AMERICAN REFORMATORY SYSTEM 465
be a grain of truth in the remark of George Eliot: "In propor- tion as the thoughts of men are removed from the earth in which they live to an invisible world they are led to neglect their duty to each other." Dr. E. H. Hartwell says : "Bodily actions demand our first consideration since without them mental power, artistic feeling, and spiritual insight cannot be made to answer any earthly purpose." To this extent the principle of determin- ism is espoused; and unhesitatingly, alleged free will is invaded. By rational procedure the social in place of anti-social tendencies are trained and made dominant. Thus the man is redeemed.
ORGANIZATION AND CONTROL
The original and preferable principle for organizing our re- formatories is that of local-centralism. The state legislative control should be limited to a broadly outlined enabling act in harmony, of course, with the general state penological policy, but leaving much freedom of initiative to the local institutional authority — the board of managers. This local authority, in turn, had best limit its functions to fixing, changing, and supervising the administrative polity, leaving the immediate executive man- agement to the resident chief officer — the prison governor. The governing principle of a reformatory must needs be, within certain constituted rights, of monarchial type, but exercised with much discretionary flexibility; approximately as a com- munity under martial law, where both civic and military functions obtain. Such a blend is practicable and useful; indeed it is requisite.
It is important that the subordinate staff shall remain sub- ordinate; that each officer and employee shall confine his reformative activity to his own assigned specific duties. The chiefs of the several departments may properly constitute a coterie for the study of prison science, for consultations and advis- ings, but they should each act entirely within his own particular sphere and under authoritative direction. And the rank and file of the staff should remain as the soldier, and never independently assume the role of the reformer. No outside training school for prison officers can ever supply a suitable reformatory prison
