Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/157

 e citizens,

interested in a ‘decent town of decent kids,’ they agreed not only to ‘keep off’ and ‘keep out’ them- selves, but to keep other boys out; and everyone agreed ‘on the square’ that he would give any kid there leave to ‘snitch’ to me, if any boy broke his word and was not square. Thus harmony was established between their world and ours, and we all pulled together one way.”

As the Judge remarked to me, those boys did what few men would do; they gave up their business “just because it was right.” All that was necessary was to make them understand the right and their duties, and then to interest them in the “game of correction.”

The arena for the great game of correction is the Court of Probation. Held every other Saturday forenoon, it is a picturesque and a very pleasant spectacle. All the “bad” boys in town who have been caught committing mistakes or who have “snitched up” on themselves, assemble there to report. It isn’t new. Like the Juvenile Court itself, the “method” of putting children on probation did not originate with Judge Lindsey. Yet he discovered it himself. As I quote him as saying above, he didn’t know about such things. When he went first to the home of the “cave-dweller” to investigate, he was performing one function of a probation officer; and when he