and is taught to meet them, guided and directed by loving, understanding parents. An institution should aim to realize the ideal of a good parent, that is, a complete development in body, soul and spirit. For this reason it is very important that we have a high standard of officers to work with the unfortunate children we get. They must be refined, patient, sympathetic, forgiving, and motherly.

They take a mother's place to many

who have not known what true mother-love is.

I shall briefly outline to you the training the delinquent girl receives at the Massachusetts State Industrial School, where we aim to carry out the ideals mentioned above.

After her arrival at Lancaster, each girl is given what to many a girl is her first real bath and a shampoo. She is then taken to a room which she is told is her own. She does not have to share it with anyone else, as each girl rooms alone, and thus possesses a little sanctuary which she can adorn with picture post-cards and other things dear to a girl's heart, and where she can go, when she chooses, to fight out her battles with herself. When she goes downstairs again she finds that there is a living-room tastefully furnisht and having a piano; there is a large sunny dining-room containing small tables.

The girls are made to feel a pride in these cottage homes that have adopted them, and are taught simple, inexpensive, effective ways of making cottages attractive, with the hope that they will later carry into their own homes suggestions received at Lancaster. It is imprest upon the girls that economy plays a very important part in successful home-making, and that to be a thoro, economical housekeeper is an end every girl should seek to attain. Their kitchen training is one of the most important features, and girls frequently come to the administration building to display with great pride some sample of culinary efforts which they have accomplisht. Besides being taught to cook, the girls are taught laundry-work (everything is done by hand in order better to equip them to become homemakers themselves). They are taught also how to make their own clothes. Our girls work out-of-doors on the farm three or four months of the year. We have done an increasing amount of outside work during the last three years. This has been of great physical and moral benefit to the girls.

A close attention is given to the individual needs of each girl in her school work, and the academic and industrial work are closely allied. They are taught to figure the cost of preparing a meal, or making garments to wear. Physiology and hygiene are brought out in connection with the discussion of ingredients of which things are made. Nature-study and geography are correlated in the study of production. The value of money and its uses, the cost of supplies-food and material values-are all taught. A class in home economics, where practical talks and demonstrations are made, we find of great value especially to those about to be paroled from the school. This preparation for the new life they are about to face and

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preparation for a new and strange environment lessen the probable failures after they leave the institution.

We have toucht on the industrial and academic training. Besides this they receive moral and religious training. A priest and minister come to the school weekly for services and instruction. Aside from this teaching the precepts and examples of those with whom the child comes in daily touch is of the greatest value.

We have a resident physician, a dentist, and oculist who make regular visits. We believe with the Greeks, "A healthy mind in a healthy body."

A thoro physical examination is made of each girl when she enters the school, and physical defects are remedied as far as possible, as they prevent the mind from that concentration of effort so necessary for self-improvement. A Wassermann test is made of every girl coming into the institution, and a segregation is made of all girls suffering from syphilis. These girls are given a three-year treatment of mercury and iodide.

Our great function, however, is the regeneration of individuals thru character-reconstruction. We aim to analyze character and to find the cure of each individual's shortcomings by the application of the particular remedy needed for every weakness. Study, by a field worker, is made of the environmental surroundings, which is of great assistance in determining how much that has contributed to the condition of each respective character. The causes being removed (by the change of environment or whatnot), we aim to fill their minds with wholesome things and to fit our girls again to take their places in society as respectable members-law-abiding, self-respecting, and self-supporting "as human assets rather than liabilities."

Our results show that 65 per cent of all the girls committed to us are living respectably at the age of twenty-one. Some girls are ready to be paroled in one year, others in two or three years, according to mentality and behavior. The matron and superintendent decide when a girl's name is to be given to the trustees to be voted upon as one able to take care of herself in the community. When this times comes, a trunk containing an outfit is given the girl and she goes forth in a happy mood. Her character has been developt, her standards of living raised.

DISCUSSION

JESSIE B. COLBURN, president, Association of Women Principals of Public Schools, New York N.Y.-For several years the women principals of public schools in New York City have felt that the question of the delinquent girl must be faced and some solution found. In the effort to do this intelligently, we women have during the past year or two been gathering figures, studying instances, and consulting as to effective means of attacking the problem, and after many conferences, we have askt that our public-school system shall include a country cottage school where these girls may be placed, free from the stigma which attaches to an institution commitment, and free too from the academic drudgery which so often makes school hateful to girls, of this type. Let the girl do house

work and learn to make a home; if she takes to it, let her do sewing and embroidery; but do not force this sedentary work with the needle upon her if she has no taste for it. In a special home for girls, everyone should have a private room-her very own. It is her right and a patent aid in character-building. Next in importance comes the home-like dining-room, with its small tables, clean napery, and consequent inculcation of not only the decencies of life, but the pleasant social amenities.

There are three reasons why such a school as this is a crying necessity. Two of these are those which we ordinarily consider: first, the protection of society; and secondly, the saving of the girl herself, who is generally much more sinned against than sinning; the third reason, however, I think the primary one, and it is, in my judgment, far too often overlookt, or at least relegated to the background, when it should have first place in our consideration. I mean the protection of the young and innocent-minded children with whom these unfortunate girls are in daily contact.

Two other points: An absolute essential to the success of such work is that the right type of woman-and it must be a woman-must be found to head the school; the second is that other women, just as carefully selected, must be ready when the girl comes back to the city to enter the struggle of life again, to do the necessary follow-up work.

THE BIG-SISTER MOVEMENT

MRS. SIDNEY C. BORG, JEWISH BIG-SISTER MOVEMENT, NEW YORK, N.Y. The "Big-Sister" societies with whose functions you are undoubtedly somewhat familiar, are attempting to render their assistance to the child in the incipient stage of delinquency and in so doing are hoping ultimately to lessen the need for institutions giving custodial and correctional care.

