related facts. The children are not truants, nor violators of city ordinances, or town by-laws, but those charged with violating the statutes of the State. Three-fourths of the whole number brought before the courts are from cities. More than one-half of the towns of the State have not had a case before the court in ten years. Four-fifths are of foreign birth or parentage; eleven-twelfths are boys. Nearly all are children of poverty; the average age is More than one-half of the offences charged are against property (larceny in some form). The other offences ✓charged are against person, good morals, for stubbornness, mischief, disturbance, etc. By the nomenclature of the law, the number of kinds of offences is between forty and fifty.

thirteen years.

By reason of poverty and social conditions, nearly all of the children brought before the courts are unable to procure counsel, and rarely any one appears for them except the State agent, or his assistant. The complaints are generally by police officers, whose business it is to make them, and whose pride it is to secure conviction, because their efficiency, as officers, is largely determined thereby. The average number of children between the ages of seven and seventeen years, brought before the courts annually, is about two thousand.

Before the enactment of the law now referred to, the children were brought to trial with adult offenders; they were subject to association with them, for the time being, and to the hurry and bias of courts crowded with cases of debauched and hardened men and women.

Viewing the constant procession thus coming, and the facts connected therewith, and perceiving the results likely, if not sure, to follow, it occurred to the wise and humane, and the prudent as well, that something might be done for such children, right at the court, before the law had designated them, and done its work upon them, and they were given over to the company and association of criminals. It was their thought and belief that there were better methods than incarcerations and punishment for the restraint and recovery of juvenile offenders, and for the prevention of offences. From that view, perception and belief, grew this law, which sends to each and every child a friend, with authority and means to help in his or her first if not greatest social and moral peril meeting him or her just where the ways of right and wrong life diverge.

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In turning again to the law it will be observed that the agent is a State officer (formerly appointed by the Governor), that he must be notified whenever a complaint is brought, that he shall have opportunity to investigate the case, to attend the trial, to protect the interests of the child." The trial awaits his opportunity to do these things, whether it requires one day or more. Or he can "otherwise provide for the child;" that is, do whatever he can for its interest before, at, or after the trial. These are provisions giving the agent many and large opportunities in the interests of the child. It will be also observed that the provision for hearing the cases of children apart from those of adults, really makes a special court therefor.

The provision which permits the judge upon request of the agent, to put the child into the care of the Board of Health, Lunacy and Charity, opens ways not before provided or used for the disposal of children charged with, or guilty of offences. The provision given the Board, to take, to indenture, to place in charge of any person, or to put into the State Primary School (which is not a criminal institution but a charity school, into which a magistrate, or court, cannot send a child), are methods of dealing, new, varied, kind, and salutary; wholly within the purview of mercy, and foreign to the law of penalties. Yet penalty is held in abeyance in a proviso for transfer by the Board, to the Reform or Industrial Schools of those who prove unmanageable under kind treatment and forbearance. I have given the letter of the law which is kindly, its spirit is more so. If he who is charged with its duties, catches its spirit, and is imbued and impelled therewith, he can turn many to righteousness.

When one comes in contact with the accused ones, hears the complaints against them, listens to their statements, learns their histories, he gets a new meaning out of the declaration, "Out of one blood God created all nations of the earth," for they are, like himself and others, not accused or guilty, in tendency to wrong and desire for the right; except that the tendency and desire in the one and the other are not alike proportionate. If the introspection of those yet saved from overt acts of wickedness, is honest and thorough, it will reveal that we are like those who do wrong, save as example, precept, ancestry, or grace, has kept us in the better.

way.

I now pass to speak of the administration of the law by the magistrates, and the State agent, and proceedings under it.

In the city of Boston, the court is in session daily for the hearing of cases of juvenile offenders. In other places, sessions are less frequent, and on such days as have been agreed upon by the magistrates and the agent.

A form of notice to the agent is used, into which can be written the name of the child complained of, his residence, the offence charged, the name of the person who made the complaint, whether parent, officer, or other person, the date and place of hearing, etc. Such facts are data for farther inquiry concerning the child and the case. Before the time of the hearing, the child, parent, officer, or other persons having knowledge of the child or the case, are seen, and from them information is sought. The child is advised concerning his plea, whether it shall be "guilty or not guilty." At the hearing, witnesses are examined and testimony introduced by the agent. After the testimony is in, the agent reviews it, giving, it may be, the child's, or his own statement of the case.

When the magistrate has found the child guilty, the agent makes his suggestion as to the disposal of the case, or the disposition to be made of the child.

