Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/322

310 and the family who send him to fetch it are alike held responsible. If a boy carries telegrams to a disreputable house, the operator who sends him is liable to a fine or to jail for a year. The boy who steals rides on a coal train involves the conductor in his delinquency; and the junk dealers find it unprofitable to purchase junk from children whose detection involves a year in jail for the adult participant in their offenses.

The child in Colorado thus has the fullest benefit of a rigid compulsory-education law, and also of this wide-embracing enforcement of adult responsibility. Colorado goes beyond the enforcement of parental responsibility, and includes with it ''adult responsibility. Whoever'' contributes to the delinquency of a child is responsible before the law of Colorado.

Mr. Bodine makes the statement that "every juvenile corrective institution in Chicago is overstuffed with boys who are there largely because their parents have not taken enough interest in their education." This statement, being unquestionably true, affords a powerful argument for the prompt adoption in Illinois of the Colorado juvenile delinquency law, for the purpose of reinforcing the compulsory-education law through all those periods to which, by its very nature, it cannot apply; namely, holidays and the two years between the fourteenth and the sixteenth birthdays. When all the juvenile institutions of Chicago are overcrowded, it would be folly to try to get on with one of two excellent laws for reducing the number of delinquent children, when both laws can easily be had.

Mr. Bodine makes the prophecy: "We shall always have corrective institutions, but the punishment of parents will keep them from being overcrowded." The people of Colorado say in effect: "If we must have corrective institutions, let us keep the children out of them as far as possible, and fine and imprison adults instead." And there appears to be a certain fine justice in supporting the efforts of parents to bring their children up righteously, by punishing those persons who defeat these efforts. Why should the whole burden of punishment fall upon fathers and mothers, while offenders outside the family who tempt the children go free?