s was an integral part of the administration of
the Juvenile Court. There's little wisdom (in a city as large as
Chicago) in paroling a wayward boy unless there's a probation officer
to follow him, to watch him, to encourage him, to keep him from
relapsing into the hands of the judge. Some 3,500 children pass
through the court every year. The judge cannot be father to many of
them. The probation officers are the judge's eyes and hands, giving
him knowledge and control of his family. Without the probation
officers the new system would have been an amiable reform, but not an
effective agency for juvenile regeneration.

The Juvenile Court Committee developed a staff of probation officers,
which finally had twenty-two members. The Juvenile Court Committee
also undertook the maintenance and management of the detention home in
which boys were sheltered and instructed while awaiting the final
disposition of their cases. The Juvenile Court Committee also gave
time and money to many other features of the development of the court,
all the way from paying the salaries of a chief clerk and a chief
stenographer to suggesting the advisability and securing the adoption
of necessary amendments to the Juvenile Court law.

From the year 1898 to the year 1907 the Juvenile Court Committee
raised and spent $100,000. But it did its best work in depriving
itself of its occupation. It secured the passage of a law which
established the probation officer system as part of the Juvenile Court
system, to be maintained forever by the county authorities. And it
succeeded, after long negotiations, in persuading the county and the
city governments to cooeperate in the erection of a Children's
Building, which houses both the court and the detention home.

The original purpose of the Juvenile Court Committee was now
fulfilled. The Committee perished. But it immediately rose from its
ashes as the Juvenile Protective Association. Instead of supporting
_probation_ officers to look after children who are _already_ in the
care of the court, it now spends some $25,000 a year on _protective_
officers, who have it for their ultimate object to prevent children
from _getting into_ the care of the court. Can anything be done to dam
the stream of dependent and delinquent children which flows through
the children's building so steadily? What are the subterranean sources
of that stream? Can they be staunched?

The managers of the Juvenile Protective Association, i