If it is a first offence and is not a serious one, and the child and its home is of fair character, the suggestion is, an admonition from the judge, or the placing of the complaint on file, or suspension of sentence, its execution to depend upon future conduct; the imposition of the costs of court or a small fine, as a check or reminder. A fine serves to awaken the parent to vigilance in the care of his child. If, in cases of first or slight offences, it appears that the home is poor and the child liable to go astray again, without some greater restraint than the home affords, probation to a given time is recommended; if given, the agent becomes bondsman for the appearance of the child at the time named, and keeps oversight of him in the meantime. If the child gives promise of well-doing in a good situation, and his home is one that will drag him down to lower depths, the agent makes request that the child be put into the care of the Board of Health, Lunacy and Charity for transfer to a new and better location and surroundings. More especially is this request made when there is absolutely no home. Sometimes, when the home is defective from lack of parental force to ensure well-doing on the part of the child, he is taken into the care of the Board and suffered to remain with its parents under control of the Board, rather than to transfer him to a new home, the Board,

through its agent, supplying the parental lack in governing the child. If the child appears to be one who needs the restraint and discipline of the reform or industrial schools, the agent interposes no objection to his or her going thereto; but other methods are almost always tried first. Occasionally a boy under seventeen years of age is brought before the court whose offence and character justify his commitment to a house of correction or jail, but rarely are any thus sent.

When a child is placed in care of the Board it is usually for the period of minority, and it can do with the child that which seems best, within very wide limitations. As the Board is an unpaid body of persons living in different parts of the State, and its meetings are not frequent, its executive duties are performed by its agents; therefore, the management of children put into its care by the courts is almost wholly by its agent. His supervision of them is constant and systematic, he giving to the child friendly, as well as official, care. The Board can discharge the child committed to it at any time, or can return him to the parents on probation, or, as already intimated, can put him in care of his parents at the first, or can put him in care of any other person, upon such terms and for such time as may seem best to it.

In cases of probation from court, the term is likely to be continued by renewals until the well-doing of the child seems to be established. When the child is put upon probation he is given a card by the agent upon which is written his or her name, the date when probation expires, and the place at which he or she is to report. It is the custom of the agent, the day before the probation expires, to send to the home of each probationer and notify him or her of the expiration and of the duty to report. If the residence is in Boston the probationer reports to the agent, and he goes with the child to the court, renews the probation, or gets a discharge as the conduct of the child may warrant.

Within the scope of the law the agent finds many ways for providing for children brought as offenders, which he can offer to the magistrate as satisfactory and salutary. That which is least in punishment and greatest in mercy, which appears sufficient for the child, is always suggested and urged. The purpose to have the agent a helper to the well-doing of the child is kept in view, as a requirement of the law.

Magistrates acknowledge the difficulties there are in dealing with

children as offenders. They are free to avail themselves of the other methods of disposal which the law permits, rather than to commit the child to an institution.

I now pass from reference to provisions and methods to speak of the results of the law.

More than three-fourths of the children brought before the courts are convicted, yet only about one-fifth of the convicted ones are sent into institutions of all kinds, and only about one-ninth to the State schools.

The institutions beside the State schools, into which children are sent, are local or private ones of milder name and character, except that the Boston House of Reformation is not essentially different from the State Reform School. Such sending is generally the arrangement of the State agent made in the interests of the child. Scarcely any are sent to jails, houses of correction or prisons.

Nearly one-third of all the convicted ones are put on probation, as previously described; and about one in twenty are formally (with a mittimus) put into the custody of the Board of Health, Lunacy and Charity. Of those put on probation only one in ten come again before the court within the year of their arraignment, and but few of them in after years.

The results of probation in cases of juvenile offenders proved so decisively good that the Legislature, two years ago, authorized the city of Boston to appoint a probation officer for adults; and, at the session of the Legislature the present year a statute was enacted permitting the appointment of a probation officer for adult offenders in every city and town in the State.

Between eighty and ninety per cent. of the children taken by the agent in the name of the Board of Health, Lunacy and Charity, have done well. In most instances the action thus taken seemed exactly to meet the wants of the children.

There is another part of the work of the State agent which is profitable; that which is authorized by the words "or otherwise provide for them." It is the adjustment of cases or provision for children not brought before the courts. A parent or guardian, or other person, having or finding difficulty with a child, sometimes goes to a magistrate for his advice; he sometimes commends such a person and the child to the State agent as one willing to hear the story and having facilities to help. The agent listens,