From these various official positions occupied by women it was only a step to secure the appointment of women on the regular police force to aid in the protection of the young. This step was first taken in Los Angeles, California, when Mrs. Alice Stebbins Wells was placed upon the police staff.

The present administration of Syracuse (1914) has appointed a woman as police officer as a result of a movement begun over a year ago by women and approved by the Chamber of Commerce. Mrs. Wells, the police officer of Los Angeles, aroused the club women of Syracuse to the advantages of such an official and later, when a moral survey of Syracuse was made under the chairmanship of Miss Arria Huntington, the advice of Mrs. Wells was more fully appreciated. The work of the policewoman will involve the training, tact and ability of a social worker and the women of Syracuse regard her as a constructive element in the city government. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Women’s Political Union and the churches assisted in the movement to secure the policewoman. “The number of cities and towns which have placed women on the police force with full or partial power is increasing so rapidly that it is no longer possible to keep count. Chicago, of course, is the recent shining example. Within the past year San Francisco has changed its charter so as to admit women to the force without meeting the physical requirements which apply to men. Three women have already been appointed. Fargo and Grand Forks, North Dakota; Topeka, Kansas; Ottawa, Illinois; and Kansas City are other places which have recently intrusted police power to women.”^[47]

In Chicago, Mayor Harrison sent Mrs. Gertrude Howe Britton, superintendent of the Juvenile Protective Association and a member of the school board, to visit all the police stations of the city to instruct the regular force of policemen how best to protect and promote the welfare of the children on their beats. When one realizes the great number of arrests of children, one will appreciate that a considerable portion of the policeman’s time is concerned in the oversight of children.

Under the caption, “Policewomen’s Efficiency in Danger,” The Survey described the situation which prevailed in Chicago in the spring of 1914:

Some of the most influential clubs and civic organizations of Chicago have protested vigorously against the action of Chief of Police Gleason in regard to the city’s twenty policewomen. Under Second Deputy Superintendent Funckhouser, the civilian police official, they have proved effective in regulating public dance halls. Under Deputy Superintendent Schuettler, to whose command they have been transferred, they are assigned to regular police duty scattered among various station houses and can no longer be used for inspection of dance halls or other pieces of work requiring concerted action.

In making over 1,500 inspections of dance halls, in which they found many violations of law for which arrests might have been made, the women officers, being more intent upon prevention than punishment, determined to make no arrests at first, but to warn the managers and to win the girls who patronize the dances. This policy has proved successful in securing obedience to law and observance of propriety.

Such results in the dance halls made the second deputy’s administration a shining mark for assaults from the underworld just as his strict censorship of motion pictures has attracted opposition from those who make and promote films suggestive of evil. Such enemies of public safety and common decency are believed to have found aid and comfort at the hands of certain police officials and of those higher up.

It is feared that the fine esprit de corps of the new women police will suffer by being forced to conform to the varying standards of the stations to which they have been assigned.

The ostensible reason for taking them away from Major Funckhouser is that his use of their service transcends his function as the civilian deputy and belongs to the active force. But his squad of male officers is left under his command apparently without fear of inconsistency, perhaps, because, under the surface, it is not inconsistent with the purpose dictating the transfer of the women.

The Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners announce that the policewoman recently appointed by them is to be “the city’s mother to the motherless.”

The work of Miss Roche in Denver, as described by George Creel, in a recent number of The Metropolitan, illustrates the inestimable value of the addition of women to the police force of cities.

Following the example set by Judge Lindsey in Denver, women have been active in creating the public opinion which has brought about the creation of juvenile courts in so many cities of the South, as well as of the North. In Atlanta, the women acted immediately upon the suggestion of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, in session there. It is generally conceded in Pennsylvania that the five bills passed in that state providing for juvenile courts owe their passage to the agitation and pressure brought to bear by the Pennsylvania Federation of Women’s Clubs and its enthusiastic president. In at least eight states it is claimed that the juvenile court system owes its inception largely to the work of women. Coupled with their interest in the court has often gone their desire to accompany the court work with model reform schools for boys and for girls. In Alabama and other states these were secured by the insistence of women.

In Iowa the Congress of Mothers took the lead for the Juvenile Court Law, and this congress has pushed steadily in other states for the same legislation. The Ohio law, passed in 1904, was due in a large measure to the fact that the juvenile court was a paramount issue of club work in that state at that time.

