_United States._--In the words of a report made in 1878 by F. B. Sanborn, secretary of the American Social Science Society, "America can justly plume herself upon the work accomplished by her juvenile reformatories since their inauguration down to the present time." The first in point of date and still the most considerable of the reformatories in the United States is that founded in 1825, thanks to the unwearied efforts of the great American publicist and philanthropist Edward Livingston, which now has its home on Randall's Island in New York City. In the following year a reformatory of the same class was founded in Boston, and another in the year after in Philadelphia. All were intended to receive criminal youth. There are state reformatories now in almost all the states of the Union, and those for juvenile adults in New York and Massachusetts have attracted world-wide attention, aiming so high and with such an elaboration of means that they deserve particular description. The great state reformatory establishment of Elmira, New York, called into existence in 1889 with the avowed aim of compassing the reformation of the criminal by new processes, partakes of the system involved in the treatment of juvenile offenders. It was based upon the principle that crime ought to be attacked in its beginnings by other than ordinary punitive and prison methods. Under this view, the right of society to defend itself by punishment was denied, and it was held that a youthful offender was more sinned against than sinning. It was urged that his crime, due largely to inherited defects, mental or physical and vicious surroundings, was not his own fault, and he had a paramount claim to be treated differently by the state when in custody. The state was not justified in using powers of repression to imprison him in the usual mechanical hard and fast fashion and then return him to society, no better, possibly worse, than before; it was bound to regenerate him, to change his nature, improve his physique, and give him a new mental equipment, so that when again at large he might be fitted to take his place amongst honest citizens, to earn his living by reputable means and escape all temptation to drift back into crime. This is the plausible explanation given for the state reformatory movement, which led to the creation on such costly and extensive lines of Elmira, and of Concord in Massachusetts, a cognate establishment. There is very little penal about the treatment, which is that of a boarding school; the education, thorough and carried far, includes languages, music, science and industrial art; diet is plentiful, even luxurious; amusements and varied recreation are permitted; well stocked libraries are provided with entertaining books; a prison newspaper is issued (edited by an inmate). Physical development is sedulously cultivated both by gymnastics and military exercises, and the whole course is well adapted to change