THE SQUARE DEAL WITH CHILDREN.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LI, Issue 9074, 24 April 1906, Page 2

THE SQUARE DEAL WITH CHILDREN.

JUDGE MACK AND THE WORK OF THE CHICAGO JUVENILE COURT.

(By Henry Kitchtll Webster, in the American Magazine.) I am not going to ask you to &it through that morning's work. It is, without qualification and without relief, horrible.. At> best it is a recital of dull, grinding misery, and from that i£ sometimes rises to a pathos Ihat is almost unendurable. The very definition in the words of the statute have a sting: "Destitute, homeless abandoned," and that is not the worst of it. The child who lives in a home where he is not -wanted, where he is, perhaps, merely -the unpleasant reminder of the wreck of some former home; the motherless girl of ten, mothering as best she can, a train of smaller brothers and sisters, and worn already into a little old woman— poor little tattered bundles of filth and vermin, children of drunkards and abandoned women. If only they were altogether bad, completely brutes, these parents.! The wrench, the grim twist to the spectacle, comes ■when these reprobates and their battered victims cling in each other's arms, sobbing, heart-broken that they are to bo parted — maternal and filial devotion 6een in travesty! There is this excuse for shirking the spectacle, that is that the decision of these cases is relatively not difficult. As a. rule the thing to be done Is fairly obvious. It is hard, almost sickening often ; like surgery on the field of battle, but it cam be understood without spending hours- beside the table. TKe time to watch Judge Mack at his work is when he is hearing the delinquent cases -in the afternoon. If there is anything more baffling, more inexhaustible, anything that calls upon more various powers of mind and soul, or that does- so much to stimulate these powers to the utmost-, than this succession of delinquent cases, that thing is a 6 far beyond my imagination as it is beyond my experience. Insight, imagination of the most purely creative sort, sympathy; and yet, to offset these warmer qualities, a fine temper and incisive edge, a judicial balance, and patience— the patience of the hills! In addition to all this the Judge needs a perfectly general, uncolored, scientific intelligence and a knowledge of the law. I can claim no credit for this exhaustive list of qualities. I have simply written down what I have seen Judge Mack bring into play in cases I have heard him try. When he takes his seat at 2 o'clock the courtroom is packed full, the overflow trailing down the corridor. It is made up mostly of people who have an intimate concern here this afternoon; witnesses,, neatly-dressed families anxiously awaiting the outcome of the day /to some beloved) black sheep who is sitting, already pretty well scared, under the eye of a probation officer in the waiting room. There is a sprinkling through the crowd of policemen., probation, officers — ttvesre. are generally women. — a reporter or two looking for "features," and here and there a young lady eagerly stoidying human life. But with all this public the hearings turn out not to be public after all. The Judge embarrasses his visitor a little by indicating the big judicial arm chair where he is .to sit, and takes for himself a- small wooden one, which ne hitches close to the rail. The chief probation officer calls the first case, and the district officer who has it in charge herds his flocks- of witnesses and his one small delinquent before him. The Judge glances over a brief history of the case which the officer has prepared. This, functionary supplements what he has written with a rather fuller statement, and calls on a witness or two for confirmation of his 6tory. It is entirely clear; -there is not a flaw of doubt in the body of fact; the boy has. stolen a, bicycle. The man from whom he -stole it and the man who found him with the goods make the necessary identification. Through all this the- Judge sits quite impassive, his eyelids drooping; except for an occasional glance .he does not look at any of -them — at the witnesses, the indignant mother (who in. a, most vivacious pantomime is expressing her disbelief in the whole accusation), or at the small boy, whose head is about all that shows above the rail, and who is mustering the very last handful of his bravado to keep him from crying. The little group is close about the- Judge, and the talk has all been in the low key of colloquial conversation, inaudible outside the group itself. But. when the story is told the Judge hitches- stall nearer to the railj waves the rest away, and motions the boy to come <flose. That is the. last stTaw with him. His lips have- been trembling before ; now he begins crying in good earnest. r "Oh, come!" says the Judge easily, "l'm not hungry. I'm not going to eat any more small boys to-day." He leans a little nearer. "Tell me about it." The boy draws back a little and begins his story. It is a recitation, not a.comf ession, that he is giving ; something he has been taught to commit to memory— a rather pathetic tissue of falsehoods. The Judge does not let it go far. "Oh, not that. I want you to tell mo the truth. You mustn't tell lies here." But the lad has- learned .his lesson too well ; the- truth is not to be had out of him. There falls -a little silence. The; Judge is sitting back .in hie. chair, liis eyelids drooping again., his face twisting into curious grimaces as he wrestles with the • problem. The theft, of the bicycle is a small matter, but this lie, so stubbornly adhered to, is a. long step in a very danigefrous direction. The man who is sitting there has that boy's- whole life,, whole environment, all the influences that play upon him, in review. Every faculty of his intelligence is grappling with the problem. He makes several casts in vain, but h© does not give it up. Suddenly ha turns to the mother. ' ' "Is the boy a Catholic?" ne asks: Yes. "Has .he made his first communion yet?" He is going to in three .weeks. "I'm going to give you another chance to tell me the truth four weeks from today," says the Judge. . "This case Is con- ! tinued for four weeks. And I want you to try to learn to tell the truth at your ' first communion. You're to remember • „ that; you're to try to learn to teW me s the truth. The next case solves iteelf a little more easily. A boy, smaller eveta than- the last one, nas got into a piece of mischief which turned out more seriously than he meant it to. He also is in tears, but he t°l s the whole story without suppression. At this, point the probation officer brings out the' fact that the, boy is motherless, that his father concerns himself very little