Club women feel that they deserve credit also for the St. Louis and Kansas City Courts. In Michigan, when the law was declared unconstitutional, women pledged their effort to the securing of a new bill.

The Civic Club of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, together with the Civic Committee of the women’s clubs, secured the organization of the juvenile court of that county. They then sent women and men speakers into neighboring counties and thus extended the movement. The first juvenile court was organized and supported entirely by the Club for several years, until it was legally incorporated and became independent. The Club also established an industrial and training school for boys, to solve the question of the care of boys that came before the court.

Detention homes preceded as well as accompanied efforts for juvenile courts. The Civic Club of Allegheny County secured the proper enforcement of the Juvenile Court Law in its provision as to rooms of detention for children under sixteen who are in custody and awaiting hearing or placement. The same club hopes soon to secure a model children’s court building along the lines adopted in a few other cities.

By the year 1906 detention homes and a juvenile court law had been actively taken up by women’s clubs in California and other western states. Since then many places have been catching up, and these two issues form part of the propaganda of club women everywhere.

The Municipal League of Utica, composed of men and women, secured recently an appropriation for a detention home and juvenile court. The Women’s Civic League, of Meadsville, Pennsylvania, also established a detention home for juvenile delinquents.

The Woman’s Club, of Orange, New Jersey, through Miss Durgin, made an investigation at the House of Detention, which was not only the means of remedying several individual wrongs, but also of supplying the women and the public generally with knowledge on which to urge the modification of the prevailing system of dealing with detained boys and girls and also the establishment of a parental school. Legal steps have been taken for the parental school, and the present chairman of the Civic Committee of this club has been named by the Board of Freeholders as one of the Board of Guardians for the school.

The Chicago Juvenile Court has had a more or less stormy career. Its whole history is indicative of the spirit and constructive ability of women. For many years—before 1906—the Chicago Woman’s Club had been maintaining a school in the Cook County jail. Determined to have the children separated, they had a bill drawn up, which became a law in 1899, and forms the basis of many of the present juvenile court laws.

Jane Addams, in the Ladies’ Home Journal, in 1913, described the Chicago movement very graphically:

Years ago the residents of Hull House were much distressed over the boys and girls who were brought into the police stations for petty offenses and gradually one of the residents gave all of her time to these unfortunate children. The police justices in the two nearest stations regularly telephoned her in regard to the first offense case, and whenever practicable paroled the children in her care. When the Juvenile Court was established in Chicago she was engaged as the first probation officer with twenty-one other persons.

For six years this voluntary association called the “Juvenile Court Committee” paid the probation officers with a well-known educator as chief, and supported the detention home through which passed each year twenty-six hundred children who would otherwise have been in the police stations.

In connection with this home the Children’s Hospital Society supported a medical clinic through which it was discovered that 90 per cent. of the sad little procession were in need of medical attention. Gradually all of these things have been taken over by the county, and now the probation officers, teachers, nurses and doctors have become public officials while the Juvenile Court with the detention home and quarters for medical and psychopathic clinics and for a school under the Chicago Board of Education is housed in the building erected for its special use out of the public taxes.

All went well through various administrations, but recently a president of the Board of County Commissioners, realizing that this developed apparatus of the Juvenile Court would be most valuable in building up party patronage, began a series of attacks upon the administration of the Court which, it is evident, will eventually destroy its usefulness.

The positions of probation officers, formerly occupied by those who had passed a careful civil service examination, were filled by sixty-day appointees, one of whom had been a sewer contractor, another a saloon-keeper. The chief probation officer, after a long and wearisome trial, was dismissed, having been found guilty of not doing those things which under the law he had no authority to do; the physician in charge resigned because a so-called trained nurse on a sixty-day appointment defied his authority, showing her ignorance of nursing by wrapping up the infected leg of a boy in a piece of old newspaper. The Funds to Parents Act, by which the judge is allowed to give ten dollars a month for the care of a child in his own home instead of in an institution, offered, of course, a splendid opportunity for building up a political following among the poorest people, and only through the action of the wise judge, in coÖperation with various philanthropic societies, was this beneficent law saved from disaster.

When an aroused public sentiment finally demanded an investigation of the Juvenile Court and the report of the Committee proved favorable to the Court, the president of the County Board refused to have it published and philanthropy, again appearing upon the scene, paid for its publication from private funds.

