JUSTICE AS DISPENSED
TO THE JUVENILES.
HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS VISIT
JUDGE M'CUNE'S COURT.
First Two Boys to Go to Parental
Home Are Delos Johnson and
Dan Clark, One a Shirker
and One a Truant.
Bent upon the study of sociology, the senior class of the Manual Training high school, under the guidance of Miss Annie Gilday, visited the children's court yesterday, presided over by Judge H. L. McCune in the second floor of the court house. There were nearly a hundred students, and they completely filled the court room. Among the gems of practical justice which the overheard were these:
Carl Warden, 3 years old, was brought before the court because he habitually runs away from his mother's home at 1212 Oak street and goes to visit Mrs. Joan Moran, police matron. Mrs. Elizabeth Warden, the mother, said that she took in washing for a living because her husband left her four months ago. She has a 3-months-old baby and Carl to provide for. The court has tried to help her before and gives her the laundry work from the Boys' hotel. She said that every time she turns her back on Carl "he scoots out of the house and goes down the alley like a rabbit." She wanted the court to find a place where she could keep him.
"Can you hold him until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning?" inquired Judge McCune.
"I doubt it," she said.
"Tie a clothes line around one leg and lariat him to a bed post," the judge ordered. "By morning we will have found a place, perhaps at the Institutional church, where he can be kept."
"I'll tie him up until an officer comes tomorrow," said the mother.
Carl fell asleep in the "bad boy's chair" while his fate was being decided and, when his mother woke him up, cried lustily.
"This is the first outing I've had in three years," remarked Robert Fisher's mother, when she came to court yesterday to defend the lad. Robert's father reported the boy as incorrigible. The mother told the court that the boy is all right. She said she would rather keep the boy than keep her husband. Judge McCune continued the case to give the officers time to investigate the conflicting stories.
Two boys were given reform school sentences. They are Columbus Pitts, who returned to Kansas City from Coffeyville, Kas., to which town the court a week ago sentenced him for life, and George Saide, a colored boy.
Two lads were sent to the parental home with Thomas N. Hughes and Mrs. Hughes, recently appointed to run the place. They will open the home today, using first a six-room farm house, now standing. The county will erect other buildings as they are needed. There will be a school house for truants by fall. Hughes and his wife attended court yesterday and went away with their boys.
One of the lads is Delos Johnson, who ran away from St. Louis and came to Kansas City last fall. His mother came here to find him and stayed here because he liked this city. She bought furniture on the installment plan, furnished a home at 512 Oak street, and the children's court got Delos a position at $20 a month so that he could help his mother pay for their new home. He quit his hob, because the boss asked him to scrub a floor. A second position he resigned because he was asked to wash a spittoon. There will be floors for him to scrub at the parental home.
The other charter member of the home is Dan Clark of 911 Wyandotte street. There's nothing the matter with Dan, except that he has insisted for two years on playing marbles and shinny, when he should have been attending the Lathrop school.