in his upbringing, so that he is practically without a home. The officer recommends that he be sent to St. Charles, a big State school out in the country, -with 500 acrep of outdoors for the boys to grow up in. The father denies vehemently thait he does less than he might for the boy. He is busy, of course, by day, but He looks after him with the greatest care. , It doesn't ring quit© true. The Judge turns to the little boy." "How old are you 1 /" he asks, and the boy lei's him. "And when is your birthday?" — "I don't know." "You haven't any birthday?" The boy shakes his head, and the Judge glances up at the father. There are a few more questions and answers, but he has already got th© truth, and th© boy goes to St. Charles. You rub your eyes a little as the probation officer calls the next case. Two women and a young girl are coming in through the gate; one of the women yoa remember as a district officer; the other, in tears, a youngish woman well dressed, though simply, is no doubt the mother, but I can the girl be the delinquent? She is about fifteen, pretty, blonde, innocent, immaculate in. white duck, a little flat sailor hat set on heir yellow hair. F>he has not been crying, and she shows no sign of perturbation now. If you look at her clouely you will see that her pretty mouth is rather loosely lipped, and that "her glance wanders a little uncertainly. Judg© Mack reads- the history of the case which th© officer hands him, and motions tlhe two women to step back, quite- out of earshot, and the girl to come close. No one hears the long story she tells him ; but it may be seen that before she is half through she is crying. At the end he lean® back, looking from one tear-stained face to the other, and seeing the same foolish, fond look in botih. His own face is twisting with those same queer, thoughtful grimaces that we remarked before. Then he calls up the mother. \ "111 have to fake her away from you, I'm afraid." he says. lhe mother cries out, and catches the girl in her arms; but h© goes on quietly, apparently quite unmoved by th© appeal. "We want io make a good woman ol h©r. If she is to grow up to that she will have to get a good many things out of ln»i mind that she has there now, and she won'l do that as long as she has her old com panions about her. She'll go on as she i going now, and there's only one way thai that can end. At i^eneva she'll have i chance. Tb© mother is sobbing hysterically. "IT • kill myself if you take her away from me !' ■ she cries. > "Then you'll make her ruin certain." h< says. He is silent a moment then he make: » a condition. "If you will move away ' move to «tn entirely new place, where he' 1 old companions won't find her, and wher< > shie will find new ones, you can hove her , Unless you do, or until you do, she wal ', have to go to Geneva." 1 There are three cases, and the beginning ' of his afternoon's work. There may tx I twenty more, or thirty more, to hear to i- day; but however many there may be i there will not be one but will be hear< r wWh his inexhaustible patience, will hav< r brought to bear upon it every faculty o J his mind.' I have left him stall sittin; fc there at half-past six at night, myself tare< b out with trying to follow him, left bin listening to the angry babble of a crow< i of witnesses who were bombarding eacl i other with mutual accuisations quite irrele r vant to the case in hand, apparently, whil< 5 Be searched patiently through the tangl< - for th© clue that would guide to the verj > bottom of it. I have never seen hin J make a superficial decision, and have neve; I seen him fail to take a case in both hands i He will follow a case as far as it take; > him, and it sometimes leads to queer sen r tences. I have heard him enjoin one boj i> not to go on Roby street, and another nol i- to hire a horse and buggy from the liverj * stable. I have heard him offer a man his > choice between getting married and going > io gaol; I have seen the -man sent oul l under guard for a license, and married bj I the Judge half an hour later. After hah ' a day of this the German doctor professor. who sat beside him, on the bench, turned » to me and whispered : "They have colossal ' powers, your Judges; colossal!" Thej > have, indeed. Judge Mack once said to me that though th© legal aspects of Juvenile Court work i were, of course, subordinate, it was, per- , haps, as well to have a lawyer to judge of > it. That was putting it mildly. Just try ' to imagine the tangle into which so great a length of rope would betray a man who wasn't. There is no room here to go into a very important feature of the work — namely, that of the probation officers, nor 1 to describe the various institutions to which > the children are sejit when they cannot be paroled. All T have tried to do has been to give you a glimpse of the machinery and of the man at the head of it. That it is a combination of tihe right man and an efficient machine there can be no doubt. Those who have themselves built this Juvenile Court machine for us are much less likely to make the mistake of thinking that it will run itself than we who Have had no hand in it, except the hand of decorous applause; but ultimately it is on us, the whole people, that the responsibility for it will devolve. Do you realise at all tlte enormous power of this machine? Forget, for a moment, that in practice it operates only on th© poor— the "lower classes" ; transpose the field, imagine the probation officer in function among your "best people." Is the power tx> enter the home, to take away the children, to depute to an officer of the Court iSb& supervision of t!hie intimate life of the family— as this power any less drastic in the case of the poor man than in the case of the rich one? Every year, almost, witnesses some' new assumption of power on the part of the State, and this is so inevitable, so necessary, that it is futile to cry out against it. The great power of the Court may constitute a danger of abolishing the power. It lies in putting and keeping the power in the right hands, in,knowing the right hands When one sees them, in giving the whole subject both attention and enlightened intelligence. I have seen it exercised by the wrong . hands— not dishonest ones, hands that were merely clumsy and impatient. He was a substitute, sitting but for on© day, but in that short while the spectacle he presented was absolutely terrifying. He was a tyrant, not a judge; a butcher, not a surgeon. Be packed off young delinquents right and left without a look ai? them. He paroled one big, pretty, insolent girt because, apparently, he was amused that she should defy him ; and ne took three more away from thiear mothers for no mora obvious reason than that he was irritated by their blubbering. Afer I had stood as much of it as I could, I went into tihe corridor. Here, in little, daaed, rebellious groups, were the families has heavy hands had played havoc with. Most of them were silent, or muttering under their breath, but one woman— gaunt, grey-haired, her eyea

