12 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
method of incarcerating the boys with older criminals in the same cell-houses. It is equally true that the instruction given, especially the manual training, has proved very beneficial to the boys, and the superintendent and teachers have done their best under the circumstances. But a very grave mistake was made in locating the John Worthy School alongside of the House of Correction, and making a prison-like structure of it (with walls, bars, and bolts), and organizing it on the old congregate plan. The school should have been located in the country, on a large tract of land, and built on the cottage system ; and it seems astonishing that the founders of the school should have made the mistake they did, when the Lyman School for Boys at West- boro, Mass., the Glen Mills School at Glen Mills, Pa., and other schools, which take care of the same class of boys as those com- mitted to the John Worthy School, had long been established and organized on the cottage plan. Doubtless a small percent- age, perhaps 2 per cent., of delinquent boys under the age of sixteen need to be forcibly restrained, but it has been conclus- ively demonstrated by long experience that vigilant supervision may be substituted in place of walls and bars and bolts, and that the vast majority of juvenile offenders may be more effectually reformed by being allowed a large amount of liberty and being humanely treated, than they can be by rigid confinement and harsh treatment.
In accordance with these views, an act was passed by the Illinois legislature in 1901 for the establishment of a "State Home for Delinquent Boys," and a large amount of money has been subscribed for the erection of the school. The school will be located near St. Charles, this state, on a large fertile farm, will be built on the cottage plan, and will accommodate, when completed, at least 1,000 pupils. This will be a state, not a municipal, institution, but it will care for such boys as are now committed to the John Worthy School. The object of the new school, as defined by law, is "to give the inmates, as far as possible, a common-school education and such a knowledge of trades and employments, agriculture and horticulture, as shall fit them for the ordinary employments of life." No building,
