“There is plenty of room at the table, and we’ll have a bunk to spare
too, I guess,” was the answer to my request to be taken care of at the
New Hampton Farms that I was about to inspect. It would have sounded
like a joke to me had I not been acquainted with the plans for the farm
from the very beginning. The answer was to be taken literally. It is
nothing new in this country to take prisoners outside the institution
walls; to leave them unguarded at their work; for officers to talk with
them as man to man; for them to live in temporary, frail quarters. But
the New Hampton Farms goes beyond that. Its thirty-odd young inmates
and four of the five ‘officers,’ including the superintendent, sleep
in the same bunkhouse, and eat at the same tables. The bunkhouse is
as rough as can be, the eating arrangements no less primitive. The
whole physical outfit of the farm is a striking demonstration of how
much practical genius and invincible enthusiasm can make of the most
inadequate means, of the poorest equipment. Yet even this is not the
striking feature of this institution.
The City Reformatory for Misdeamenants of the City of New York is
situated on an island of about 100 acres, within the limits of the City
of New York. Its buildings are inadequate and overcrowded, its officers
insufficient, its methods largely repressive. It receives misdeamenants
between the ages of 16 and 30. On the same island is situated a branch
of the Workhouse of New York City, where the most useless of the city’s
criminal population is confined. To prevent intercourse between the
inmates of the two institutions is well nigh impossible. As a result of
all this, the Reformatory has hardly deserved its name. After long and
painful efforts, the purchase of a 600 acre farm in Orange County, 60
miles from New York, was effected, in order to remove the Reformatory
to the country, and to make it worthy of its name. So there was the
farm, but without appropriations for building the institution. And the
overcrowding at the Reformatory was worse than ever.
It was not only a question of relieving the congestion, though that
certainly was a large factor; nor was it chiefly to remove the
Reformatory from the vicious proximity of the Branch Workhouse. The
plans that had been developed for the New Reformatory were based on
penological principles quite at variance with those necessarily carried
out at the present location. The new institution would have to permit
the utmost possible classification and individualization; but above all
it would have to establish the possibility of practical inspiration of
its inmates by the encouragement of self-respect, by the exercise of
individual responsibility, by healthful contact between officer and
inmate. And in many other ways it was to strike out into new treatment
of reformable young men. To this ambition for a reformatory on such
lines was added the possession of a large fertile farm, the approach of
spring--and the enthusiastic propositions to Commissioner Katherine B.
Davis from the present superintendent of the Farm, Robert Rosenbluth.
“Let us build up the spirit with the institution” was his plan in
brief. What was this spirit to be? “Just what are the essentials
of your experiment?” I asked Mr. Rosenbluth. “It is,” I said, “a
commonplace, of course, to talk of the advantages of agricultural
occupation, of fresh air, hard work, and ‘honor system’; and the
economic advantage of utilizing, instead of wasting, a good farm for
a whole season surely could not have created in you the amount of
enthusiasm which you are carrying into this thing; after all, even
though you do produce quite as much as $10,000 worth of farm product,
it will hardly cover your expenditures for the year.”
“You are right,” he said, “those things are all very well but they
are not fundamental. None of those things counts a heap towards
reformation; the honor system is simply a more sensible, more effective
method--it’s a fairer method of preserving discipline, an easier method
of running your institutions. It does not touch your real man. It is
all a matter of habit. Now take those Dannemora prison fellows with
whom I worked in the forests around the prison; they were repeaters,
many of them hardened evil doers. And take these fellows here--young
fellows--and just hear them talk among themselves, as I had a chance
to hear them talk, night after night--nothing but crime. It’s an
obsession. Naught else has any interest for them. If it is not their
own exploits, then it is the latest from the newspapers (for you don’t
suppose all the regulations and punishments on earth can keep the
newspapers out of a prison). The only thing they are interested in is
crime. Everybody talks crime. How can you reform a fellow whose mental
habit is crime? My idea is this: You have got to change their topic of
conversation. You’ve got to coax their minds to a higher level. And
you can’t just tug at them from above. You have to be taken into their
community, into their confidence, you’ve got to be one of them. You
must push their thoughts upward from within instead of pulling from
above.
“My officers are all first class men. They are graduates of schools
of agriculture or forestry. And they have all lived in close contact
with men. They sleep in the same room, on the same rough bunk in our
three-decker, go to bed with the boys, rise with them. Their food is
exactly the same--neither different nor more. They do their day’s work
just like the boys. Their hardship is no less than that of the boys.
And the boys know that and feel it. Now, see, my point is this, I have
a right to expect the same thing from the boys that I expect from my
men, who are required to undergo the same hardships as the boys. In
this way I establish an equality which enables us to get into the
community of the boys, and naturally control their conversation and
their thoughts. Thus they are really reformed without their knowing it.”
The spirit among the boys and the officers was certainly remarkable.
They joked, called each other by their first names, and were “kidding”
each other at a great rate. I was wondering what would happen when the
question of authority arose. I was not disappointed. Alongside the
joyous camaraderie, there was a willing recognition of unquestioned
authority.
“You’ll be up in court, Kid; you went fish’n without permission”, I
heard one of them yell to another, and a little later, when one of the
recent arrivals wanted to go to the farmhouse to see the incubators, an
older member of the colony instructed him in a casual way.
“You gotta git p’rmission from Bob first.” “Bob” is Mr. Rosenbluth.
How open and frank the spirit of the conduct of the “court” is, and how
it reflects the character of the whole institution, I could only guess,
for unfortunately no session of the court could be held that Sunday, as
is the custom. In the midst of conversation of a group of some ten of
the boys one of them remarked that there would be no court that day.
