proceedings and an opportunity be given them to be heard in defense of their parental rights.

The main principles involved in Juvenile Court legislation, as pointed out by Herbert Samuels in introducing into the House of Commons his excellent children's bill, are that the child offender be kept separate from the adult criminal; that the courts be agencies for the rescue as well as the punishment of children; that the parent be made to feel more responsible for the wrongdoing of his child, and that the commitment of children to jails, no matter what the offense, is an unsuitable penalty. To these, however, should be added that taking a child away from its parents is as far as possible to be avoided; and, as the most important principle, that when it is allowed to return home it must be under probation, subject to the guidance and friendly interest of the probation officer as the representative of the court. To raise the age of criminal responsibility from seven or ten to sixteen or eighteen without providing for an efficient system of probation, would be disastrous. Probation is the keynote of Juvenile Court legislation.

The jurisdiction to hear cases is generally granted to an existing court having full equity powers. Some cities, however, have provided special courts with judges devoting their entire time to this work. If these special courts can constitutionally be vested with full and complete chancery and criminal jurisdiction, much is to be said in favor of their establishment. In the large cities particularly the entire time of one judge may well be needed. It has been suggested from time to time that all the judges of the municipal or special session courts be empowered to act in these cases, but while it would be valuable in metropolitan communities to have more than one detention home and court house, it would seem to be even more important to have a single Juvenile Court judge. The British government has adopted this policy for London.

By the Colorado act of 1909 provision is made for hearings before masters in chancery, designated as masters of discipline, to be appointed by the Juvenile Court judge and to act under his directions. This may prove to be the best solution of a difficult problem, combining as it does the possibility of a quick disposition of the simpler cases in many sections of a large city or county, with a unity of administration through the supervisory power of a single judge.

The personality of the judge is an all-important matter. The public at large, sympathetic to the work, and even the probation officers who are not lawyers, regard the judge as one having almost

autocratic power. Because of the extent of his jurisdiction and the tremendous responsibility that it entails, it is, in the judgment of the writer, absolutely essential that he be a trained lawyer thoroughly imbued with the doctrine that ours is a "government of laws and not of men."

He must, however, be more than a lawyer. He must be a student of and deeply interested in the problems of philanthropy and child life and a lover of children. He must be able to understand the boys' point of view and ideas of justice; he must be willing and patient enough to search out the underlying causes of the trouble and to formulate the plan by which, ofttimes through the cooperation of many agencies, the cure may be effected. [See Mill vs. Brown, 88 Pac., 609 (1907), Utah.]

In some very important jurisdictions the vicious practice is indulged in of assigning a different judge to the Juvenile Court work every month or every three months. It is impossible for these judges to gain the necessary experience or to devote the necessary time to the study of new problems. The service should under no circumstances be for less than one year and preferably for a longer period. In some of our cities, notably in Denver, the judge has discharged not only the judicial functions but also those of the most efficient probation officer. Judge Lindsey's love for the work and his personality have enabled him to exert a powerful influence on the boys and girls brought before him. While doubtless the best results can be obtained in such a court, lack of time would prevent a judge in the largest cities from adding this work to his strictly judicial duties, even were it not extremely difficult to find the necessary combination of elements in one man. Judge Lindsey is unique.

The child brought into court should be made to know that he is face to face with the power of the state, but at the same time and more emphatically he should be made to feel that he is the object of its care and solicitude. The ordinary trappings of the court room are out of place in such hearings. The judge on a bench, looking down upon the boy standing at the bar, can never evoke a sympathetic spirit. Seated at a desk, with the child at his side, where on occasion he can put his arm around his shoulder and draw the lad to him, the judge, while losing none of his judicial dignity, will gain immensely in effectiveness. Moreover, in this way, even in a large room, the proceedings can be conducted more quietly and sympathetically and without undue publicity. Then, too, the child can be made to feel that he is talking directly with the judge and that the judge is carefully heeding his story. If the child be made to feel that the judge is endeavoring to get the truth

from him rather than from witnesses and that he is trusting him, far better results will be obtained. It is wiser, too, to follow the practice of those cities which have attendants and officials, including police officers, appear without uniform.

