streets and public places during school hours or in the nighttime, having no employment or lawful occupation, shall be deemed juvenile disorderly persons, subject to the provisions of the act. The act further provided that any person might file a complaint in the county court (now also called the juvenile court), and that the case could be continued for further hearing upon the conduct of the child. This act also provided that the school board could appoint truant officers who should look after the children.

It will be observed, therefore, that even before the juvenile law of Illinois of 1899 became effective, Colorado had upon her statute books every feature of the juvenile court of Illinois, if only availed of and put into actual practice. We have found this condition to exist in several States clamoring for juvenile laws. Of course we must except that feature of the law which permits us to hold legally accountable and punish parents and others for the moral delinquency of children. Colorado is at this period the first and only State in the Union which has such a law.

THE WORK AND THE LAW.

What is here said is not intended to withhold any credit from the noble men, and women responsible for the embodiment of all of these features in a well-defined code, but simply to accentuate the fact that it is not so much a question of law as a question of work with and for the children. It is rather a question of doing the thing. In saying this we do not intend to discourage efforts in behalf of such a juvenile-court system as has been finally adopted in Illinois and Colorado.

We found it much more convenient in the handling of children's cases to embody in definite statutory form the definition of "delinquency" and "dependency," and to provide many details by statute, the working out of which without the statute would depend upon the cooperation of various officials, which might not be so easily obtained and which would be largely voluntary.

TRUE FUNCTION OF STATE.

Another advantage of this compilation has been to emphasize and accentuate the importance of such cases and the necessity on the part of the State for greater care and more intelligent dealing in the handling of one of its greatest problems. It has resulted in a moral awakening. It has caused a revulsion against that carelessness and indifference which formerly characterized the State in its dealing with children offenders. It has, more than any other incident in the history of jurisprudence, compelled us to realize that the attitude of the State in the care and correction of the child should be as nearly parental as possible. It has also provided a better method of living up to this test. It has awakened the State to see with clearer vision. that the child is not to be reformed, but to be formed; that it has every

advantage while character is plastic, in the golden period of adolescence, to redeem a possible offender of the future to good citizenship before he has really become an offender at all. This should be accomplished as a wise and loving parent would accomplish it, not with leniency on the one hand or brutality on the other, but with charity, patience, interest, and what is most important of all, a firmness that commands respect, love, and obedience, and does not produce hate or ill-will. To correct the child we must often begin by correcting the parent, improving the environment in which the child lives, and adding, as far as possible, good opportunities to its life. If the parent is careless and negligent, punishment is rather for the parent than the child. If the parent is helpess, or if the environment is such as to seriously hamper the honest effort of the parent, as is often the case; or, if the natural instincts of childhood for fun, play, and adventure are stifled, for instance, by city ordinances, necessary for the protection of others in large cities, with the consequence of a sure violation thereof and an unintentional disregard for the rights of others rather than viciousness or criminality, then the State simply comes to the aid of the parent and the child.

LAW IN DENVER AND COLORADO.

Denver is now in the fourth year of its so-called "juvenile court work." Some cases were brought under the law of April 12, 1899, but no organized effort or systematized plan was inaugurated until a year later. Up to this time there were nearly as many children proceeded against in the justice's court and in the criminal court for crime as there were in the county court. (The county court is also the juvenile court.) There was no systematized effort to bring them to one court. There was no report system, no probation officers, no rain baths, no literature, no physical department, no relief department, none of the earnest heart to heart work and personal contact and touch with the boys, such as characterizes the present juvenile-court work. There was no adult delinquent law. There was no juvenile improvement association, no detention school, with its wholesomeness and uplifting influence. On the contrary, there was the jail, with its filth and vermin and all its vileness, into which over 2,000 Denver boys, between 10 and 16 years of age, were thrust during the six years prior to the establishment of the juvenile court. This meant that one out of every five mothers' sons had a taste of jail life during his formative period between 10 and 16, the most important in life, the period when examples and impressions for good or evil are most sure and lasting.

OBJECTIONS TO JUVENILE LAW.

Whatever good results may come under any juvenile law must depend rather upon the personal, active, sincere, and earnest work of

those who are called upon to administer the law. Yet we would be handicapped without the law. It permits many things to be done. where there is a disposition to do which could only be accomplished with difficulty under the old law. I do not, in my own experience, know of one imaginable abuse which might be feared under the juvenile law that could not likewise and with more probability occur under the criminal laws. The misfortune is that abuses, mistakes, and failures under the criminal law, because of its very conventionality, are seldom thought of or considered, whereas the shortcomings, however inconsiderable, under the juvenile law, because it is new, are too often seized upon and held up as glaring illustrations of its failure. An official requested the judge of the juvenile court to send a 15-year-old boy to jail, giving as his principal reason that while the evidence was not conclusive, nevertheless the boy had been in jail twelve times before from the criminal courts, and therefore he should be sent to jail the thirteenth time. It never occurred to him that the State had failed already twelve times when he began his dire predictions that to place the boy on probation, with such aid as could be afforded him by the court, would end in utter failure. In this particular case the boy turned out well and after two years is an independent and promising citizen. But suppose probation had failed. It would have had still twelve times the best of the jail. Even in England, where the criminal laws are most rigidly enforced, according to the statistics of its prison inmates, more than half of them are serving at least the second term.

