time, and to get in as close touch as possible with his parents, so that they may welcome his co-operation. I know to some people this may seem unnecessary, the boy being in his own home; but we find that it is of the very greatest advantage, and that the objections which are anticipated in the matter really do not materialize. It must be remembered that in every case the parents have failed with the boys before they came to the school; and it is found very easy for a person with tact and good feeling to win their confidence, and indeed their gratitude, in the effort to keep the boy straight. In a very large number of cases when the boy proves unruly, the parents send themselves for the visitor to come and give the boy a talking to, and to threaten him with recall, or even, if necessary, to have him taken away. On the other hand, when the boy is doing well, the visitor's sympathy and approbation are welcomed. Of course, the boy himself should not be hampered by the visitor, when he does not need restraint. If the visitor calls at the place where the boy is working, no one but the boy should know why he calls on him. For instance, one of our boys is a barber; and the visitor goes to him for a shave, and has a friendly word of greeting. Gradually, as time passes and the boys show themselves self-reliant and honest, the visitor's authority may be wholly relaxed. How far this will do, of course, must be a matter of tact and judgment. When a boy has to go out to a farm, the officers of the visitor are even more necessary; for in this case not only must the boy be advised and guided, but he must be protected in case the employer proves a harsh or an unjust one. Another advantage in this method of carrying on the reform school work is that it helps to keep the school itself from getting institutionized. It tends to keep alive in the minds of the management the sense that the school exists for the boys, not the boys for the school, and that the value of the school must be decided by results, not in the institution, but outside in the world. The individual is the thing that counts, and the only thing. What kind of men do these boys grow into? Do these lines of little fellows, who obey rules so promptly and look so clean and walk so straight, turn out tramps and pickpockets, or do they grow into law-abiding citizens? That is the question by which the merits of a reform school must stand or fall. The years of probation are the critical ones, the period on which the attention of the management should dwell. This larger conception of the work of an institution, this ideal of reformatory work as a system of education, influence, and guidance extending throughout the boy's minority, is one which we in Massachusetts regard as the most important feature of our school. Mr. John H. Smyth was asked to speak on the negro delinquent children of Virginia. Mr. J. H. SMYTH, ex-United States Minister, and Consul-general to Liberia, W.A.- Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Conference, As I am but a one-thousandth part of the Conference, representing one-ninth of the population of the country, I may content myself to speak from my place on the floor. My purpose is to give you information which you may not have with reference to negro children and youth in Virginia, whence I am. The need in every Southern State now that the black race is free, and possessed of citizens' rights is a reformatory. Slavery was most destructive of morals in this, that the parents of negro children were not permitted to exercise parental restraint and control over them. This enforced denial of natural right and guardianship conducive to filial obedience and love was the beginning of the end,- moral wreckage of the young of the race. The severe discipline of slavery, which made the slaves efficient and valuable as a labor class in the South, had the effect upon negro parentage — free and enfranchised — which caused them to dislike and revolt from the exercise of an exacting discipline over their children born during the last thirty years. This sentiment and unfortunate practice of laxity were born of ignorance. These causes, coupled with the poverty of the natural guardians of negro children, account for the jails and penitentiaries of the South having more negro inmates in them between the ages of seven and twenty years than between the ages of thirty and forty years. But I am here to speak of Virginia's needs in particular, to pick the beam out of her eye rather than the mote out of the eye of the South. Virginia has a population of nearly 1,000,000 whites and 700,000 blacks, with a present penitentiary enrolment of 1,325 negro felons between ten and thirty-five years of age as against 310 white felons above their majority, because there is a reformatory for white boys. For fourteen years there has been a steady increase of criminality among negroes, from 210 in the penitentiary in 1882 to 1,325 in 1896-97. These delinquents cost the State in 1896-97 $378,000 for their support. The whites cost $72,000, while the blacks cost $306,000. The cost for negro child and youth vagrants, disorderlies, and misdemeanants, was greatly in excess of this amount, which fell upon one hundred county governments and some six city governments. From all sources of negro taxation, capitation, personal and real property, only $116,000 was received by the State in 1896. So that for every dollar expended for the imprisonment of negroes in the penitentiary, there was necessity for the State to supplement the deficit by two dollars, leaving out of the reckoning commitments to jails of counties and cities of felons. With a legal machinery which makes it possible for police officers, magistrates, and other court officials to profit by the arrests, trials, and convictions of children and youths of the black race for any and every grade of offence, where and when is criminality among this class to stop? Worse than this is the fact that a custom as old as the State, of herding men and women, boys and girls, in the same compartments in the jails, Virginia, unconsciously, is graduating — under the common and statute laws, annually — thousands of child and youth criminals of the black race. There is no middle ground, no house of refuge, correction, or reformatory for the black boy or girl who, from defective and from no training, has taken the first step downward; and, as a consequence, crime is accelerated and increased by law. The motherhood of the black race in Virginia is being tainted in its childhood by jails and a penitentiary. The boyhood and youths are made criminal by means designed for punishment of wrongdoing, but which are destructive agencies of the morals of a large class of the race. Through the influence of a few earnest negro men, moved by humane and Christian sentiments, the Negro Reformatory Association of Virginia came into corporate existence June 11, 1897, with a negro board of directors and an advisory board of seven white Virginians, with the purpose of rescuing and reforming this class through a reformatory. Though there is a reformatory in Virginia for white boys, in the eighth year of its existence, neither a negro child