Few of us are so occupied as to be unable to spare the time for such personal service, and a sympathetic interest often proves the determining factor in a girl's life. The ways in which a "Big Sister" can be helpful can neither be enumerated nor foreseen. The measure of her usefulness is most largely dependent upon the subordination of the thought of charity to a genuine feeling of interest and comradeship.

The work is chiefly preventive; it is not so much a problem of reforming girls who have gone a long way on the erring path, as an effort to prevent them from ruining their lives beyond recall.

Personal influence, the human touch, as I have said before, can become strong influences for good, and these are qualities which we all possess in a measure. Further, it is not on the child alone that this influence must be exercised, for, as Mr. Coulter has so aptly stated in his book entitled The Children in the Shadow, the real delinquent is the parent and not the child. It is therefore to the parents that the "Big Sister" must turn and emphasize the weight of their responsibility. But the parents, unfortunately, are frequently unable to carry the burden alone, hence to us falls the moral obligation of preventing these children from passing irrevocably into the depths of degradation and disease.

Since we initiated this work a few years ago, we have been able to assist approximately 650 girls, many of whom are under our constant supervision

and others to whom we return at frequent intervals for a friendly chat or a word of advice.

It has been said that it is more blessed to give than to receive. Those who stretch out the helping hand of a sister to these young unfortunates open up to them a new world, and receive in return the priceless blessing of the deepening and quickening of their own spiritual lives.

ORGANIZED CHARITY AND THE DELINQUENT

SIEGFRIED GEISMAN, SUPERINTENDENT, BROOKLYN HEBREW ORPHAN ASYLUM, BROOKLYN, N.Y.

During the recent Shakespeare revival, lips youthful and mature uttered the bard's immortal lines: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances."

Applying this metaphor, we sit in review upon this motley throng, and only after some effort do we detect its components, some standing forth in bold relief by virtue of salient characteristics, others mere mass, part and parcel of that great, apparently indivisible, indistinguishable background. And yet of these how many start forth blithely, how many, because of inherent defect or the compelling force of untoward circumstances, drop by the wayside, footsore, weary, despondent, despairing! Aye, at this very moment, two children are being born into the world, the one of goodly parentage, eagerly awaited, tenderly watcht over, properly provided for; the other, a compulsory addition to an already overstockt family, a mere drag, necessitating the loss of pay for several days on the part of a tired, careworn mother.

The development of urban centers, creating new situations of especial difficulty, also complicated hitherto simple problems. Amid rural or village environments, where one had lived in close knowledge, if not in direct contact, with the other, the demand for financial aid was easily met. But in cities private help, the assistance that neighbor renders to neighbor, is inadequate and desultory, hopelessly incapable of dealing with any but surface phenomena.

The erring mother presents, in all likelihood, a more serious question. Disintegrating homes require skilled care; but, for the welfare of society, it is essential that the strongest forces be marshaled so that, by means of the cement of human love, lasting buttresses and bulwarks may be reared. Tho the delinquent father and mother should have a measure of our attention, yet we must apply ourselves especially to the children. They are thoughtless, unmoral perhaps, callous to argument, reason, or love; they include too, the imbecile, the moron, all those dwelling eternally in the gloom, feebly groping their way in a world too full of obstacles, too bizarre for a simple, childlike comprehension and appreciation. List them, if

you will, under the categories of the court, as the truant, the gangster, the sneak thief, the drug fiend. Who are his parents? Are they possibly not the delinquent rather than he? What are his home surroundings? Is the body politic perhaps not more criminal than he, in permitting such conditions in our wealthy urban centers?

Some years ago we were appalled at the statistics of children who came to school each morning without a suitable, or some times any, breakfast. Now and then we are set aghast when we are confronted with the findings of physicians who speak of the stupendous number of pupils suffering from physical defects of one sort or another. Add to these causes the chasm between the Americanized child and the alien parent, the latter continuing in the New World his fixt habits of life in total ignorance of American ways. We admit that among our American children, also, respect for law and order, reverence and obedience, are neither inborn nor inculcated. May I suggest that, in the case of the truant, greater blame and severer responsibility be fixt on the delinquent parent. I am deeply conscious of the splendid efforts of our so-called parental or truant schools. I equally realize that they attempt to render, in a way, the work which our public schools fail to extend to many; that they emphasize manual training, supervised play, etc. The schools need a total reorganization, a great humanizing, a broadening and extension. The school year must be extended, the vacation limited to the hottest season, possibly the month of July. Of course, there will be some variance in the work accomplisht during the summer months, more of the time being devoted to manual work, to domestic science, to nature-study, to excursions to points of scenic beauty, historic association, etc. There must be additional playgrounds. It surely has occurred to you what scanty provision our cities make for recreation. In the days of Greece and Rome, more stress was placed upon the amusement of the public. There were festivals without number, games, races, in fine every opportunity was embraced for a public festival. The children. of the wealthy today have their amusements, their extraneous instruction in music, dancing, etc., while the children of the poor are relegated to the streets and worse. The boy must be somewhere between school hours and school hours. Let him be in the streets, if there is absolutely no other place, rather than have him disappear from view entirely.

Where can the girl of the working mother seek her recreation? The surprise to me often is that so many preserve their native purity and goodness rather than that so many go astray. Are there then no delinquents among the wealthy, may be your proper question? There surely are, but public agencies are rarely called upon to deal with them; their record does not fill our pages, and in their case, too, we would frequently be forst to ascribe their condition to wreckt homes.

I discust the entire problem a short time ago with one of the best-known judges of our juvenile court. He made the rather cheering statement that