If we can save a few, if we can tide them over the first danger period and get them into the second, it will be helpful. One man absolutely saved is certainly worth trying for.

MR. WHITE: I saw during the past week that a great many drug fiends have been afflicted so terribly mentally that they have given themselves up and asked to be taken to the hospitals for treatment. In case a patient is so addicted to drugs when they arrive at your institution, do you believe in shutting them off entirely or in the tapering-off process?

DR. STOKES: It would be absolutely cruel to shut them off at once. It is better to taper them off, reducing the dose gradually, over two or three or four days. We give cathartics that stimulate the flow of the bile and intestinal juices; we give them cathartics that have other effects and we clear the liver and the brain cells of these symptoms. Immediate discontinuance is wrong. It is cruel.

MR. PATRICK O'REILLEY, PROBATION OFFICER, SECOND DIVISION MAGISTRATES' COURTS: I want to tell you that down in Richmond we haven't yet had one single case of drug addiction in the past three years. We do have plenty of alcoholic cases. We have quite a number of men brought into court who have worked during the week pretty hard and who get their wages and go in to have a drink and spend it all; come home, abuse the wife, throw the children out of bed; and they are sometimes placed on probation.

We usually treat a man of that kind in this way: We get him to sign an agreement that he will allow the probation officer to draw his salary during the continuance of his probationary period. The next step is to see his employer, which usually can be done, but in some cases it perhaps cannot be done, and we get the employer to agree to those terms, and the probation officer draws the salary and gives it to the wife; that system has worked very well.

In the treatment of my cases, I have tried various ways, the tapering-off process and the substitution of beer for whiskey, and while we had some very good successes, I cannot say they were permanent. These men usually go back again, the same old story, coming home drunk and calling the wife vile names, etc., but I

have had many cases where the man was induced to stop drinking altogether. We do have many successes and I believe the only way is to stop it altogether and it can be done if a man has the will. If he will say, "I will stop it," and mean it, he can do it, but it is the great trouble that they don't mean it.

I had a case of a man that was on three months' trial. His wife had left him; couldn't live with him, and he was taken into court. The judge adjourned the case for investigation. I found he was the proprietor of a saloon and from a good family. He had lost his arm in an accident and took this way of making his living. He promised to stop drinking. The next day the judge said, “I will suspend sentence if you will stop drinking," and the man said, "I will." "I do not believe you can do it," but he did it and that is two years ago and he hasn't drank anything since. There is only one method to keep sober and that is to stop drinking.

JUDGE ROBERT J. WILKIN, CHILDREN'S COURT, BROOKLYN: I think the doctor has touched upon what most of us understand when he spoke of the psychic nature of it. If I understand his treatment at all, it is first to get the man to know himself; know he wants to change and then make up his mind to do it. When he does that, that is the end of it.

Probation officers cannot do very much in that line if I know anything about the probation officer's work. We are told they have fifty or sixty cases a month and follow those cases in all parts of the city, spend an hour a whole month on a case. You cannot do anything on that. I had a boy twelve years old come into the children's court. He had been a dope fiend for a year. There is no use in sending that boy with the probation officer. I might just as well have a boy with a broken leg and give him to you to fix up. Probation officers' duties and possibilities are great, but you cannot do everything. The dope fiend should be taken care of first under medical care in the hospital. Doctors tell me they cannot cure them in less than a year. I do not mean to say they must be locked up all that time, but they should be under treatment by a trained medical man. Neither you nor I have that knowledge. We are trained to determine whether the State shall interfere with the citizen or not legally. You are trained to try to bring someone

back to the right path, but doctors are trained with medicines and their business is to apply remedies that do not come within our powers at all.

It seems to me, to sum up all said to-night, the dope fiend, he who uses cocaine or heroin or the other narcotics, should be placed in an institution under the care of a medical expert. When he comes out, then some one should see that he keeps on the right road. Of course, that isn't your province because you haven't the time. The institution evidently contemplates doing this work, which is another evidence of the wisdom of its conduct.

