No one disputes the fact that the problem of prostitution is largely
a moral one, and must be solved through educational methods. However,
while we believe that certain conditions can be much alleviated, we
believe also that the problem will never be fully solved from the moral
standpoint alone. The most crying need of the present time is in the
mental and physical aspect of the situation, and we believe that the
greatest possible emphasis at this time should be laid on these factors
and their great menace to society.
[1] Read at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections,
Memphis, May, 1914.
[2] Report of the Commission for the Investigation of the White Slave
Traffic so called.
THE NEW HAMPTON FARMS
By Philip Klein
“There is plenty of room at the table, and we’ll have a bunk to spare
too, I guess,” was the answer to my request to be taken care of at the
New Hampton Farms that I was about to inspect. It would have sounded
like a joke to me had I not been acquainted with the plans for the farm
from the very beginning. The answer was to be taken literally. It is
nothing new in this country to take prisoners outside the institution
walls; to leave them unguarded at their work; for officers to talk with
them as man to man; for them to live in temporary, frail quarters. But
the New Hampton Farms goes beyond that. Its thirty-odd young inmates
and four of the five ‘officers,’ including the superintendent, sleep
in the same bunkhouse, and eat at the same tables. The bunkhouse is
as rough as can be, the eating arrangements no less primitive. The
whole physical outfit of the farm is a striking demonstration of how
much practical genius and invincible enthusiasm can make of the most
inadequate means, of the poorest equipment. Yet even this is not the
striking feature of this institution.
The City Reformatory for Misdeamenants of the City of New York is
situated on an island of about 100 acres, within the limits of the City
of New York. Its buildings are inadequate and overcrowded, its officers
insufficient, its methods largely repressive. It receives misdeamenants
between the ages of 16 and 30. On the same island is situated a branch
of the Workhouse of New York City, where the most useless of the city’s
criminal population is confined. To prevent intercourse between the
inmates of the two institutions is well nigh impossible. As a result of
all this, the Reformatory has hardly deserved its name. After long and
painful efforts, the purchase of a 600 acre farm in Orange County, 60
miles from New York, was effected, in order to remove the Reformatory
to the country, and to make it worthy of its name. So there was the
farm, but without appropriations for building the institution. And the
overcrowding at the Reformatory was worse than ever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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