It was not to be wondered at that a great many public-spirited women of Chicago, through their clubs and other organizations, gave of their time and best efforts last autumn to promote the election of a wiser man as president of the County Board. They would have been stupid indeed to sit quietly while their faithful work of years was being demolished. Of course they were obliged to enter partisan politics because there is no other way, owing to the American system of party nominations, to secure the election of any official, good or bad....

The larger plans for meeting these general needs can only be carried out with the consent of all the people and the wisdom of such plans must be submitted to them during a political campaign.

Certainly woman’s rÔle of non-partisanship needs to be examined afresh when a multitude of men and women have come to challenge the sincerity and moral value of that combination of reverence and disregard which does not permit a woman to fulfill the traditional obligations to the community simply because to do this she must participate in political life.

If women would bear their share in those great social problems which no nation has yet solved, but which every nation must reduce to political action if it would hold its place in advancing civilization, they are fairly forced to choose between standing for an impossible ideal, quite outside the political field, or upholding moral standards within political life itself.

The entrance of women into the political combat in Chicago helped to defeat the rÉgime which was undermining the Juvenile Court. A temporary setback was threatened by the decision of the state court that probation officers were not included in the officers under the civil service law, but until their position under that law could be strengthened the situation was met by an advisory committee, appointed by Judge Pinckney, in whose hands lay the appointment of probation officers, to examine and pass upon all applicants. Louise De Koven Bowen, president of the Juvenile Protective Association and of the Chicago Woman’s Club, and Leonora Meder, president of the Federation of Catholic Women’s Charities, were on this advisory council.

In summing up the efforts of women for, and their attitude toward, the Juvenile Court, Julia Lathrop, chief of the Children’s Bureau, says: “Important as are the immediate services of a Juvenile Court to the children who are daily brought before it for protection and guidance, painstaking as are the Court’s methods of ascertaining the facts which account for a child’s trouble, his family history, his own physical and mental state, hopeful as are the results of probation, yet the great primary service of the Court is that it lifts up the truth and compels us to see that wastage of human life whose sign is the child in the Court. Heretofore the kindly but hurried people never saw as a whole what it cannot now avoid seeing—the sad procession of little children and older brothers and sisters who for various reasons cannot keep step with the great company of normal, orderly, protected children.”

In view of all their interest in juvenile courts, their labors to procure their establishment, and their protective care for the children passing through the courts, it was only natural that women should take the next step and mount the bench to deal, particularly, with cases involving children and girls. Fourteen years ago, Judge Lindsey, in Denver, called a woman to his assistance, in cases pending before him, and the experiment was eminently successful.

The St. Louis Juvenile Court has two women assistant judges to hear all cases of girls. The change took effect January 12, 1914, and was established by Judge Thomas C. Hennings, who appointed to these positions two women probation officers, Mrs. E. C. Runge and Catherine R. Dunn. No legislation was necessary to make the appointments. The girls are heard by these women privately and then their findings are submitted to him and entered as orders of the court. Only in cases of disagreement between the two women will the judge be called upon to hear the case.

St. Louis was the third city to take this step. Chicago and Denver had already appointed women assistant judges, but the “move” in St. Louis came quite independently as the direct result of a baffling case which Judge Hennings had to meet. Four girls were brought before him, from whom he was unable to get truthful statements even after searching inquiry. He put two women probation officers at work on the problem, and they got the facts truthfully from the girls at once. When Mrs. Runge asked one of the girls, “Why didn’t you tell this to the judge?” she said, “Why, I couldn’t tell such things to any man.” When Judge Hennings heard this, he was moved at once to the decision not to hear any more girls’ cases himself.

Mrs. Runge has been a probation officer in the Juvenile Court six years and Miss Dunn four. Both of them had previously had long experience in social work. It is hoped in St. Louis that these appointments will lead to the appointment of a woman assistant judge to give her whole time to it. At present these women are still probation officers.^[48]

In 1913, a court for delinquent girls up to the age of twenty-one was created for Chicago, and Miss Mary Bartelme was appointed judge. As public guardian of Cook County, Miss Bartelme had had excellent experience with young people and children in preparation for her work on the bench. “Miss Bartelme,” said Judge Pinckney recently, “is admirably fitted for her position. She is an acute and well-trained lawyer, with a distinctly judicial temperament. Her mind is quick and comprehensive. She has poise, cool judgment, and a fine, discriminating sense of justice.”

