The logical thing for a state to do is to purchase a farm of about a
thousand acres, with barracks for the prisoners to eat and sleep in.
Over one-third of the men in the prisons of Iowa could be set to work
upon this farm, raising grains and garden truck. They could be paid a
certain wage and board in the same manner as the farmer pays his hired
help, but every cent of these earnings should be turned over to the
wife and children of the man who earns it. Not a penny should be given
to him.
Warden Barr also said that he believed that if men knew that they would
be compelled to work and work hard at a fair wage without themselves
getting a penny of it, that there would be less crime. Many men during
the fall commit crimes solely for the purpose of getting a warm place
to stay during the winter and three good meals per day. They allow
their families to shift for themselves. For the state to encourage this
sort of a thing Mr. Barr says is absolutely wrong.
* * * * *
_Charting Juvenile Crime._--The juvenile court of Detroit is reported
to be greatly assisted in its campaign of saving girls and boys, by a
chart which shows how many children are under the watchful care of the
judge and his probation and truant officers, and how crime recedes and
advances among the young at different seasons of the year; also what
effect a big convention has on the city’s morality, and how greatly
parks and playgrounds help in the fight for decency.
The 600 boys and 170 girls are represented on the chart by cloth-headed
tacks of different colors: red for bad boys, blue for bad girls, and
white for children who are only truants or neglected. Each tack bears
a bit of cardboard with a number which refers one to a filing cabinet
where may be found the entire record of the boy or girl. Little groups
of dots on the chart show where the gangs are, and indicate that bad
boys are more gregarious than bad girls, who usually go alone or in
couples. The chart also shows more plainly than any magazine article
the evil results of congestion. The probation officers are not using
this chart as an interesting sort of game, but as a valuable aid in
their work for good citizenship.
* * * * *
_London’s Beggar Army._--Walter Weyl, a well-known writer on social
and economic subjects, has the following to say in the “National Post”
on London’s army of the unemployed. It is of special significance
to Americans who are facing the impending problems of vagrancy and
mendicancy in urban centers.
“As I started to call a cab,” writes Walter Weyl, “suddenly there arose
out of the darkness, as though evoked by some Aladdins lamp, four
tattered, pale-faced men of the underworld. The four sprang forward to
render me this slight service. One, quicker than his fellows, tore open
the cab door and received his penny. Then the men vanished, slinking
into the gray mist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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