“We ain’t got many cases, Bob, only one fight, one fishin’ without
asking, and one fellow smoking out of time.” There was no secret report
or accusation; only a cooperative policing, with apparently no trace of
grudge. Yet the boys average probably more than twenty years of age.
The unfortunate circumstances that prevented court session, as well
as the regular base-ball game and morning service that Sunday, was
the lamentable drowning of one of the boys while taking a swim, the
Thursday preceding. Despite the presence of several good swimmers,
and their desperate efforts to save him, he went down beyond aid. The
river was dragged the same day, but no trace of his body was found.
The next day and the day following was the real test, in my opinion of
the spirit of the Farm. The officers were preoccupied, the coroner,
undertaker, reporter were busy about the place; some of the boys were
taken from their regular work to search for the body; supervision was
practically naught. But the season was late. The farm behind time. Work
had to be continued. And the boys did work, though with hearts heavy
with real sorrow. The next day, Saturday, the coroner dynamited the
river in order to bring the body to the surface. Curiosity was added to
possible desire to shirk work. Yet all but those aiding in the search
were at their ploughs or hoes. Several acres were ploughed and five
acres of corn planted by less than twenty boys on Saturday afternoon
alone.
Early next morning the body was found by one of the boys on search
duty. The body was taken to Middletown, three miles away, by the
coroner’s undertaker. Morning service was postponed. The rest of the
morning was given over to bathing and to visits to the boys. The
visitors roamed the farm with the boys at will. The day was ideal, and
with the remarkably attractive scenery, helped lift the gloom from the
little colony. Even death cannot darken very long such a beautiful
spring day in Orange County. Dinner came along for a hungry two-score,
with spirits still somewhat subdued, but no longer blackened by the
shadow of death. To the regular dinner crowd there were added now the
wife and child of the officer occupying the farmhouse.
There were three long tables, with benches on either side, all
constructed of boards such as were used for building the bunkhouse. The
carpet of the dining room was rich green grass, and the ceiling green
foliage and blue sky, all gilded with bright warm sunshine. A brisk
fresh breeze made electric fans superfluous. Roast beef, gravy, brown
baked potatoes, coffee with real milk in plenty, (from the four cows
borrowed from another institution) and the most delicious of lemon pies
rapidly disappeared.
Soon after dinner a service was held. I confess I was quite curious to
see this service, without minister, conducted by “Bob,” separated from
his group by the deepest of sectarian differences. At these services
occurrences of the week and plans of the coming week are talked over,
and a kind of rough-and-ready, heart-to-heart moralizing is done.
The subject, this day, was of course the death of their unfortunate
comrade. I did not know then, that the most impressive of all funeral
services I have ever seen, was to come that afternoon. The boys and
instructors (that is what the officers are called) lay in a group on
the grass under the shade of tall trees, and Bob sat on a stump. His
face showed signs of the deep anxiety and sleeplessness of the last
few days. The talk was brief. The boys were asked to meditate over
the decease of their friend, and draw their own lessons. One point
only was enlarged upon. Some neighboring farmers had criticised the
management for continuing to work during the two days following the day
of the accident. “If sorrow is heartfelt, it does not require that duty
towards the living be sacrificed to empty form in regard to the dead.”
Only the words were simpler, more explicit.
The afternoon was spent in gathering flowers to give to the parents
of the dead comrade, who were to arrive that afternoon. There was a
wreath of white lilacs, and bunches of lilies of the valley, and
white wild flowers. When the parents arrived, boys and instructors
stood bare-headed in front of the old dilapidated framehouse that had
been patched up to serve for the various purposes of the farm, and as
a kind of general field headquarters. Some twenty to thirty feet from
the house each boy had planted a tree on arbor day. After a few words
from Bob, the tree that had been planted by the dead boy was dug up and
transplanted to a place of honor. Then amid deep silence, the father
spoke to the comrades of his lost son. It is impossible for me to
render the simple words in their true effect. He hoped that the death
of his son might teach the rest of the boys the same lesson that his
life could no longer teach, namely, that the efforts of good men could
not fail to save them from evil careers, if they brought but a little
good-will towards those that were willing to help them regain their
true selves.
Not an eye remained dry, and the instructor who offered the simple
closing prayer--in the absence of any minister--could hardly choke down
his tears. They had lost their son when he was all but saved from the
abyss of crime, by nature and by good men.
Under the stress of such an intense day, following days of hard labor
under untoward conditions, I came to understand why Mr. Rosenbluth
insisted so much upon the personality of his helpers; why he had spent
large sums of his own private funds, to persuade men to leave better
paying, often more than twice as renumerative positions, to come to
the farm. These men sacrificed money, comfort, even the one day in the
week freedom, to spend all their time with the boys, to reform them by
sheer force of personality. In labor, in fun, in sorrow they understood
and were understood by the boys. They could laugh with them and keep
silence with them. I want to congratulate them all: Mr. Rosenbluth and
his aids Messrs. Blue, Buck, Ford, Wissner for their remarkable ability
to dispense with the pleasure of pleasure-seeking, for the pleasure of
service.
The success of the New Hampton Farms as an experiment in reformation
lies surely not in its fertile soil, its excellent location, the
unprecedented plans for the classification of its future inmates, for
the erection of the future buildings. The crops of the farm in this
handicapped year may prove economically profitable or disastrous.
Individual inmates may escape, or otherwise disgrace the little colony.
Many may fall again into temptation, among bad companions, filthy,
immoral environments, and their own vicious inclinations. But the farm
has already shown that there can be a vastly different spirit between a
different type of officers and the same inmates, and that this “spirit
can be built up with the institution.”