its guardianship, three distinct kinds of reformatories-one for those committed by request of parents, one for the accused awaiting trial, and the third for those convicted of crime by law. Such institutions would be useful as a means of technical instruction not only in cities but in rural districts also.

2. The guardianship or supervision which public authority exercises in many ways over those under age could be bettered in a great degree by placing a certain number of them in private families for education. This is specially recommended for young girls.

3. The practice on the part of the state of confiding certain minors to private families for their education may be harmonized with that of placing them in reformatories on the congregate plan.

4. It is proper that the directors and instructors of the state reform. atories should be laymen.

5. With the approval of competent judicial authority, the accused and the convicted under 18 years of age, upon whom sentence has not been executed, should be committed by the state to responsible families for education during the term of their preventive detention. Local societies, either of patronage of prisoners or of discharged convicts, should be urged by the public authority to provide these families and to supervise them.

6. It is best for the state to decrease its expense by favoring the establishment of private reformatory institutions.

THE EVIL INFLUENCES OF PARENTS.

SENATOR ROUSSEL, OF France.

The seventh question of the first section would seem appropriate in the third section. It would also appear proper to call attention here to some of the answers to that question. It deals largely with illtreated children and their proper protection and education as a very efficient agency of prevention. Among the most prominent writers on the seventh question of the first section, in regard to the evil influence of parents and how to counteract it, is the distinguished Senator Roussel, of France, the author of the remarkable report to the French Senate on dependent and delinquent children.

The author begins by saying:

It is not rare when a minor is convicted by the courts to hear the regret expressed that the really guilty parties, the parents, have escaped punishment. This reflection, brought out by the special facts, has almost general comprehension.

It can be said that it characterizes the family associations from which emanate nearly all the young delinquents and young criminals, and it indicates correctly the principal source of the criminality of minors, the alarming progress of which has been shown in countries most advanced in civilization. We do not have to demonstrate the evil influence of parental example upon the development already so precocious of vicious instincts and criminal tendencies. According to the terms of the question submitted to us, we are to seek for the means of protecting until their majority, young convicts in a state of conditional liberation, and also those who have completed the term of their imprisonment.

The pernicious influence of parents relative to minors is manifested in two ways and at two periods in the life of the child. First, in extreme youth when he is only a burden, his parents neglect him. He is left without proper care, often without food, and subjected to all hazards of the streets; he is forced to be a vagabond and a beggar, and this situation continues until a violation of law places the little unfortunate in the hands of justice. Later everything is changed. When by maturity of age and the good effects of penitentiary education the child instead of being a burden can be a source of profit, we see these same parents, who had abandoned him in his infancy and apparently had forgotten him altogether, go to him and win him back to them by their entreaties, and finally on his discharge regain him by virtue of parental authority. This indiscretion of evil parents operates in the same way in the ease of children brought up by charity, and it is in this way that the fruits of correctional or charitable education are corrupted, and that a great many minors, who would have become useful members of society, are definitely lost to it. It is to the infallible remedy of this evil in certain local conditions that the seventh question of the first section has been submitted to the congress.

In this connection the picture above drawn by Senator Roussel brings to mind a thrilling and touching incident related by Viscount D'Haussonville at the beginning of his able work, "L'Enfance á Paris." He says:

Some years ago a band of criminals were brought before the jury of the Seine charged with a terrible crime, the assassination of an aged widow, with details of ferocity which the pen refuses to describe. The president of the court having asked the principal, Maillot called "the Yellow," how he had been brought to commit such a crime, he replied:

"What do you wish I should tell you, Mr. President? Since the age of seven years I have been found only on the streets of Paris. I have never met anyone who was interested in me. When a child I was abandoned to every vicissitude--and I am lost. I have always been unfortunate. My life has been passed in prisons and jails. This is all. It is my fate. I have thus reached-you know where. I will not say I have committed this crime under circumstances independent of my will, but finally[here the voice of Maillot trembled]—I never had a person to advise me. I had in view only robbery. I committed robbery, but I ended with murder."

The two pictures, one drawn by Senator Roussel and the other some years ago by Viscount D'Haussonville, are typical of neglected childhood in the great cities and demonstrate how, by such neglect, society creates within itself a criminal population that some day will fearfully prey upon it. The proper care and education of dependent children and the timely protection of the illtreated might have prevented what must now be suffered. It must be remembered that in all these cases of crime society suffers far more than the one individual, the offender, who is removed from its midst by the execution of the law.

Senator Roussel reviews at length the treatment of the seventh question in its various forms at the Congresses of London, Stockholm, and Rome, giving extracts from the discussions and the resolutions adopted, with comments thereon. He also reviews the provisions of the French law and the progress made lately on the project reported by him in the senate, in his great report referred to above. This project of law, as it passed the senate, was the most perfect in its general plan and details of any that ever came before a legislative body. The house of

deputies has very much modified the original project and has considably lessened its scope. Certain portions of the senatorial project became law July 23, 1889, having for their object the protection of illtreated, dependent, and morally abandoned children.

But the act of 1889, in the opinion of Senator Roussel, is yet incomplete and should be materially amended, as he says in the following extract from his report:

In conclusion, it appears from the preceding statement that to secure in French legislation the protection of young prisoners on conditional liberation, and of young convicts after the expiration of their sentence, it is necessary:

1. To modify article 66 of the penal code by extending until the twenty-first year, that is to say until majority, or in the case of a boy, until the time when he will be called into military service, the power to fix the duration of correctional imprison

ment.

2. To add to the law of August 5, 1850, the provision of which the text has been given above and which permits, first, to withdraw from the parents during the time of conditional liberty the exercise of parental rights, and secondly, to deprive the parents of the young convict of the guardianship of his person until his majority or his discharge, if they have been convicted of certain offenses or have voluntarily abandoned their child, or have habitually neglected to watch over him, or if they are guilty of notorious conduct.

3. To aid in the protection not only of minors brought before the courts for violations of law, but also of those cared for by public charity, or by a charitable association, or even by an individual, the provisions of the law of July 23, 1889, should be applied.

*

If the search for preventive methods which has already had a large place in the works of the three International Prison Congresses should retain its importance in the future congresses, we can not pass in silence this remark,

The

That above direct means, which have been indicated, to counteract the pernicious influence of parents or guardians over children or wards, at the time of their conditional liberation or at the expiration of their sentence, should be placed the means of reclamation applicable to these children before any intervention of the courts. superiority of the measures proposed by the senate of France, distinctly protecting the child before the abuse of paternal power had made him a delinquent or a criminal, will be admitted. It withdrew him at the very time when the abuse of paternal authority took place or at the time of sentence, when he was placed in a reformatory, or at the time of conditional liberation.

Therefore, we do not fear to repeat this conclusion, which is the result of a long experience, namely: That if we wish to arrest the progress of crime, especially with minors, it is of less importance to improve the prison régime for young prisoners than it is to establish, on the ground of charity, the legal, moral, and professional education of abandoned, dependent, and illtreated children.

The reports and discussions relative to child-saving in the prelimi nary work of the congress and in the congress itself show the extended interest in the subject which has become the most interesting of any connected with penal science. The world every day is learning better the truth that if the child is saved to a good life there will be no grownup man to punish. It is because of the great importance of the subject and that the congress gave so full a hearing that so much space has been given it here.