Just a word here about the superintendent: he was a man nearing, I suppose, his sixtieth year. He had held his position for ten or twelve years, and to all intents and purposes was an ideal man for the head of such an institution. In all my dealings with him I found him an honorable and square man. In after months he used the lash on me several times, and always because he thought the offense warranted it, but never in a brutal manner. His great fault lay in not giving the institution his personal supervision, as he should have done. This duty he left to the assistant superintendent, satisfying the conscience of duty done by an occasional round of the cottages and shops. Punishments he delegated usually to the same assistant superintendent. The law said and directed, I have since informed myself, that only the superintendent had this power. This assistant superintendent was a man of the Brockway type, a cold, cruel specimen of a man, a martinet rather than a disciplinarian. All the wrongs ever complained of there were traceable to him--of him more anon. The institution was run on the cottage system. There were several cottages--eight, I believe, in all--scattered about the grounds, sheltering a group of from forty to seventy boys in each. These collections of boys in groups were called families. It was the aim of the officials so to group the inmates that each family would include boys of nearly the same age. This method was soon found impractical, and at the time I entered there was as much as eight years difference in the ages of the boys making up the family to which I was assigned. This grouping has been one of the vicious faults of the reform-school systems of this country, and still exists in some of the schools of the present day. I also found that some of the boys were grouped regardless of type or character. I found dependents, boys absolutely guiltless of crime, whose only fault lay in the unfortunate fact that they had lost their parents, mingling and coming into daily contact with boys of a naturally depraved nature. You can imagine what five years of this association would mean to such boys. These are no isolated instances. In the school at the time when I was there I know there were at least a hundred committed because of lack of homes, and these boys, through no fault of their own, were thrown by the State into an environment of degeneracy and crime. Is it surprising that the majority chose the underworld for a living? I have read a lot about the percentage of reformations some of the reform schools of this country are making yearly. To be frank, I doubt it. I very much doubt the accuracy of the statistics. Seventy-five per cent of the professional crooks of the country are reform-school graduates. In my belief it is a natural evolution. CHAPTER VI ESCAPE AND RECAPTURE