officers remark that boys who have received the manual training show increased power of concentration and ability to take and to follow directions.

The question often arises why a course of general manual training is preferred at Westborough to definite trade instruction such as is used in many reformatory institutions. To this question it must be answered that, considered from the educational stand-point alone, a progressive course of manual training has far greater value than special trade teaching. Trade teaching, then, which may well follow after a more general educational course, should not be allowed to supersede it, especially for boys such as these in the Lyman School, who are all under fifteen when they enter the institution, who are most of them from two to five years behind the pupils of a good public school in their studies, and who stay at Westborough often only about a year and a half and not often longer than two years. All the education these boys are to receive must be crowded into these brief months; and to learn a trade in this time would necessitate the neglect of all other manual training. Moreover, most of the boys are too young when they leave the school to go to work at trades. The unions, where they have influence, will not allow a boy under eighteen to be taken at trades. Further, it is shown in the manual training classes that, while practically all are capable, in varying degrees, of being developed mentally and morally by the exercises, and while perhaps two-thirds or Z-fourths are competent to go into a shop and learn to run a machine, barely ten per cent. show sufficient mechanical ability to make it probable that they could ever follow a skilled trade with profit. From this fact alone it is evident that the main lines of the teaching must be adapted to the ninety per cent. who need general rather than specialized manual training.

Meanwhile, under present methods trade teaching is not entirely neglected. Some of the more skilful boys are carried on by special instructions and become good carpenters or joiners, others gain skill in the shoe shop or the printing office, and a considerable number take a responsible part in the construction and the repair of buildings. Within the past two years it has happened that seventeen boys on leaving the school obtained positions distinctly because of the mechanical training at West

borough. In one case an employer, offering three dollars a week to a green hand, paid five dollars a week to a Lyman School boy because of his knowledge of the use of tools.

In discussing the question as to how far mechanical training may be expected to lead Lyman School boys to follow mechanical pursuits when earning their bread, the superintendent recently made an interesting analysis of the careers of twenty probationers who had made more than average mechanical progress in the school. He found that of the twenty only eight had obtained employment requiring any mechanical skill, and that of these eight only three seemed likely to stick to work with tools. One of the most skilful had become a canvasser because at that he could earn more money, two were mill hands, two expressmen, two clerks, two worked in shoe shops, one was a barber, one owned a fishing boat, one had taken to farming and three had had a variety of occupations. Eighteen of the twenty had made a fair record in conduct, while two had been arrested.

In commenting on these facts, the superintendent says: "This is a fair sample of present results. What is the interpretation? First, that any particular form of handskill is a very uncertain reliance, unless it is mechanical skill of a high order; second, that other forms of labor are frequently better recompensed than work in mechanical shops; third, that the community and class of pursuits most in vogue in it often settle the question what the boy shall do for a living. Again, machinery cuts such a figure in almost all trades that he who seeks mechanical work must, in the majority of cases, learn to manage a machine, which makes, perhaps, only one small part of a finished product. What prescience will enable a boy or his master to foresee the circumstances that must determine his industrial career, so as to give him the trade instruction which will fit him for that?" *

On the other hand, a general course of manual training makes a boy undoubtedly more valuable in any line of work which he may find to do and in proportion as the work demands skill.

It must be understood, however, that the Lyman School is gathering experience in this matter in a wholly tentative spirit,

"The Educational Value of Manual Training," by Theodore F. Chapin: "The Charities Review," June, 1897.

and it is probable that in the future trade teaching in special cases will be added, to a far greater degree than has yet been found practicable, to the present manual training system. Of course the pros and cons of trade teaching in reformatories have no bearing upon the question whether trade schools may not be urgently needed in the community, to take the place of the obsolete apprentice system.

The physical development drill in use is an adaptation of what is known as the Ling system, and is much more valuable than the military drill, which was formerly used. The exercises are arranged with a view to an all-round development of nervous and muscular control, and special attention is given to the needs of subjects who are deficient in one way or another.

The superintendent's unremitting labors for so many years have resulted in a serious break in his health, and in September, at the urgent recommendation of his physician, he was granted a four-months leave of absence. As the corps of officers on duty is unusually satisfactory, it is anticipated that everything will run on smoothly during his absence.

