For good or evil, the old system of apprenticeship is dead and gone. It had its faults, but it had many virtues, for at any rate it insured a boy continuity of work during those years when idleness is fatal. Nor have we anything to take its place, for parental control and interest have to a great extent disappeared also. It ought naturally to have become more keen and active, but who can deny that the reverse is the case? Everything nowadays is to be done for the parents, and but little by them. So it comes that agencies and organizations innumerable are in existence for the purpose of doing work that ought to have been done cheerfully by the parents, or for undoing the evil that has been done by them. But can they undo it? Can anyone undo it? Boys from fourteen to sixteen may be sent to reformatories till they are nineteen years of age. But does such a course undo it? No; for if he behaves badly enough he is sent away, and if he behaves well enough he is sent out on license when he has been there two years. Many such boys get charged again and again, and many detectives tell me that the worst thieves in their districts are men who have spent a time in a reformatory.
Parental influence cannot be exercised by proxy. Standing as God’s vicegerents towards their children, parents have committed to them a sacred duty and a trust; they have given to them an influence that no one can exert on their behalf. Reformatories undoubtedly do a great amount of good; unfortunately, they are absolutely necessary, they cannot be dispensed with. To take a vicious lad from his surroundings is the only wise, and frequently the only possible, course; but having taken him, he ought at any rate to be kept a sufficient length of time to allow of his acquiring industrious habits and useful skill which will fit him for becoming a decent and self-supporting citizen. An idle, dishonest boy of fifteen cannot by any process be converted into an upright and aspiring youth in two years; nor can he in two years acquire technical skill sufficient to be of service to him. But it is too late an age for him to commence to learn a trade; if he is kept the full time, till nineteen, he is then released at a time when he is neither man nor boy, and it is difficult for him to begin life other than as a casual labourer. When a boy has been proved unfit for freedom, and the magistrate commits him to a reformatory till nineteen, he ought to remain till nineteen, unless special circumstances are brought to the magistrate’s knowledge and he endorses a license for the boy; for he, having adjudicated on the boy’s guilt, and having knowledge of all the circumstances, is surely the best judge as to whether in committing the boy he meant one year or three, two years or four. It sometimes happens that bad boys, who have been sent to reformatories and whom the magistrate thinks are in safe custody and good keeping, come in a short time again before him on some other charge; they have been let out on license. Fewer boys should be sent to reformatories--it should be the last resource; but having been sent, they ought to be detained for the specified time to allow them to grow out of their evil habits.