Judge Bartelme does not believe that the court can solve the question of delinquency among children. She holds positive opinions on causes, and would seek preventive measures, like all progressive men and women today. The causes of delinquency, in girls, according to her ideas, are: “Growing luxury of the age, man’s loss of chivalry toward girls who work, immodest fashions in dress set by women of wealth, bad home environment, inadequate wages, dance halls with bar attachments, saloons with family entrances, immoral moving-picture shows, improper police supervision of skating rinks, ice cream parlors, amusement parks, and other places of amusement, activity of ‘white slave’ agents of commercialized vice, laws which permit girls to go to work at an immature age.”

As an auxiliary to the Municipal Court of Chicago, a psychopathic laboratory is to be established very soon, on the theory that offenders may have diseased brains and need mental treatment rather than punishment. Miss Mary R. Campbell, of Milwaukee, who did research work at Johns Hopkins and Harvard, will be associate director. The laboratory will be used for all offenders who seem to need study.

In some of the domestic relations courts now in the larger cities, women are serving as assistant judges.

On the one hand, interested in all that pertains to court procedure and the judicial function and the prevention of delinquency and crime, women are, on the other hand, interested in the internal conditions of correctional institutions of all kinds, and are suggesting remedies and new experiments all the time.

Many states have their women’s prison associations. Indeed, since the days of Elizabeth Frye, nearly a century ago in England, women have been closely associated with prison work. The American name that stands out in fitting companionship with the name of Elizabeth Frye is that of Isabel Barrows whose death two years ago laid to rest one of the foremost prison reformers of the world.

In Chicago, boys in the county jail have been studied by the Juvenile Protective Association, and a report based on the study is issued by Mrs. Louise Bowen, who suggests a court for the juvenile adult—the boy between seventeen and twenty-one years of age, who is too old for the Juvenile Court—as an effort toward the rehabilitation of boys in the later stages of adolescence.

In New York, the Women’s Prison Association was organized in 1844 as the Female Department of the Men’s Prison Association. Members soon discovered that it existed to raise funds for others to spend. In 1853 they formed a separate society, the Women’s Prison Association, and founded the Isaac T. Hopper Home. They have brought about many reforms, such as laws concerning police matrons, patrol wagons, probation systems, appropriations for Bedford Reformatory, and the State Farm for women misdemeanants.

The nature of their legislative efforts is indicated by this extract from their report of 1914:

It was decided last fall, at a special meeting of the Women’s Prison Association, to try to get five bills through the Legislature. They failed in toto, but one clause which was incorporated in the Goldberg Bill abolishing fines for women misdemeanants was a suggestion made by this Association.

The bills were:

An Act to provide for the appointment of police matrons for duty in places of amusement.

An Act to change the present method of temporary care of prisoners, insane, injured, or dangerously ill.

An Act to provide a Board of Managers and a Woman Superintendent for the State Farm for Women.

An Act to provide a separate Court for women.

An Act to provide a resident physician for Blackwell’s Island.

The Women’s Prison Association, the Salvation Army, and charity societies often coÖperate, and are discussing at present a national association for the promotion of prisoners’ aid.

Such associations are always deeply interested in the advanced experimental methods aimed to improve, through scientific study and observation, the systems of dealing with delinquents in private and public institutions. They are equally interested in extending present facilities for the care of these wards of the state.

For example, boys’ home and training schools have been inaugurated in many places by women. The Women’s Municipal League of New York, in connection with the Cornell Medical College, established a research and experimental station to develop the best methods of reaching and helping deficient and delinquent boys—Hillside Farm School. The technique of a hospital including clinical study has been introduced into penal institutions, notably women’s, in the last few years. At the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women at South Framingham this work is being well developed under the superintendency of Mrs. Hodder. Dr. Katharine Davis established a laboratory at Bedford Reformatory, when she was head of it, for the social and psychological study of the inmates.

The visitation of jails has been part of the duty assumed by state federations of clubs as well as other women’s organizations, such as the Women’s Municipal League of New York. The reform and proper management of state charitable and penal institutions is taken up by the club women in state after state. Kentucky clubs are active just at present in seeking to secure women on the governing boards of public institutions and proper training for juvenile offenders.