nor youth may enter its portals, though there is not a word or sentence in the charter of the Prison Association of Virginia restricting its beneficence to whites nor prohibitive of its influence to blacks. We who live in the South know that thirty years are not years enough for a people to outgrow their prejudices of race. We know that time is of the very essence of good relations between different races, and that insistence upon the exercise of rights has often to be postponed until men's intelligence and humanity are developed to a recognition and accord of them. Virginia is fresher in her prejudices to blacks than the North, the East, and the West. Virginia is not able to do this work of reform for the delinquent young of the whites, and therefore is not able to do it for the blacks. The State gives the white reformatory, or Prison Association of Virginia, the same compensation for care of the inmates of the reformatory as it gives the superintendent of the State penitentiary for the inmates of that institution, and the same amount the counties give their jailers, 25 cents a day for the food and $10 a year for the clothing of each inmate. The Prison Association of Virginia would not be a refuge and a reformatory for white boys, had Major Robert Stiles not left his law office and appealed to public charity for the money with which the site was bought, and upon which the buildings are erected, never having received from the State treasury but $22,000 in seven years in aid of the reformatory, aside from the appropriation of 25 cents a day and $10 a year for food and clothing of the inmates. The Negro Reformatory Association of Virginia has undertaken to purchase a farm of 1,804 acres of ground in the county of Hanover, the erection of dormitories, and two workshops for trades teaching. The cost of the land is $14,432, the cost of the buildings $60,000, making a total of about $75,000. That the institution shall not be an annual pensioner upon its friends and the public, farming in all its branches, blacksmithing, carpentry, and instruction in the domesticities of the home, are designed to be taught, that the institution from the start shall be selfsupporting, with the State's aid in food and clothing of the inmates. The rudiments of English learning will be taught, and moral training will be the object. Virginia, by the ravages of war, was the greatest sufferer of the Confederate States. Every industry was either destroyed or paralyzed. Virginia in three years hence will add 3 per cent. to the interest-bearing obligations of the State, increasing her indebtedness annually for an indefinite time by $180,000. Virginia is carrying on as good a public-school system for whites and blacks as any other Southern State. Virginia is caring for quite one thousand mentally enfeebled and insane negroes, at an expense of $85,000 annually. Virginia would gladly support reformatories for both races if the effort were not fraught with the present certainty of bankruptcy, the loss of honor in not meeting her obligations to her creditors. It would be better to kill the unhappy children of my race than to wreck their souls by herding them in prisons with common and hardened criminals. Virginia has a loyal white and black citizenship now. Virginia has always been pre-eminently American. In a nation's need nothing is more valued than patriotism. A major-general in the person of Fitz-Hugh Lee, of a line of illustrious American soldiers, is on his way to "the front." Her black citizens point with pride to ninety thousand of their kith and kin who "Gave their spirits out, Trusted the end to God, Rolled in triumphant blood" for the preservation of the integrity of this Union, the glory of Americans, the admiration of Britons, and the envy of Celtic Europe. The negro race has increased from four to eight millions of souls in thirty years, 100 per cent.,- and has become an important part of the nation. The race's moral character is, therefore, a constituent part of the moral character of the nation. The nation cannot with safety be indifferent to the negro in the light of its civilization and Christianity. Mr. IRA OTTERSON, N.J.-I must say a word in accord with what Mr. Smith has said. In 1877 I went to Virginia and cast in my lot with her people. I can speak from personal knowledge of the facts which have been so forcibly and eloquently set before you. During ten months and a half I had under my supervision from five to seven hundred men. With the exception of the heads of the different departments, they were all colored men. Those who were reared since emancipation squandered almost every cent they received in trifles and folly. Those brought up under slavery were prudent and frugal, many buying homes that they might establish their little families about them. It was evident that the younger race were gravitating to self-destruction, not only physical, but moral. I speak with the warmest sympathy with our friend and brother, Mr. Smith, in his work for the elevation of the colored race. I hope Virginia will be able to do justice alike to black and white. As to the report read by the chairman, I will give two instances from one family which came under my personal observation. Some years ago a boy was sent to our institution whose father had left his mother, and had gone to live with a woman degraded in morals. That boy was committed for theft. He was intelligent, responded readily to instruction, and was generally good in deportment, and in time was released from the care of the school, and allowed to live with his mother. He has lived and become a good citizen. While he was still in the institution, there was a boy sent under commitment who was the son by that boy's father of another mother. He was only seven years old, a dependent child; and, because the laws of the State said that we could only receive those who were over eight and under sixteen, I had to refuse to enroll him, although realizing that by birth, environment, and education he needed the instruction of our school far more than his older brother. I sent him away, and he had to go to that depraved mother. After a year he was eight, and was sent back to me. I had much harder work to make him amenable to the laws of the school than if I had had him the previous year. As to parole, the mother, through influence on the board of trustees, secured the release of the boy on the plea that it would be an incentive to prepare him for the home. After great pressure he was released. The mother died; and, through the effects of her evil living, the boy was sent to another reformatory. Prof. W. H. BREWER, Yale University. It is a law of nature, and nature's laws are inexorable, cruel, it may be, but it is a law of nature that the young of a species pass through stages that represent species lower in the scale of life. It was brought out by Agassiz before the doctrine of evolution was taught. It is now held by every student and teacher of evolution. Now there is not a parent before me, father or mother, who has not noticed the savagery of childhood. The old explorers used to tell us how much savages were like children in instincts and reasoning powers. Any |