“A boy, who has been unaccustomed to obey his parents, or respect his superiors, and has been allowed to spend most of his time in idleness before he is brought to the Refuge, if kept regularly at work, and at the same time compelled to obey those who have the care of him, will, in time, become so accustomed to labor, that he will even, in some cases, prefer it to idleness, and obedience will also become habitual. But this must be a work of time. He should be kept until he is thoroughly weaned from his former indolent ways. I have known boys who have remained three or four years in our institution and who have run away from their masters soon after they were bound out, come back to the city and resort to their old haunts and habits; but finding few if any of their old associates, they have soon felt that their former habits were not so pleasant, and having lost all relish for a vagabond life, have voluntarily returned to the house and asked admission and employment as a boon!”
He justly animadverts upon the unreasonableness of those who expect “a House of Refuge will accomplish, in a few months, what respectable and even religious parents find it difficult to do even in a series of years.” They have their children from the first hour of their existence, and through all that precious period of childhood, while they are comparatively strangers to evil habits and associations, and yet how often do they fail to secure their standing in good habits and sound principles? How preposterous then, must be the expectation that the House of Refuge will take them, when their moral and intellectual nature is so completely perverted and corrupted, and thoroughly reform them in a few months!
Touching the employment of boys in the institution, and after they leave it, many difficulties are experienced. The modes of labor which are adopted, are, of course, fitted to the age and physical ability of such children, but are by no means calculated to prepare them for that sort of life, which most of them expect to lead. To remove them completely from the temptations and exposures of city life, is considered very desirable; and hence, to place them with farmers in the country, where the means of indulging vicious inclinations are supposed to be few and far between, is always preferred to placing them with mechanics, where they will be likely to find associates who will be the subjects or agents of corruption. But to bind a boy to a farmer till he is of age, is regarded by most parents as a very undesirable disposition to make of him, and when a boy is thus bound, he generally understands that his parents or friends will readily connive at his escape. The general wish is, that they should be bound to trades, if bound at all.
It seems to be admitted that, as a general thing, city boys are not likely to make good farmers, unless put to it very young, and by degrees accustomed to hard work. “The routine of labor pursued in the Refuge, does not seem fitted to prepare boys for that kind of life, to which the greater part of them are destined. A boy here, works from five to seven hours a day at very light work, in a room that is warmed and made comfortable in winter, and sheltered from the wet and heat of summer. He has from one to two hours for play every day, and an abundance of playmates. After living in this way about one year, (sometimes a little less, and sometimes more than a year,) he is bound to a farmer, who makes him work, perhaps ten or twelve hours in a day, and at labor which is much harder than any thing he has been accustomed to before. He has, perhaps, repeatedly been told, while in the Refuge, to behave well, and he should soon have a good place, and it has been told in such a way, that to be with a farmer is, in his mind, to be in a kind of paradise. But when he finds hard work, no time for play, frequent exposure to heat and cold, few or no companions, it is not strange that some are disappointed and disposed to abscond.”
In contrast with this mode of proceeding, our correspondent proposes the following outline. “If it were possible,” he says, “I would keep every boy at least three years, and I would have him understand, when he comes into the Refuge, that he must not expect to be discharged in less than three years, so that his mind should be at ease on that point. I would have them employed at trades, that would be useful to them after their discharge. In three years they would acquire so much knowledge of a common trade, that their services would become desirable to respectable mechanics. In three years, if properly disciplined, their habits of industry, obedience, &c., would acquire a degree of strength. They would become weaned from their old associates and habits. In three years the older ones, (if too old for apprentices,) would become sufficiently acquainted with their business to earn their living. Their parents would not feel that their time was lost. They would see, and the boys themselves would see, that they are acquiring that sort of knowledge that will be useful to them in after life. Many of our older boys think now, that their time is in a good degree lost. They know, indeed, that the intellectual education they acquire will be of service to them, but they feel, at the same time, that they are not learning any thing that will secure them a livelihood after their discharge.”
Among the obvious evils of a short continuance in the Refuge, (besides the impracticability of forming new habits in the children,) are, (1.) The state of constant restlessness in the alternation of hope and disappointment, respecting a release. Parents are permitted to visit their children once in two months, and in these visits the principal subject of conversation is about their “getting out.” The children are constantly urging their parents to have them released, and the parents are equally constant in promising to do so. This excites much uneasiness in the former, and neutralizes what would otherwise be the useful discipline of the house; and, (2.) The institution is deprived of the fruits of its good discipline as fast, nearly, as they appear. “By constantly sending out the best, we lose their influence, which might be of much service with the more vicious. If, in any community, the best members were constantly leaving, and only bad members coming in to supply their places, the condition of that community, with regard to morals, would become very low, if not hopeless.”
These opinions, formed from an intimate acquaintance with the practical working of the system, are entitled to weight. We do not adopt nor reject them. We do not say that any material modification of the present rules of admission, or of the form of discipline is practicable. But, if the views we have ever held respecting the design of a House of Refuge are just, viz., to rescue those whose childhood lies all open to evil examples and influences, and to put them under treatment, which shall resemble, in its main features, that of a good home, then are we clear, that a more rigid discrimination in the admission of inmates should be observed. The most hopeful subjects of such domestic discipline, are those who have not past into that stage of moral and intellectual stupor and impenetrability, on which ordinary sympathies fall as water-drops upon a marble slab. Notwithstanding the sad neglects and abuses they have suffered, there are still impulses in their young natures, which can be worked upon by kind words and approving smiles, and indeed, their present unhappy condition is owing, in no small measure, to the absence of such influences from the place which (for want of a better) they call their home. We have known cases, not a few, in which the manifestation of a real interest in the welfare of a child at a favorable moment, has been, in its effects, like the gushing forth of a living spring from the smitten rock. And it is in this view, that we most highly commend a recent measure in the institution, whose report is now under review, viz., the employment of an intelligent, judicious, capable female, to supervise with maternal care and tenderness the moral and physical condition of the boys.
We all know with how many chords the human heart is strung, which vibrate only to the soft breath of sympathy. A gentle accent—a trifling act of kindness, or even a glance of pity, will awaken their harmonies, and fill the heart of the rudest child with what may well pass for rapture. There is a period, however, at which these better feelings become comparatively incapable of excitement. They have either lost their vitality by abuse or neglect, or they have been overborne and swallowed up by the ebbless tide of vicious associations and indulgencies. The voice of virtuous charmers is no longer heard, charm they never so wisely.
But we cannot enlarge on this fruitful topic, suffice it to say that some of the defects of the present system are remediable, as we have already intimated, and others are inseparable from the very nature and design of the institution, and can only be set over against the greater good.
The report furnishes a very gratifying account of the progress which has been made in the erection of a new Refuge for Colored Juvenile Delinquents. A front view and ground plan of the structure accompanying our present number and the following general description of the arrangement of the various departments, may be interesting to our readers.