Many states do have women on their institutional boards, and women are superintendents, in some cases, of penal institutions for women, and generally of reform institutions for women. The application of civil service reform to these institutions is urged enthusiastically and earnestly by women members of the civil service reform leagues as well as indorsed by clubs and other women’s organizations.

A public tribute to woman’s ability in correctional work was made in New York in 1914 by the appointment of Dr. Katharine B. Davis to the post of city commissioner of corrections. Dr. Davis is a national figure, owing to her work at the Bedford Reformatory. In answer to critics of her appointment, it is agreed that her present work “is not a man’s job nor a woman’s job; it is a job for one who knows how.” Dr. Davis, it was decided, knew how. Soon after she entered upon her public duties, Dr. Davis said: “Everybody knows New York’s prison institutions to be little better than medieval. I hope to bring them up to something nearer to the modern standard.... The thing for which I hope most earnestly is light upon the mental and physical causes leading to the production of the individual human type which commits crime. Such knowledge would lead us to prevention.”

Dr. Davis, by virtue of her office, is ex-officio member of the New York City Board of Inebriety, created and established to maintain a hospital and industrial colony for inebriates—the first municipal institution for these unfortunates.

It is not merely in public and official capacity that women are helping in the improvement of the conditions of correction. They are to be found among the leading students and original investigators who concern themselves with prison methods.

One of the most courageous and useful pieces of prison investigation was that undertaken in 1914 in Auburn prison, New York, by Elizabeth Watson and Madeleine Doty, a member of the State Commission for Prison Reform, who voluntarily incarcerated themselves in the prison under disguise to study at first hand the conditions under which women were confined there. Both of these women were experienced investigators, the former having worked with child labor committees for years and the latter, a lawyer, having worked with the juvenile court. They found bad physical conditions which they were unable to endure themselves for more than a few days: bad food, commingling of sick and well, and other physical evils. They also condemned the lack of classification of youthful and hardened offenders, the inadequacy of the educational system and the failure to teach such occupations as would enable the prisoners to be self-supporting on their release. They deplored the fact that the prisoners were not allowed to form a single tie—social or economic—that could help them in attempts to live a normal life later. As a direct result of the report of Miss Watson and Miss Doty, John B. Riley, State Superintendent of Prisons, ordered a number of changes to be made in institutional procedure at that prison: the extension of the letter-writing privilege; more conversation among prisoners; less confinement; more water; more reading matter. These reforms were to apply only to that institution. The superintendent will ask the legislature, however, for a new prison for women.

Another important investigation—that of the convict labor system—was supported by the Consumers’ League and carried out by Julian Leavitt, who showed the effect of this system on the outside labor market as well as on the prison workers themselves. Men were found to be working at women’s trades and thus undercutting women workers in the regular field at the same time that they were learning nothing which would serve them on their release.

That other women in addition to those in the Consumers’ League have been aroused to this grave evil is shown in the agitation against it by Kate Barnard, Commissioner of Charities and Corrections of Oklahoma. Martha Falconer is working to destroy this system in Maryland’s institutions for delinquent children.

The difficulties that the alien meets in American courts have been investigated by Frances A. Kellor, managing director of the North American Civic League for Immigrants, and described in a late number of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. It is shown that his fate in smaller communities depends on the character of the justice of the peace, and that character is not of the highest order often, owing to the low requirements for the office and the fee system that prevails. In the higher courts it is frequently difficult for the immigrant to receive justice because of his ignorance and inadequate legal defense.

It was to remedy such conditions as those cited by Miss Kellor, for one thing, that legal aid societies have been formed here and there. The Legal Aid Society of Chicago is a consolidation of the Bureau of Justice and the Protective Agency for Women and Children. It is an auxiliary of the Chicago Woman’s Club. Its objects are: “To assist in securing legal protection against injustice for those who are unable to protect themselves; to take cognizance of the workings of existing laws and methods of procedure and to suggest improvements; and to propose new and better laws and to make efforts toward securing their enactment.” Women appear among the officers, directors and counselors as well as among the financial backers of this society. In 1913, legal aid was given to more than 15,000 poor people in addition to 2,400 old clients. The superintendent, Mrs. Wm. Boyes, has to interview about 125 people a day. She says: “The Society last year investigated 2,700 complaints growing out of domestic relations. This class of case requires more work than formerly, as the courts require fuller and fuller investigations. We have a representative from our Society in the Court of Domestic Relations all the time. She has handled during the year 473 cases in that court. The other cases have been advised in the office, and although they are the most heart-breaking kind, involving the drunkenness or failure to provide on the part of a husband, or the insanity of a mother, or custody of a child, we are fortunate in having on our staff three or four women who are most successful in the adjustment of these tragedies.”

