Judge Lindsey sends boys to the reform school without officer or guard.
The boys go of their own accord, carrying their own commitment papers.
They pound on the gate demanding admittance in the name of the law. The
boy believes that Judge Lindsey is his friend, and that the reason he
is sent to the reform school is that he may reap a betterment which his
full freedom cannot possibly offer. When he takes his commitment papers
he is no longer at war with society and the keepers of the law. He
believes that what is being done for him is done for the best, and so he
goes to prison, which is really not a prison at the last, for it is a
school where the lad is taught to economize both time and money and to
make himself useful.

Other people work for us, and we must work for them. This is the supreme
lesson that the boy learns. You can only help yourself by
helping others.

Now here is a proposition: If a boy or a man takes his commitment
papers, goes to prison alone and unattended, is it necessary that he
should be there locked up, enclosed in a corral and be looked after by
guards armed with death-dealing implements?

Superintendent Whittaker, of the institution at Jeffersonville, Indiana,
says, "No." He believes that within ten years' time we will do away with
the high wall, and will keep our loaded guns out of sight; to a great
degree also we will take the bars from the windows of the prisons, just
as we have taken them away from the windows of the hospitals for
the insane.

At the reform school it may be necessary to have a guard-house for some