UTOPIA.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 113, 26 November 1915, Page 2 (Supplement)

UTOPIA.

CRIMINALS RESPONSE TO KINDNESS.

A little over a year ago, suffragists n Amenta, and indeed ail over the world, were elated to learn that Dr. Katlierme Davis, New York's woman Police Commissioner, virtually subdued the revolt of UOO prisoner of Blackwell's Island, when the efforts ot the other officials had failed. BlackweU'a Island had been i!i a state of riot ever since the arrest of the prison doctor who had confessed that he increased hie salary by selling morphine to the inmates, and about one-third of the prisoners, maddened by nareotic deprivation, were ready to assault the warders and let loose hell on the slightest provocation. Into the midst of this pandemonium came Commissioner Katherine Davis, armed only with the "spir't of kindness and charity," and substituted order for chaos and peace for war. THE GOLDEN RULE. It seems that she believed in the "golden rule," and found that faith in human beings is its own reward, a ere. ative force to translate into reality "things hoped for." And now, after more than a year's experience of her methods and the results attained, the Mayor of New York has to a representative of the Sun" his testimony to the.extraordinary success of her work. "It has been Miss Davis's unswerving aim," he said, "to maue the city's correctional institutions truly reformatory, reformatory in ti ie strictest sense of the word, institutions that correct rather than confirm habits of crime, and her work in a department that Avas notoriously dormant and ineffective suffices to illustrate feminine efficiency at its best. "Nor k this ideal,, already partially realised, of making our city prisons a door of hope through which the inmates may escape to honest fields of work and citizenship, the only proof of constructive efficiency Miss Davis has given as Commissioner of Correction. A CORRECTIONAL FARM. "Just above a year ago, late in March 1914, she instituted, in the face of Utopian impracticability of the idea, the most interesting municipal experiment of recent years. Th:s was the establishment, as a feature of the corrective system, of the New Hampton Farms . To a farm of 610 acres, owned by the city in New Hampton, Orange County, she has transferred 150 boys from the Hart's Island Reformatory, and set them at work out of doors, with the result that 100 acres of this land have been ploughed and 90 acres have been planted and cultivated by their labour. . . . The boys enjoy

the work, and the epirH, the morale of the institution is excellent. But Miss Davis will not be happy until the women of the city institutions are also removed to New Hampton, and given a chance to develop the best possibilities of their nature, under condit'ons as rational, as salutary as those which have worked such marvels in the case of the boys of the farm.

. ''And Miss Davis's administration has already demonstrated {hat sucn an achievement is no dream of a philanthropic visionary, but a genuine economic and correctional possibility that cannot fail of? practical results. Isn't that sufficient feform for one woman to have worked out in a year and a quarter of efficient administration r" A DOMESTIC ECONOMY SUCCESS.

In the line of domestic economy and financial efficiency, Miss Davis has scored a marked success, despite a reduction of £7BOO in the budget of 1911, and the inmates of the city's institution enjoy a better and more wholesome dietary now than ever before. "As for feminine efficiency in what may be termed the moral and ethical phases of correction work, amazing things unbelievable things have been done in the line of drug habit reform.

"Hearty co-operation by all the employees of the department has now become a habit of mind, and a proud and splendid espirit de corps has devi.oped This loyalty to Miss Davis is little snort of wonderful when one contrasts it with the 6iillen state of despair, lethargy and dry rot which characterised the same department lttle more thao. a year ago. Working conditions >a the Department of Correction may i>e fairly characterised as ideal." Truly, idealists arc the salt of the earth —and Utopia is not so far off and visionary as "practical" men and women imagine. For what we believe is the measure of what we achieve.