The court must always aim not to destroy but to better the relations between the parent and the child, and it is therefore seldom wise to reprimand the parent, no matter how deserving of it he may be, in the presence of the child.

While the proceedings in this court, as in all courts, should be public, so as to avert danger even of unjust suspicions, the greatest effort should be made to limit the extent of publicity. Mere idlers and those impelled by curiosity should be excluded from the room; earnest students, on the other hand, should be admitted, and full opportunity given them to study the proceedings. While stimulating the public interest which is essential to the work of the court, the press should be induced to spare the feelings of the children, their relatives and friends by not printing real names or addresses.

The object of the Juvenile Court and of the intervention of the state is, of course, in no case to lessen or weaken the sense of responsibility, either of the child or of the parents. On the contrary, the aim is to develop and to enforce it. Therefore, it is wisely provided in most of the recent acts that the child, if of working age, may be compelled when on probation to make restitution for any damage it has done. Moreover, the parents may not only be compelled to contribute to the support even of the children who are sent to institutions, but, following Colorado, in many states, they, as well as other adults, may be made liable for their acts or neglect contributing to a child's dependency or delinquency. In most of the jurisdictions which have established separate Juvenile Courts, as well as in some of the others, all criminal cases affecting children are tried by the Juvenile Court judge. In legislation making adults criminally liable for such contributory acts the constitutional rights of the defendant must be carefully safeguarded. Such penal acts are strictly construed, and therefore in the recent case of Gibson vs. People, 99 Pac., 333 (1909), the Colorado Supreme Court limited the application of the act of 1903 to the parents and those standing in a parental relation to the child. Colorado, in 1907, however, as well as other states, expressly extended the scope of such statutes so as to include any person, whether standing in loco parentis or not. The Supreme Court of Oregon in State vs. Dunn (99 Pac., 278 (1909)) construed such legislation to refer only to misconduct not otherwise punishable.

Kentucky, in 1908, followed by Colorado in 1909, has enacted

a statute providing for the enforcement of parental obligations not in the criminal but in the chancery branch of the Juvenile Court. A decree not merely for the payment of support money, but for the performance or omission of such acts as under the circumstances of the case are found necessary, may be enforced by contempt proceedings.

The work of the Juvenile Court is, at the best, palliative, curative. The more important, indeed the vital thing, is to prevent children from reaching that condition in which they have to be dealt with in any court, and we are not doing our duty to the children of to-day, the men and women of to-morrow, when we neglect to destroy the evils that are leading them into careers of delinquency, when we fail not merely to uproot the wrong, but to implant in place of it the positive good. We must study thoroughly the underlying causes of juvenile delinquency in order to apply these preventive and positive measures. As was well said (186 Hans. Parl. Deb., 4th series, 1262) in the course of the debates on the children's bill in the House of Commons: "We want to say to the child that if the world or the world's law has not been his friend in the past, it shall be now. We say that it is the duty of this Parliament and that this Parliament is determined to lift if possible and rescue him, to shut the prison door, and to open the door of hope."

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION

The Secularization of Education. Throughout the colonial period social customs and institutional life were naturally dominated by mother country traditions; none of which exerted a more persistent influence than that of the accepted relation and responsibility of the church as regards education, in all of its stages. The taproot of early nineteenth century democracy was necessarily nurtured in the conception of the free and universal school, untrammeled by the restrictions of religious orthodoxy or the conflicts of creed. The secular common school came as the inevitable result of the adjustment of the new relations of men which were grounded in the religious freedom of individuals and in the political rights of majorities.

The entrance of the state with the secular school into the field of education could have but a single series of results; the more or less immediate withdrawal of the church, and of private and philanthropic enterprise from elementary education activities; and thenceforth a gradually diminishing range of influence of the non-state institutions of education, of higher as well as of middle grade.

The Roman Catholic Church, notwithstanding the social trend by which the system of general state education has expanded and enlarged, has continued to retain its ancient responsibilities for the education of its adherents. The principal selections for this chapter pertain to the existing attitude of the church to the question of education, and the problems presented by this attitude.