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The City of Boys
A fascinating sketch of the city founded by Judge Willis Brown to make bad boys into good citizens
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A SCHOOL OP CITIZENSHIP ! That sounds better than the reform school, doesn't it? And it is better, for it is conceded that reform schools often serve to make good boys bad and bad boys worse, particularly when they are "schools of crime where the older offenders instruct the lesser delinquents in the art of law breaking." At Boy City these same " kiddies* ' are taught to make and to enforce laws — not to break them. They are taught all the duties of citizenship and when they leave Boyville for the world outside they are better in mind, body and morals, for their residence within the charmed limits of the play city. That is the idea of Judge Willis Brown, of the Juvenile Court of Chicago, and Boy City is famous among penologists the world over. It is a manufactory of manhood that is doing more good for the youth of Chicago than can be realized without intimate association with Boy City and its products.
The City of Boys is not an institution of instruction but of education in its broadest meaning; the education which eomes from experience. It is a system of educational recreation. The City of Boys emphasizes the real elements which make up a boy's desires — fun and opportunity actually to do things. The instruction and discipline which obtains in a boy's life in home, school and church; every activity in which he enters, is under the direction of adults who are in authority. This discipline is
necessary and its purpose is to grow a man of character. Its fundamental is that the growing, boy needs moulding in the right way so that in after years when manhood is the fulfilment of boyhood, there shall be fixed habits of honor and virtue.
Notwithstanding this care and instruction given boys, many of them go wrong. Many violate laws to a greater or less extent. When a boy becomes incorrigible, disobedient, willful; when he smokes cigarettes, stays out nights, runs away to adjoining cities and often to far distant places, two deductions are always made. One is that the boy is naturally bad and needs severe punishment, the other is that the boy has not had proper control and instruction. This latter reason may well be responsible for many of the boys of bad homes and vicious environment doing unseemly acts, on the theory that they know no better, that they are but following the example set before them and that they are misunderstood. The harsh treatment given these boys by the criminal courts made necessary the establishment of the Juvenile Courts.
As a judge of the Juvenile Court, Judge Brown found a great many boys of good homes coming before it. These boys having had good examples, loving parents and religious instruction and advantages not enjoyed by the poorer boys, nevertheless committed acts fully as vicious as these so-called unfortunate boys. Then it was claimed that these boys were simply "naturally" bad, and, in
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