Colorado the appointee must be approved by the State Board of Charities and Corrections. 2 All this uncertainty indicates clearly that we are yet in the experimental stage in this matter, at least in the public mind. It is true that many of the best friends of the system have opposed payment of officers from the public funds on the ground that the qualities necessary in the officers are rarely found in politically dependent men. The same argument would apply with identical strength against the employment of policemen as probation officers. There is basis for this argument certainly in our American public life, but on the other hand this particular movement has not only succeeded in keeping itself from the hands of the spoilsmen, but it has been in actual development and will be in the nature of the case close to the healthy censorship of individual and institutional interest. Therefore, while we may be sceptical about the wisdom of optimistically trusting public officials even in this high task, can we afford not to encourage by decent remuneration the many who voluntarily serve such a cause? They are enough so that among them we may surely find splendidly equipped probation officers. When we have once confessed to ourselves that the only real problem is to keep the political buzzards away from us, we shall find a way to do it. If we cannot check them in the Colorado plan of requiring the approval of the charities organization to the appointment, surely with the backing there is in this popular enterprise we may safeguard ourselves in some other way. At least let us not be guilty of listening to those who insist that we cannot afford to pay probation officers. It does not require an expert accountant, as Judge Lindsey and others have shown us in their reports of the enormous saving of the Court to the State, to convince us that we can afford from that source alone to pay more officers than we need to perform the present functions of the office.

2 "Charities," Jan. 7, 1905, gives a complete list to date of appointing power, terms of appointment, compensation, term of service and scope of powers according to States.