But the chief problem in any community cursed with crime
is not the punishment of the criminals, but the preventing of
the young from being trained to crime. And here again the
peculiar conditions of the South have prevented proper pre-
cautions. I have seen twelve-year-old boys working in chains
on the public streets of Atlanta, directly in front of the
schools, in company with old and hardened criminals; and
this indiscriminate mingling of men and women and children
makes the chain-gangs perfect schools of crime and debauch-
ery. The struggle for reformatories, which has gone on in
Virginia, Georgia, and other States, is the one encouraging
sign of the awakening of some communities to the suicidal
results of this policy.
It is the public schools, however, which can be made,
outside the homes, the greatest means of training decent
self-respecting citizens. We have been so hotly engaged re-
cently in discussing trade-schools and the higher education
that the pitiable plight of the public-school system in the
South has almost dropped from view. Of every five dollars
spent for public education in the State of Georgia, the white
schools get four dollars and the Negro one dollar; and even
then the white public-school system, save in the cities, is bad
and cries for reform.
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