A plan of the Women’s Committee to give greater publicity to the work of the Legal Aid Society has been carried on with success in women’s clubs of Chicago. The superintendent, Mrs. Boyes, does much of the speaking that this work involves. A young woman lawyer has been placed in the Boys’ Court to advise those who need defense and are unable to pay attorney’s fees.

The workers for the Society include many women, as the work is of a social character with which they are familiar and in which their interest lies. These workers are akin to probation officers, as the courts are continually calling upon them to investigate cases. In two cases these workers are assigned to courts and give their full time there. Cases are also referred to this Society from other agencies—police, newspapers, charities, settlements.

The Legal Aid Society has promoted loan shark legislation, among other reforms. It helps the Wage Loan Society and kindred agencies. Its great effort now is directed to enlisting the interest of the regular legal profession in an attempt to make that profession accept social service in connection with its work, just as hospitals and the medical profession accept social service in health work. Lawyers should make the Legal Aid their own work, it is claimed.

A National Alliance of Legal Aid Societies was started in 1912, and this will doubtless have considerable influence on labor and protective legislation.

Of wider scope than the legal aid societies are many other associations concerned in work that is more or less correctional in character. Of these only a few can be mentioned here.

The Juvenile Protective Association, of Chicago, to which reference has been made, is a very forceful group of women and men working together for the prevention of juvenile delinquency through legislative and social means. The objects revealed in its charter are:

1. To organize auxiliary leagues within the boundaries of Cook County.

2. To suppress and prevent conditions and to prosecute persons contributing to the dependency and delinquency of children.

3. To coÖperate with the Juvenile Court, compulsory education department, state factory inspector, and all other child-helping agencies.

4. To promote study of child problems and to work to create public sentiment for the establishment of wholesome, uplifting agencies such as parks, playgrounds, gymnasiums, free baths, vacation schools, communal school settlements, etc.

This Association’s vigorous legislative demands and its education of public opinion are shown by the following proposals: A more adequate bastardy law making it a crime and extraditable, applying to the deserted wife as well as to the unmarried woman; a law to make even the first offense in pandering punishable by a term in the penitentiary and seduction a felony; an amendment of the marriage law providing for a period of ten days or two weeks between the issuing of the marriage license and the ceremony in order to give guardians time to act, the girl to appear to testify in person to her own age; an amendment to the adult delinquency law so that a wife can testify against her own husband in case he is charged with violation of such a law. “As the law stands at present the man can force his child to do all kinds of disreputable things—even immoral things—and yet the testimony of the mother, anxious to save her child, is not admitted. This law should further be amended so that it will clearly cover all persons even if they are not parents, if they in any way contribute to the delinquency of the child. Unfortunately the law is not very clear on that point, and some of the judges refuse to hold others than parents.”

The Association has made careful studies of theaters, department stores, and wage conditions in their relations to vice, crime, illegitimacy, and has definite proposals for remedying evil elements therein. Among these proposals are those for the regulation of messenger and delivery service for boys; better regulation of employment agencies, of loan sharks, of poolrooms; dance halls; separate travelers’ aid for immigrants; liquor regulation; and inebriate hospitals and farms.

The Woman’s Department of the National Civic Federation took up prison reform for survey and constructive work during the year 1914 as a uniform activity for all sections. In New York, conferences on this subject were held last March by the Metropolitan section at which a comprehensive legislative program of prison reform and an educational campaign to promote it were promulgated. The delegates and visitors were handed circulars of the Prison Association of New York stating why Sing Sing prison must be abolished and a farm industrial prison established in its place. A woman’s farm in place of Auburn prison was also advocated.

