The Report of the Commissioner
of Public Welfare
The report of the State Board of Charities and Public Welfare
to the Governor and General Assembly just completed by Mr. R.F. Beasley,
Commissioner of Public Welfare, under the board, discusses at length the important
subject of child welfare, prison and chain gang conditions, care of the insane
and feeble-minded, county homes, and social ideals and tendencies generally,
with specific recommendations. The fact that the North Carolina idea of State
and county board of public welfare, closely associated and linked up in a
unified system, is spreading over the country and is being adopted by the other
States, is brought out. The Commissioner of Public Welfare joined ex-State
Superintendent Joyner in recommending strengthening the compulsory attendance
law and providing means for every child to attend school during the entire six
months’ period.
Insisting that the war has brought into question many former
standards or lack of standards, Mr. Beasley cites the percentage of mental and
physical defects shown in the draft, and defects shown in medical examination
of school children as indications of a need for far reaching plans to prevent
such conditions in the future. He would have the State committed firmly to a
program which, sometimes, will measurably accomplish easier economic
conditions, conservation of physical health, a more perfect fulfillment of
educational requirements, a better conservation of child life, a more just distribution
of work and play throughout the whole population, a better are of dependent and
unfortunate classes and improvement in the handling of prisoners and persons
charged with offenses.
In carrying out this program he declared a unified system of
State and local agencies absolutely essential, and he recommended that the
State Board of Public Welfare be given power to appoint county boards whose
members will serve without pay, and leave the power of appointing County
Superintendents of Public Welfare to the local authorities but make the
appointment mandatory. This county superintendent, he plans, should be chief
probation officer and charged with the special duty of child welfare. He should
be paid jointly by the county commissioners and county board of education since
a part of his work will relate directly to children and school attendance.
“In the matter of child welfare, we shall have a directing head
in our office whose duty it will be to study the whole problem, to direct and
assist in the enforcement of the juvenile laws, to find and provide for
neglected children, to visit and co-operate with the 20 orphanages and other
institutions for children, to assist in every way in finding the facts and
suggesting the remedy for delinquency, neglect, truancy and other evils
affecting child life. In the development of the work, which is earnestly
insisted upon by the orphanages, which realize they cannot meet the demand, we
must be ready to find a home for every child in need of one.”
Declaring that child welfare is the largest subject before
the people of the State, Mr. Beasley insists that the State must provide means
of putting the hand of protection upon every child in the State who is now
without it. He thereupon outlines the necessary steps, in a general way, which
may accomplish the result without revolutionary changes and without great
expense. His recommendations are these:
1.
An active juvenile court in every county to whom
the chief county attendance officer may bring the case of every dependent,
neglected, truant, delinquent, or child needing protection for any cause, and
have that case heard in an intelligent and sympathetic manner and disposed of
for the best interest and welfare of the child solely. The Superior Court sits
in every county and all that is needed is to make the clerk of the court the
active trial judge or referee whose decisions may be reviewed if necessary by
the judge when he comes around. But children’s cases cannot wait for the judge
on his regular circuit. They must be heard and disposed of at one, hence the
clerk is the local officer. We now have a juvenile court law but it is largely
of no effect for lack of enforcement. All our laws relating to children as they
now stand should be rewritten and place in a separate chapter with the clerk of
the court and the county attendance officer charged with their administration.
The necessity for intelligent, sympathetic, and immediate disposition of
children’s cases, with subsequent oversight is the nucleus around which the
legislation on the subject must swing.
2.
Make the compulsory attendance law apply to the
full time that the public school is in session and start with the assumption
that every child between the ages of 8 and 14 must attend, except for the sole
cause of physical or mental incapacity. When the teacher reports non-attendance
to the chief attendance officer, he must find the reason in every case and
eliminate it. If it is neglect of the father, apply the law for non-support. If
it is bona fide poverty, let the case be brought before the juvenile court and
be disposed of, either by an order on the public funds to help the family or by
placing the child in better hands, if circumstances require it. The place of
the child is in the school. If he is not there it is the duty of the State to
remove the hindrance which keeps him away, no matter what it is.
3.
In case the child has a mother who is qualified
to have passion of it and train it, but cannot do so for lack of financial
ability, let the court investigate the facts and take the case under
supervision, with some aid from the county, whereby the mother would be enabled
to keep the child. She is the natural protector. She can take care of the child
much more cheaply and better than any other agency, and no child should be separated
from its mother for any reason except the moral unworthiness of the mother to care
for it. A law of this kind would relieve the pressure upon the orphanages which
are now unable to meet the demand.
4.
Give the State Board of Charities and Public Welfare
the co-operating agencies in the counties which it asks for and a contingent
appropriation to be expended when necessary in finding homes or otherwise
disposing of neglected and dependent children.
5.
Increased capacity of the Jackson Training
School for delinquent boys. Only half the actual demand for admission to this
school can now be granted. Increase the capacity of the Caswell Training School
for the case of subnormal children. This is one of the most important of all
demands. “If there is one lesson above all
others that we must heed, it is that the Commonwealth cannot go backward in its
efforts to control and prevent the increase of feeble-mindedness unless it
intends to completely surrender to the forces of decay and racial
deterioration. North Carolina has made a beginning and we do not hesitate to
say, it would be next to criminal folly to fail to prosecute its beginning. It will
cost money, but will be money well spent. There is no sentimentality in this subject.
Its dictates arise from the sternest demands of race protection.” Ninety per cent of the cases of
the white insane hospitals, he adds, are chronic and 85 per cent of those in
the colored hospitals.“Unless we can do more to catch in
time incipient mental disorder and treat it promptly as physical illness is
treated, we may expect an ever increasing number of mere custodial cases.”
Prison Conditions
Discussing prison conditions, Mr.
Beasley reports that there are fewer prisoners held in custody in the State
today than at any time in the past 10 years. While the prison statistics are
not full and accurate, he says they are enough to show that something is taking
place in the State that is not yet fully understood.
“From 1909 to 1915 there was a
gradual rise of the number of prisoners at any given date on the county chain
gangs, in the jail mostly awaiting trial and in State prisons. Then there was a
sudden drop. Notwithstanding the increase in the State’s population in the past
10 years, it is a fact that there are fewer prisoners held in custody in the
State today than at any one date before in the past 10 years. The chain gang
population present on the days reports were made ran up to nearly 1,900 in
1915. Since then it has dropped violently, especially in 1917 and 1918, when
the figures were 1,230 and 851, respectively.
If this goes on, as all men should
pray that it may, the chain gang as it has been known will be a thing of the
past. Very few of them, if any, are now valuable as they once were, for the
work of the prisoners, on account of inability to keep up equipment and
management for a decreasing number of men. Very few counties will long desire
to keep up their forces if the tendency continues to increase. We shall soon
have to send all the long term men to the State’s prison and provide misdemeant
farms for the less serious offenders. The right kind of probation in the counties
will further lessen the number of men committed for small offenses. The practice
of putting men on the chain gang, especially first offenders and youthful ones
for inability to pay small fines and cost should cease at once, and probation
be substituted whereby they will be allowed to work at their familiar lines of
occupation under a probation officer and pay the amount due, as well as be
instructed in better ideas of citizenship and duty. Making a half grown boy
work on the chain gang with hardened prisoners because he has failed to pay a
cost is worse crime on the part of the State than that for which it professes
to punish.
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