The length of detention at Westborough is fixed by a marking system. When a boy reaches his honor grade, his name. comes before the trustees, and they, with the assistance of the superintendent and of the two visitors who are employed in the care of probationers, must determine whether the boy may safely go to his own home on probation or whether his chance of well-doing will be better if placed out with a farmer. In forming this decision, the character of the home, as reported from the personal investigation of one of the visitors, is of course the chief consideration; but the boy's character is an important factor, too, and often a boy may be allowed to go to a home where the conditions are far from satisfactory, because on the whole it seems likely that he will do better with his own people than in any other opening that can be found. A committee of the trustees meets at the school every month, to consider probation and other cases which the superintendent may bring before them; and last winter 237 cases were passed upon by the trustees.

*These cases concerned 183 different boys, 46 of whom were considered twice and 83 were considered three times.

An analysis of the cases considered within the year shows that in regard to 10 boys a petition for release was refused on the ground that they needed further detention in the school; that of 48 boys it was decided that they should be placed on farms (or, being already on farms, should stay there), because their homes were unsuitable or because it seemed unwise to trust them at home at present; 33 boys were allowed to go home, in spite of the fact that their homes were more or less unsatisfactory,* 63 boys were voted to homes where the conditions seemed fairly good; 11 were voted to transfer to the Massachusetts Reformatory, 2 to the State Farm and 2 to the State Almshouse.

While a probationary system has always nominally been a feature of the school, it is only since legislation in 1895 placed the visitation of probationers under the direction of the trustees that this branch of the work has been satisfactorily developed. No one can recognize more fully than the trustees do that an institution is never a good place for any human being who can be successfully dealt with by any less artificial method; and the effort to follow up young law-breakers with steadying influences while restoring them to natural relations in the community is believed to be a notable step ahead in reformatory work.

The care of probationers is assigned to Mr. Walter A. Wheeler and Mr. Asa F. Howe, both of whom have shown themselves admirably qualified for their work. The boys seem uniformly to regard them as friends, and parents welcome their assistance in advising and controlling their boys in cases of difficulty. Of course, when boys seem desirous and capable of standing on their own feet, it is the visitors' policy to leave them very much alone.

There were 1,557 visits to probationers recorded within the year, and 683 investigations of homes and places. The report of the superintendent of visitation, on page 99, will give detailed information as to this department.

While it is manifestly proper that this branch of public work

* Of these, 4 were boys with marked mechanical ability, whose tastes would have been injuriously thwarted on a farm; 6 were boys who were otherwise unsuited to farm life; 2 were boys who had been tried on farms, and who would not stay there; 3 were defective boys, who could not be placed out; and the rest were boys whose homes were on the border line and whom for various reasons it was judged best to give a trial with their own people.

should be subject to supervisory inspection by a central board, just as the interior workings of public institutions are inspected, the trustees believe that an undivided responsibility for the selection of places and the proper care of probationers should be thrown upon those in direct charge of the work, and that the supervisory board should be trusted to inspect the work for probationers according to any methods that its own experience may dictate. As it is, under a law framed to meet wholly obsolete conditions, a Lyman School boy may never be placed until, in addition to the investigations of the Lyman School visitors, the place has been reported on by the State Board of Lunacy and Charity; and every boy outside the institution must, however often he may have been visited by visitors of the school or by the trustees, be likewise visited once a year by an agent of said State Board. These provisions entail a wholly unnecessary expenditure of public money, and hamper both the Lyman School and the State Board in a proper discharge of their functions. The trustees therefore renew their recommendations that the law be so revised as to free the former from cumbersome restrictions and to allow the latter to exercise a wise discretion in its method of inspecting this branch of Lyman School work.

Of the 124 new-comers received within the year at Westborough, 28 boys ranging from nine to thirteen years of age were placed in the branch cottage situated in the town of Berlin, some seven miles away. The methods of the Berlin family are very different from those of the main institution. An educational system, such as is possible in a large school, is impossible for a little group of ungraded scholars; but this is to be the less regretted, as many of the boys stay too short a time at Berlin to profit by an extended system of training, and even where this is not the case the advantage of being wholly removed from the associations of a large reformatory institution is so great as to offset all counterbalancing disadvantages.

For all except the most depraved the Berlin discipline has been successful beyond expectation. The matron, Mrs. Warner, has an extraordinary faculty of finding out everything that is good in a boy's nature, arousing his interest, winning his affections and commanding the implicit obedience of those who