This was the time when prison reformers were crazy about preventing personal contamination, and the régime as applicable to those of tender years did not please all. M. De Metz, the founder of Mettray, that famous agricultural colony for French juveniles, was a magistrate of advanced ideas, who had been sent by his Government to examine and report upon the cellular régime as recently established in the United States. He came back satisfied that it was wholly unsuited for youthful offenders. He much preferred the associated life for them as it obtained in Holland and Belgium, and he strongly advised its adoption. In 1839 he planned a _société paternelle_,--a farm school in fact, to receive young criminals and if possible amend them. His motto was “the moralisation of the man by the cultivation of the soil,” and he set himself to collect friends to put his ideas into effect. With another philanthropist, who was a landed proprietor, he secured and endowed the institution known as Mettray on an estate near Tours. Good progress was made, and in 1840 a first house was built, in which forty juveniles were received as into a private family, the head of which was the “father” or master, who was always with his boys, exercising parental control. He knew them by heart; their character and disposition. Each family (there are now twenty houses) is distinct, and has no connection with any other except during work, recreation or divine service. The houses stand in their own ground; they are three stories, divided into living rooms, studies and dormitories. Mettray was planned on a sound basis, and attained such excellent results that it has been made a model for general imitation, especially in France, where many such agricultural colonies are now to be found, all on the family principle, with numerous houses and extensive well-managed farms. The results obtained at Mettray have been highly satisfactory. Fully half of those who have passed through it have taken to honest labor, as artisans or in the fields. Many have entered the army and the Government service, earning decorations and promotion. A large percentage have married and become respectable citizens. Some hostile critics--notably the Russian Prince Kropotkine, who spent some time in various prisons--speak ill of the Mettray system as cruel in its discipline, but general opinion in France does not condemn it, and admits a great debt of gratitude to M. De Metz, in which indeed the whole world joins. Mettray was the starting point in the movement towards child rescue and the systematic efforts for the protection and reclamation of the juvenile with a natural bias towards crime, so often encouraged to evil deeds by the misfortune of birth and heredity, the evil influence of home surroundings, or worse still the absence of good example or moral training.