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LL OF US engaged in children's work realize that we have fallen short of satisfactory business methods, largely in the way in which we keep and handle our records. The lack of business system in a great deal of the work means not only disorder and frequent error, but a failure to interpret properly to our communities the real work we are doing, for we cannot interpret without facts clearly and definitely kept.

When the public ought to get facts to know at just what points we fall short in helping children to decent living in our communities, we give them instead pleasant and encouraging statements of the work, with pictures of a few illustrative cases to show how much good we are doing.

We do need that kind of optimism, but it should be backed up by the most searching, careful analysis of the work in the form of simple statistical statements. None of us cares to read statistical tables, but we do like to have accurate deductions made from statistics properly kept, and we want to be sure that when our deductions are tested their source will not be found wanting.

This comment is true of private organizations, as well as of public offices. It is, of course, not universally true, but it is true of a large part of children's work done all over the country.

Among the children's agencies, it is particularly necessary that the juvenile. court should be so conducted as to state frequently and effectively its message as to the welfare of the children in the community. This is true because the juvenile court gets the failures of all other agencies the school, the home, the church, the private societies, the neighborhood, the community, and is in itself. a pretty exact index of the forces which make for or against the successful upbringing of children.

The chief reason why the juvenile court

movement is, in so many cities, open to criticism and attack, is because it has failed to take a position of leadership in teaching the community from its own records and its observations at the most strategic point in child-life, what definite conditions need remedy and what agencies should be responsible for their solution.

THE RECORD AND FILING SYSTEM.

Most juvenile court forms are poorly prepared and very irregularly kept. Even when they are well enough indexed to be readily found, the cards and papers are often written over in such a way as to be practically illegible; are allowed to become torn, blotted, or dirty, and altogether present a most unbusiness-like appearance. Business method and system are essential to good work, for successful probation means in large part freedom from the annoyances of poorly arranged clerical work. In those offices which do not have a good system, it will be found a comparatively simple matter to secure, free of charge, the services of some office-supply company, which will be glad to map out a system-in the hope, of course, of securing some portion of the order for its installation. Comparison of the suggestions of several such office-supply companies will usually result in the adoption of a well-conceived system.

Many probation offices are run in the same old-fashioned way in which many courts are run (the records kept in ink in books, the alphabetical index appearing page after page, the first letter only being alphabetically arranged, making it thus impossible to locate John Brown without going through several pages of B's, to discover whether or not he is there. An intelligible system should be run, of course, on the alphabetical cardindex principle, or, when books are used for records of cases, on the loose-leaf principle. That method only insures exact alphabetical order.

All the children handled by the court or probation office should be recorded in a general card index, alphabetically arranged, on which the name and address of each child should appear, together with a reference to the file containing the papers in the case. The various papers in regard to the case of any one child should be kept in one place, and the system of flat-filing in an ordinary correspondence folder is much to be preferred over envelopes or pouches, which have been so commonly used in the courts. The folding and wrapping of papers not only wastes time, but it soils papers and subjects them to greater damage than flatfiling. If these flat files are numbered and kept in numerical order, it is then a simple matter to refer to any case from the number on the alphabetical index card. Such a numerical system of filing has the advantage over an alphabetical file system of enabling each year's accumulation to be transferred to "storage cases," necessitating keeping immediately at hand only the most active current cases, or at most the current year's cases and those of the preceding year.

A system of indexing and filing, such as outlined, is about the simplest which can be devised and has been successfully worked out in several courts after conferences with the representatives of a number of office-systems, all of whom agreed that from the standpoints of timesaving and business efficiency, the system was best adapted to the work of the juvenile court. The system has these manifest advantages: First, the general card index offers a speedy and ready reference to every case at any time before the court; second, the flat-filing system, which can be kept in close proximity in regulation wood or metal filing cases, affords a neat and convenient method for keeping the papers; third, only the active cases, to which frequent reference is made, need be kept immediately accessible.