Power under any law may be abused. Mistakes under any law may be made. No system is perfect. If anyone conceives the idea. that the juvenue court was created for the purpose of correcting or reforming every disorderly child, they are, of course, mistaken. Jails and criminal courts never did that. On the contrary, criminality among the youth of this country has been amazingly on the increase. Over half of the inmates of jails, reformatories, and prisons combined are under 24 years of age. They are there largely because of uncorrected delinquency in childhood. While the juvenile court and probation system will not and can not entirely overcome delinquency and waywardness, it will do it a great deal better than the jail and the criminal court ever did. This is the test of its success rather than the number of children it succeeds in correcting. There are failures under the juvenile law, but there were more failures under the criminal law. It must be remembered that the juvenile court generally deals with cases in which there has been a failure in the home, school, and often the church. These three institutions are the places through their various influences to form the character of the child. Yet when he violates the law of the land it is the state that is called in to effect the correction. The home, of course, is the most important place of all to accomplish this. The school or the state is not to

blame because it can not always supply the deficiency of home training. Again, each home depends upon some other home, and I have known many careful and firm parents to have all of their efforts in behalf of their boys overcome by the stronger power and influence of a boy in some other home, where the rearing and training was not so good. We are the creatures more or less of all the influences and environment of our lives. The juvenile court is rather an aid to the home and the school in the moral training of the child. If these two latter fail, the court, through its officers, does the best it can to supply the deficiency. It should never be resorted to until necessary, and then it needs and demands the help, assistance and cooperation of the parent and the school, and with their aid, brings to bear such additional power as it may wield in the life of a child, to correct its evil tendencies. They should realize that what is being done is in the interest of the child and, incidentally, to protect the rights of others. Of course, it is also to overcome lawlessness, secure obedience from the child, and respect for the law. This is done often under difficulties, not of the court's creating, but over which it has not complete control. Understood rightly, the actions of the court will seldom merit disapproval or criticism.

THE COURT AND THE HOME.

It will be seen, therefore, that it is not the province of the juvenile court to usurp the functions of the home. Its true province is rather to see that this function is performed as it should be; in the case of inexcusable neglect and indifference by parents, to compel them to perform this function; where there is excuse, as is frequently the case, to assist them; and finally, where the parent has entirely failed or there is no home, the state must take the child and treat it as nearly as possible as the parent should.

TREATMENT OF CHILD OFFENDERS.

This court does not tolerate the idea of the child being a criminal. It does not consider the question of punishment the important thing. If the child can not be corrected at home, for its own good and for the good of society at large it is simply sent to a State public school, where discipline is superior to that of the home and where it is intended to correct its waywardness, and also, in so far as it may, serve as an example to prevent waywardness in others. The purpose is in delinquent cases, to inspire and receive obedience, to improve and strengthen character. Force is seldom necessary. Force is seldom necessary. It should not be at all if there was harmony, understanding, and patience. It is only at best a short cut to correction. It is not natural. We never release a boy upon probation until he is impressed with the idea that he must obey. It is explained what the consequences will be if he does not obey and keep his word. It is kindly but firmly impressed

why all this is so, and why after all he is the one we are most interested in, and that it is for him we are working and not against him. We want him to work with us and not against us. He must, to do this, obey in the home, in the school, and of course he must obey the laws of the land and respect the rights of others. We must know that he obeys. We know this by reports from the school, signed by the teacher, every two weeks; by reports from the neighborhood, when necessary to investigate, and frequently, by reports from the neighborhood, when necessary to investigate, and frequently, by reports from the home, and, in exceptional cases, visits to the home. And more important than all this and above all this is the trust and confidence we impose upon the boy himself through the administrative work of the court. We arouse his sense of responsibility. We understand him as best we can and we make him understand us as best we can.

CRIMINAL COURT AND JUVENILE COURT COMPARED.

In over 95 per cent of cases on probation, after nearly four years. (at the writing of this report) we succeed. We do not fail in the 5 per cent, for because a boy must be sent to the industrial school is not the test of failure. It may be said that because 95 per cent have not committed a second offense after a period of from one to three years, it is not the test of success. Yet such was the test under the criminal law, and it is the only test we have. We know that over 50 per cent of all the boys discharged from the courts, before the existence of the juvenile law, were returned for further offenses within the same period upon which the estimates of results in the juvenile court of Denver are here made. As a matter of fact, from the records investigated in the criminal court, over 90 per cent were convicted of crime and over 75 per cent of boys, under 17, were sent to jail or some State institution. In the Denver juvenile court none are convicted of crime or subjected to the contamination of the jail, and not over 5 per cent of those first subjected to probation ever reach the industrial school to be cared for at the expense of the State, and (however unjust it is) to be handicapped in life by the stigma of reform school odor. Indeed if the number of commitments of children brought to the juvenile court were as large as in the old days when they were brought to the criminal court, considerably over $100,000 cash would have been added to the burdens of the taxpayers of Colorado during the past three years for their care and maintenance. But is this even to be thought of in connection with the saving to the citizenship of to-morrow?

PRESENT COLORADO LAW AND DETAILS OF ITS OPERATION.

The first two annual reports of the juvenile court of Denver represented its work under the system established in January, 1901, in