blazing defiance — was crying out against it. "Hie own daughter ran. away from him," she cried, "and they hushed it up. He can't control his own. Who ie he to take our flesh and blood away from us?" That is, I think, an experience to bear in mind when we acre tempted 1 to think that we have solved the difficulty, when we have built the machine. I called it chemistry of the soul } and I think that af- ; ter a look at the work you would agree ' that the expression does not exaggerate the difficulty of it. Now you are at liberty j to say : "This work is 6O difficult that no i man but one possessing an absolute genius for it can possibly do it; it acquires a synthesis of qualities very ware, and often not available at all." Judge Mack ; well, Denver and Chicago ate in luck. But what are we to do when no such speciallyfibted person happens to be at hand? , Genius is not made to order. In a mea- j [ sure that is true. But it is also true that I when the public have a thing at heart, | galvanised by an idea^ then from Bomewhere among that public the genius which '■ the situation cries out for will lift his head. I He was always there, he was not made to order ; but without the galvanic cuimub he 1 ' would never even, have found himself. When the people of the North really wanted to put slavery "in the way of ultimata extinction," they found Abraham Lincoln; they did not know how it hapI pened, and neither did he. « But they ' ' would mot have found him if they had not been galvanised by an idea. And when the people of out great citiete really care what becomes of the children, care enough to study and think, when they really mean it, they will find the man they j need tinder their hands.

' A minimum wage of thirty shillings a , week for all unskilled adult Government employees will be demanded at t!he annual | conference of the United Government I Workers' Federation, to be held in London.