but into the fashioning of a useful utensil from a block of wood must inevitably go the sum total of individuality which has been developed within him. As Mr. Hilles has pointed out, the embryonic carpenter or mason might find in the farm an occupation which would engender a dislike for all work, when manual training would give him a mental stimulus. A close study of his individual aptitudes is needed to start him right.

The chief factor in realizing this ideal of individual consideration is the constant daily association of a child with an interested teacher. Personal influence has no peer in the work of building character and implanting ideals. Even for schools whose facilities afford no opportunity for anything but the humdrum of the classroom, steady contact with an inspiring teacher may do much for his wards. Realizing this and conscious of defective enforcement of the truancy laws, especially with children who most need enlightened school training, the Buffalo Charity Organization Society has begun to ask each month from the public and parochial schools a report upon the school attendance of all children who have applied to the society for assistance. To this end we are sending to the schools each month from our records a list of children enrolled there. We have determined that hereafter the giving of relief to a family shall be at least influenced, and some day, we hope, absolutely guided, by the regularity of the children's attendance at school.

One danger we may perhaps point out in closing. The school can be a training place, but must not be in any sense a substitute for the home. The educational process in fitting the child for his own best work is essentially selfish, a tendency which in a normal home is counteracted by the home life. But with the child whose home is a mockery and a sham, the school must in some way give with its education those ideals of the home, serenity, good comradeship and service, which he has missed.

CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: Following this discussion of the paper by Mr. Lee, there is provided by the program a general discussion in which any person who desires may take part. The speakers are limited to five minutes each and the chair will have to enforce that rule.

REV. S. R. CALTHROP, of Syracuse: I have been asked to say a word with regard to our Boys' Club. Prevention is better than cure, and it is better to take an incipient wild boy and make him decent than to try to get him after he has gone where we don't want him to go. The Syracuse Boys' Club this summer was authorized by the city to use the old reservoir for bathing. We got a raft and put it on there and made dressing-rooms, procured a boat and paid a swimming teacher, and we gave permits to 1,950 boys. A gentleman who lived near the reservoir was indignant at bringing the riffraff of the city close by his home. He watched the boys and after a short time he recanted. He said the difference between those boys as they used to be and as they now are was amazing; the boys used to go along the streets blaspheming and talking indecently all the time; now he hears them say what a splendid time they had in the bath. Now, the Boys' Club, it seems to me, takes hold of the delinquent before he is a delinquent, gets hold of your degenerate before he degenerates. Our club has a membership of nearly two hundred in its regular home. We have our club-house open every night in the winter, spring and fall, and in the summer we provide as much base-ball as possible, and as much swimming as we possibly can. We provided swimming for nearly all the boys in Syracuse of the legal age to swim.

Now, I want to say, in the first place, with regard to the eagerness with which certain persons I know give money to help our work, that I feel they give that money as a gift to God and man, and it is magnificent. By the way, I was asked to write to some influential people in Syracuse whom I didn't know. I wrote a long description of the things I told you, and I sent it to those people I didn't know. I wrote several letters which took me a long time, and I have yet to receive the courtesy of a single line from any one of them. Now, some of those people are really philanthropic people. It only shows that they do not understand the situation. They are just as much responsible as I am for the neglected boys of Syracuse. Their duty is just as plain as mine; and we ask them if they can not do this personally, to help us to do it, and it is their duty before God and man to do it.

I trust some day I shall be able to shame some people in Syracuse into helping us.

The Mothers' Club ought to be represented here. They have kept a vacation school open for the small children and a magnificent success it has been. It is a pity some one can not speak adequately for them.

CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: Any further discussion?

MRS. D. L. COVILL, of New York city: I wanted to speak of a home that has been established by the Children's Aid Society for neglected children preparatory to placing them in permanent homes. We have a home that can accommodate twenty-five children, our families are never large. We employ in the home refined and gentle nurses. We take children from the streets and from poor homes and put them under this influence, and the change that comes to them is wonderful. Three weeks ago I brought to New York, from a distance of more than three hundred miles, two little orphan children who had been living with an insane grandmother. They were cousins, about two years of age. The only clothing they ever had consisted of little slips. Having no shoes, their feet were hard and callous. I thought how can I travel three hundred miles with them in that situation; but when I dressed them up in white, with little white shoes and stockings, and cunning little bonnets, they traveled admiring their clothes to New York. Now, I wish you could see those little girls. They are beautiful. The influence of the home has been such that they are as gentle as the very gentlest children.