In one of the largest children's courts in the country the papers are filed, not by either alphabet or number, but under the heading of the place or institution in which the child may be at the time. Thus, to locate Sam Jones, the card index is first consulted, and a long list of memoranda on the card-all a waste of time

shows finally that after having been formerly in the discharge, probation, parental school and other files, he is now under the state school. Going to a heavy drawer, and running through the state school boys, under "J" we find Sam, and out comes a huge manila envelope full of correspondence, notes, cards, reports from teacher and school, court records, and all kinds of papers, helter-skelter, without order, and every time Sam changes his location, his pouch changes its locationwasted time, waste effort, disorder, confusion, lack of business system, such as no up-to-date business house would tolerate for a moment. If this is true of one of our biggest cities where the court has been highly developed, what are the conditions where much less attention has been given the court's business?

SPECIAL INDEXES.

In addition to the system outlined, it is usually necessary in probation offices to have a few special indexes. Certain groups of children under the court's jurisdiction often have to be inquired about. For instance, the question continually comes up in any probation office whether or not Will Jones or Sam Smith is on probation. The answer to the question, which is often asked over the telephone, will ordinarily require a search for Will Jones' or Sam Smith's name in the index and a reference to the file, which would show the disposition in court. However, a card index of all the children on probation, alphabetically arranged, together with the name of the officer in charge of the child, on each card, would, at a glance, answer two important questions: First, as to whether or not Will Jones or Sam Smith is on probation, and second, who is responsible for him. Again, the same question comes up in regard to children in institutions, it being frequently asked over the telephone by some interested inquirer whether or not Sam Jones is in the industrial school. The same kind of a search would ordinarily have to be made in both index and in file to give the answer, while an index of all the children in the industrial school, alphabetically arranged, together with the dates and conditions of their commitments, answers that and related questions at once.

Where such an index of all children in care of the probation office and all children in the various institutions has been kept, it has been found of the greatest benefit in saving time and expediting the work of the probation office. It is not a difficult index to keep up, even in a large court, provided a few minutes' time can be given to it each day by a clerk or stenographer. There are instances, time and again, where needless injustice has been done a child. because "somebody forgot" that he was in the institution, or that he was on probation and needed care. One homeless youngster, ordered placed out in a family, but temporarily sent to an institution, was negelected for two years in the institution because there was no "active index" to show who of the court's charges were there, and the "record" had long since been filed away.

There are often small special indexes of one kind and another, which can be kept with profit. For instance, a list of physicians who will assist in treating the cases of children before the court. Indexes of volunteer officers, interpreters, etc., form a means of ready reference at times when information must be secured in a hurry. The card index is superior even to the loose-leaf book in this connection, because it is always in the same place, whereas the book is frequently misplaced.

JUVENILE COURT STATISTICS.

Comparatively little has been done as yet in juvenile courts in presenting to the public, in intelligible and accurate form, the statistical results of their work.

One of the first essentials is to secure a monthly report from each probation officer, containing the exact record of the children in his care during that month. This is necessary, not only for statistical purposes, but also for the chief probation officer, or the judge, in supervising and summing up the work. The monthly report should show the number of children. in charge of each probation officer the 'first of the month, the number removed during the month and for what reasons the groups of delinquent and and neglected children being treated separately under these heads. It should also show the number of reports made by

children, the number of visits to home and school and other work of the probation officers.

The business of the whole court should also be checked up monthly, in a general report covering its operations, in order to compare its proceedings one month with another to secure an accurate gauge of the delinquency and neglect in the community.

The general report of the court for the month (for that portion dealing with the probation office) should include a summary of the individual probation officers' reports, showing the number of children in charge of the office the first of the month, the number taken on, the number removed, and the total business of the office in children's reports and visits to homes, together with all investigations made during the month. The court exhibit should show the number of cases in court and the method of disposing of them-the number discharged, placed on probation, paroled, committed or fined. A summary statement might profitably include also a monthly census of the children committed by the court. to public and private institutions, made up, of course, very quickly from the special index discussed before.

ANNUAL REPORT.

An annual report is also a desirable vehicle of expression, but only provided it really gives the public an intelligent idea as to what the court has been doing and as to what constitutes the community's child-problem during the specific year in question. The community has no means of knowing how well its efforts for children are succeeding, unless the juvenile court expresses the results in the form of statistical fact. Most annual reports of juvenile courts have been merely pleasant statements of the good work the court is doing, couched in general terms, embellished by a number of pictures, together with a few more or less formidable tables which, on examination, prove to have little or no statistical value. These statements of the court's work are usually expressions of superficial facts, and do not really accomplish the purposes of an annual report, which should be an exact presentation of the business of the court for one year in its relation to previous