The bill passed unanimously both house and senate, and a juvenile court was established in every county in Kansas. The juvenile court system of this state is modeled after that of Colorado.
Taking the Kansas society as a nucleus, the general superintendent accepted calls into Missouri and outlying states. The first step was to organize a league in the Missouri state penitentiary, under Chaplain Geo. J. Warren, D. D. Since then the general superintendent has made twenty-six major and many minor national tours, the longest one being seven thousand miles. During that period, fifteen states have been opened to the work of the society. Of these eleven still maintain the society for the friendless. Ministers of ability and consecration have accepted calls to be superintendents. There are seventeen of these now in full service, with two laymen giving part time.
There are twenty centers of religious activity in penal institutions, originally projected by the society.
When the society was nine years old the first national convention was held in Kansas City, in January, 1910. In 1906 the original society had been expanded from a state organization to one including all the states and territories in the United States. At the first national convention in 1910 the first elective national board was chosen. Previous to this the board of directors of the “Kansas and Missouri division,” (Kansas and Missouri having been united in one unit of territory), was a holding board for all the work in the other states. In November, 1908, the general office was moved from Topeka to Kansas City, the office being in Missouri and the temporary home on the Kansas side of the line. The first national convention came as a natural sequence. It was to more completely develop this slowly evolving organization, so that it would cover all the territories occupied by the living organism--the society itself.
NEW PRISON HEAD NOMINATED IN MASSACHUSETTS.
Warren F. Spalding, Secretary of the Massachusetts Prison Association, has been nominated by Governor Foss, chairman and executive of the Prison Commission, succeeding Mr. Pettigrove. Of the appointment the Boston Transcript says editorially:
The Governor has supplanted one good man with another good man. That Mr. Pettigrove was not to be reappointed was announced by the governor some weeks ago, and yet Mr. Pettigrove’s friends hoped that he would reconsider, as he had done on so many other occasions. There will be regret at the passing of Mr. Pettigrove, who, in the many years in which he has been prison commissioner has served the State well and given his department the benefit of long experience and real ability. The public, while regretting the departure of Pettigrove, will welcome the incoming of Spalding. As secretary of the Massachusetts prison association for many years, and backed by his long experience in prison labor affairs, Mr. Spalding has been one of the foremost prison men of the United States. The association of which he is the secretary has been a leader in progressive ideas on prison management, and in this Mr. Spalding has been the executive officer and initiator. There will be no question whatever of the progressiveness of Mr. Spalding’s administration and of the value of his services to the State.