Other women’s associations are giving attention to the problem of delinquency and its prevention, as these notes from The American Club Woman indicate: “The City Federation of Clubs of Dallas, Texas, so changed the street conditions for boys that instead of two-fifths of all juvenile arrests less than two per cent. now come from the cotton mill district. Playgrounds largely accomplished this result. A Public Schools Athletic League now controlled by the Board of Education has helped also.

“The Atlanta Woman’s Club has been urging the daily papers to refrain from publishing details of revolting crimes.

“By educating mothers through social centers, the Civic Club of Philadelphia believes that many juvenile crimes will be averted, because the mothers will take proper precautions to safeguard their children. Mrs. J. L. Pickering, chief probation officer of the city, concurs in this view.

“Mrs. M. Gordon McCouch, a well-known clubwoman, says that properly supervised playgrounds reduce crime in the neighborhood about one-half, and that the taxpayers should be interested in them, if only from an economical standpoint.

“A militant campaign against the illegal sale of liquor has been started by the clubwomen of San JosÉ, Cal. When the police department refused its coÖperation, a committee of women gathered their own evidence. Already they have done much to improve conditions.

“Prosecutions against violators of the State anti-cigarette law will be initiated by the Women’s Clubs of Madison, Wis. Cigarette dealers have been warned of the impending campaign for the enforcement of the law, also that women detectives have already collected evidence of violations.

“Juvenile courts, uniform child labor laws, anti-tuberculosis appropriation, women on school boards, restriction of liquor traffic, also of cigarettes—these are some of the measures which the West Virginia clubwomen expect from their legislature this year.”

“Reforming the convict by means of education as practiced at the Moundsville penitentiary meets with the unqualified approval and support of the West Virginia Federation of Women’s Clubs. At the annual meeting in Huntington, recently, a resolution was adopted recommending to the next session of the legislature that steps be taken to enlarge the rooms and increase the educational facilities at the prison school so that all prisoners who wish may avail themselves of the instruction provided. The present facilities at the school limit the enrollment to 125 men. Another important resolution passed was that petitioning the legislature to establish a reformatory for women who are beyond the age limit for admission to the industrial schools and who are now committed to the county jails for misdemeanors.

“A reformatory for women is greatly needed in Maine, according to Miss Mabel Davies of the Prison Reform Association. The Woman’s Council of Portland indorses the plan and asks all women’s organizations in the state to join in an effort to secure the legislation necessary to maintain such an institution.

“A woman member on the new state board of control for penal and charitable institutions is strongly urged by the New Hampshire Federation of Women’s Clubs.

“Minnesota women’s clubs are working for a woman’s reformatory and one of their leaders who has had long experience in prison work insists that reform can only be a success ‘when society makes good its teaching to unfortunates that it pays to be good.’”

With the advent of the policewoman, the prevention of harm to women and children comes as a new note in the protection of a city, and brings this municipal service into harmony with other services where prevention is the dominating purpose. Gradually policemen are being converted into social workers with the idea of controlling those forces that lead to delinquency in all its forms. Policemen too are sometimes sanitary or housing or poverty inspectors as well as custodians of the criminal and vicious.

As yet the police department is distinctly removed from feminine control. Policewomen as a rule do not supplant male police, but are an additional force established for a specific purpose. In Cleveland, Mildred Chadsey is head of the sanitary police. In Hunnewell, Kansas, Mrs. Marshal was appointed by Mrs. Wilson, the mayor, as local police officer. New York has a woman as deputy sergeant, and Dr. Katharine Davis, the commissioner of corrections, thinks a woman might make an excellent police commissioner there; but this radical step has not been taken.

By their activities, however, women sometimes affect the number and distribution of the police force: when they agitate for better patrolling of parks and playgrounds or other poorly protected districts and when they influence the number of saloon licenses issued.

Women and policemen are each a problem to the other of the deepest concern. The uncorroborated testimony of a plain-clothes policeman against the girl or woman whom he arrests on the street is often accepted in the court whereas corroborative testimony is required in the case of a man arrested for sexual irregularity. Voteless women strikers have been grossly mistreated by the police in industrial centers and the graft exposures have revealed the all too frequent alliance of the police with the vice interests to the injury of the city’s womanhood.

Women’s entering wedge into the police department, the policewoman, we venture to predict, will not be withdrawn, but rather will attacks be made until, through a constructive program, all human life is better safeguarded in the communities of this country, and the idea of social service permeates the police departments, as it does other municipal departments.