We have a little boy who had never slept in a bed, wouldn't stay in bed, wouldn't lie quiet. He would kick and scream all night, but in two weeks this child was as gentle and sweet as any child could be. Perhaps you think that is not possible; but I wish you could come into the home and see the transformations there accomplished. I should like you to come when you come to the Conference next year and let us show it to you. We give these children the best of food and the best companionship, and it is wonderful to see the change that comes over them when they are placed in this temporary home for children. They come to us so neglected! We place them in better homes. We have placed them in some of the finest homes in

New York. There is a lady who lives in Syracuse who has adopted three of our children; these little neglected ones, you would think they were her own. It is a most inspiring sight to see them. In another city there are four of our children in one home, two brothers and two sisters. It is through the influence of this temporary home that these children have been provided with such homes.

CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: If there is no further discussion I shall call for the next paper, by Judge Wilkin of the Children's Court in Brooklyn. Judge Wilkin expected to be here, but owing to the illness of one of the other judges he was compelled unexpectedly to take the bench himself both yesterday and to-day and to-morrow, so he found it impossible to come and he sent his paper, which Dr. William O. Stillman, of Albany, President of the Children's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children of that city, has kindly consented to read.

DR. STILLMAN: I must ask your indulgence as I am at a disadvantage in reading this paper, as it was given me only twenty minutes before the meeting began.

THE LIFE OF THE STREET AS IT AFFECTS JUVENILE

DELINQUENCY.

It is always a difficult matter to attribute to any one particular cause any special effect, although it is the usual way to select some particular cause and then charge up against it certain consequent effects. The surroundings of a boy who has the liberty of the streets, and the relationships, all contribute to a result which affects his after life and being. Let us, for a moment, consider the precedent conditions.

Take, for instance, the case of a boy of 12 years of age; he may be the son of an immigrant Italian. In the first instance, the father has come to the United States with very little means; he works hard here and saves enough money to send for his wife and children, whom he had left in Italy. They arrive and secure a small place in which to live; it consists, perhaps, of one, two or three rooms. There are the father and mother and three to five, or perhaps seven, children, of whom our boy is one. The father is up early in the morning, snatches a bit of breakfast and

is off to work. Laboring arduously all day long, he returns at night, probably having plodded on foot a long distance from his labor to his home. Certainly, he is in no condition to give instruction to his children, except possibly the primitive instruction along religious lines he remembers from his childhood. The education of the school is unknown to the father; his education as to work is confined almost entirely to the handling of pick and shovel, and were he physically able and mentally competent, the fatigue of the day incapacitates him, and consequently the boy receives nothing in that way from his father. His mother is occupied with her household duties, for, in addition to caring for her children, providing food for them and cooking the meals for the husband, etc., she probably is trying to add to the family income by providing for one or two boarders. She not only does not have time to give attention to the boy, but in fact the place is so crowded that there is not room for the boy and he is pushed out into the world. In my experience in the Children's Court I have found a great many of these cases, where the boys have been arrested by the police or brought into court charged with minor offenses, simply because they preferred any place to the home, and because their parents were unable to do anything for them. The influence of the street for this boy is of one character. Take the case of another boy, whose father is engaged in some business and whose time is taken up, when not at his employment, with companions who while away the time gambling in near-by saloons or resorts, and whose topic of conversation at home is along the line of his gambling habits. Not only that, the language of this man at home is of such a character that the boy constantly hears the worst oaths and the most objectionable language in his home, indecent epithets being bandied between the father and mother in such a way that even an endearing term from the boy to his friends in the street is couched in indecent and profane language. This boy drifts to the streets, the parents at home feeling that they are performing properly their parental duties..

Another boy is the result of an unfortunate mésalliance, his father being unknown and his mother marrying after his birth. He is a continual accusation against the mother, menaces the peace of the home and is a nuisance to the father.