I think if there is any conclusion that we can reach to-night it is that the dope fiend in the first instance had better be placed under the custodial care of the medical fraternity until he can change his psychic condition. How many times you have heard a man say, "I cannot stop smoking." Get him sick in bed and see how quick he forgets about it. When the dope fiend gets into that condition then there is small chance that we can do anything, but in the first instance when you report to the court that this is a narcotic user, habitual user; he has lost his self control, then it is for you to tell the court and it is the wisdom of the court to find a place where that user can be cared for. In the City Reformatory as soon as we find the boys are drug-users, we immediately place them under the care of the physician. Owing to the crowded condition we have to discharge them within the year; but that is the first proposition it seems to all of us. It is a medical question and it must begin there.

MR. JOHN J. GASCOYNE, CHIEF PROBATION OFFICER, NEWARK, N. J. I have been very much interested in the subject you have been discussing. There is no probation officer I know of that is competent to take care of a drug fiend. That man is sick physically, mentally and morally, and how can you or I expect to take care of him and allow him to be at large and without guidance excepting for about one-half hour in the week? It is an utter impossibility; it is a hopeless task; it would be an unfortunate affair for you to undertake. I believe that every reformatory or penal institution that is caring for offenders should have attached to it an annex or hospital of some kind for the special treatment of drug fiends. I think we have all come to realize in our inves

tigations from day to day that drugs are responsible to a greater extent than is generally supposed for a number of the offenses committed day after day, and for that reason instead of punishing the man for the offense that he has committed, we should treat him in a scientific manner for the cause which brought him to the point of committing the offense.

We talk about the after-care or the probation care of the individual after he has received his medical treatment. I do not think that is a matter for the probation officer. If a man is sent to an institution for care, he should be followed along by a person who is attached to that institution and understands what after-care means. If he has become a criminal because of this drug habit, why the probation officer has no right to undertake to have him report to him and mix any with those who have committed offenses who are not drug fiends. He is a special individual and should be treated by a person who has had rather peculiar training for the care of such individuals.

MR. THEODORE TRIEPER, PROBATION Officer, Court of SpeCIAL SESSIONS, BROOKLYN: Dr. Stokes spoke of the need of the courts having medical officers; that is a great need. I think every one here ought to be a messenger for the purpose of trying to induce the Board of Estimate and Apportionment to grant more money to the Inebriate Farm. We have subways for the convenience of the public, but for the upbuilding of the poor fellow who needs it, there is no money. They laugh at this thing. I think we all ought to take this matter in hand and show them how serious the subject is.

THIRD SESSION

Thursday Evening, April 29, 1915

BOY PROBLEMS

MB. BERNARD J. FAGAN, ACTING CHIEF PROBATION OFFICER CHILDREN'S COURT, MANHATTAN, presiding:

The subject to-night is "Boy Problems." We who work in the Children's Court know that there are many boy problems. The topics mentioned are truancy, employment, recreation; what can be done for boys in summer vacations; what can be done with boys who steal; treatment of sub-normal boys; how can the co-operation of father, mother, other relatives and friends be best obtained; how much do we know of the boy's environment, associates, interests, how much should we know, how can we best help in the choice of these? Those are the problems we are to take up this evening. They are the problems that confront us every day in our work. The greatest of these problems is truancy, and the speaker of the evening is a gentleman who is endeavoring to bring the new Bureau of Attendance to assume its proper functions and to co-operate along the best possible lines with the agencies of the city to reduce, if possible, the vexatious problem of truancy.

DR. JOHN W. DAVIS, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF ATTENDANCE, NEW YORK CITY: As indicated by your Chairman, the new Bureau which has been in existence practically since last September and the official title of which is, the Bureau of Compulsory Education. School Census and Child Welfare, is an important Bureau. This is the first time in the history of the United States that an attempt. has been made to focus the work that is so important, the so-called child welfare work.

You have limited my presentation to the truancy problem only, which is one of the many numerous problems that we have to attempt to solve. In attempting to solve these problems, we are co-operating with all the agencies, charitable and otherwise, in the City that have been organized for the purpose of ameliorating