4 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
school than in any well-regulated educational institution no more restraint than is necessary to the proper education of the children committed to it.
After this decision in its favor, the Industrial School for Girls prospered. For years the placing of children in homes was only partially satisfactory. In one year (1891), we are told in the annual report, "nine-tenths of the children taken out of the school were returned after trial." This state of affairs was due to several causes, chiefly to the lack of thorough investigation of the homes to which the girls were sent and to proper super- vision. A visiting agent was finally employed, and better results were soon apparent.
In 1894 the state board of charities, which had the right of supervision over such institutions, made a report to the governor, in which it was alleged ( I ) that the location of the Illinois Indus- trial School for Girls was undesirable; (2) that the discipline was unnecessarily severe; (3) that the industrial training was inade- quate, being unsystematic ; (4) that the accounts were not satisfac- torily kept ; ( 5) that the girls were retained in the school too long on an average three years ; and (6) that the girls placed in homes were not properly looked after. The county commissioners of Cook county, during the fall of 1895, a ^ so preferred serious charges against the school, and a somewhat acrimonious contro- versy ensued. Finally the governor (Altgeld) discharged all the girls (105), but they refused to leave, and the scene at the school, when their discharge was announced, was both amusing and pathetic. The charges of cruelty on the part of the man- agement were not sustained, but it can hardly be doubted that a more desirable location for such a school might be found. There should be more land connected with the school, so that gardening, poultry-raising, and dairy work, etc., might be more effectually taught the girls. The school should also be built on "the cottage plan;" and the trustees fully recognize the advan- tages of this plan over the old congregate system, but for various reasons they have not removed the school from its original site, nor remodeled it, although they have greatly improved the build- ing and grounds.
