« p. 63-65: Up the Hudson
The Children’s Republic in Freeville
p. 69-82
I’d resolved to myself to write what I knew before I came. Then to write what I saw while I was there. And finally to write what I think of everything now that I’m away. I’ve been in Freeville ten days, and now I want to say very simply what I saw and heard and hope that it contains my final opinion. I want to write this right now: the trip was worth it, simply because I’ve met a real person, William R. George. He’s the reason for this Children’s Republic, and it’s named The George Junior Republic in his honor. If it’s true that, when the time comes, the just will sit on the right-hand side, I will know where to look for Daddy George when I want to see him again. --
I was traveling along the Hudson to this small place, in-between Auburn and Ithaca in the state of New York, and as the bus brought me to the beautiful, small Republic Inn, I said to myself: My God, this guest house is much too refined and luxurious for the place they’ve built it in. Because Freeville is (we call things by their names) a very mild correctional institution for wayward, poorly supervised and criminally disposed children and young people. But next to me in this artistically perfect dining hall, three ladies sat to dinner in evening wear. I was utterly ashamed of my traveling suit.
Aha, I said to myself again, this whole story has been created with the money of local rich people, and this guest house has been built to accommodate their social status when they come here to see the Republic. Poor prospects!
After dinner, I went down the country roads to the Republic. I’d already seen a tiny town out my window some two miles away from the guest house, small colorful wooden houses, looking in the distance like a Russian or Swedish village. I walked there down the country roads.
A couple of boys walked past me to the Republic with a handcart. They were crudely dressed in blue overalls (that is: pants, vest and suspenders all in one piece), returning from field work with their spades. A tall, broad-shouldered man came over from the Republic, making hand gestures as they approached one another. I heard the boys cry, “Daddy!” and the man yelled something that sounded like, “Sonny!”
As he came towards me, he stopped to say hello. A stranger in this small place meant a visitor to the Republic, and a stranger at night, when the trains have stopped leaving, meant someone more than just a tourist, someone who wants to see, wants to see.
The man was Mr. George himself, the father of the Republic, a man with an open, animated face and mild blue eyes, a man in his ripe years yet still looking very young. He has allowed himself to be called Daddy (that is, Papa) by more or less unlucky children, for whom he has done more than all other Papas, more than their own. He did not bring them into the world, but he was there to do something better: to bring them to life. He went with me back the way he came, and we both went back to the Junior Republic. Today we stayed a few hours, and when he accompanied me back to the hotel, he introduced me to the ladies I had seen there. I hadn’t been wrong. The youngest of them was one of the richest women in America, the daughter of the Copper King of the West.
I stayed for three days in Freeville, heard all and saw all. In July 1911, about one hundred and fifty children were there, boys and girls, white and black, most of them not older than seventeen. A few of them are younger than fifteen, a few older than eighteen, most of them I established as being in their developing years. No wonder, they were the wayward, neglected, depressed, criminal children. So many came from state correctional facilities, reformatories, and had various crimes on their consciences, not only thefts but also bigger problems; there was an arsonist among them, even a murderer. There were children sent here by their parents, because they weren’t doing well at home, which was probably the fault of the parents themselves. There were children from alcoholic families, children from divorced marriages, unsupervised children left to their own devices. Children who partly were led stray and partly drifted deep into the abyss. A few of them had some sexual escapades to their names; but there were no onanists among them. The greatest segment consisted of children whose lives had gone out of control and many whose lives had been driven into darkness before they had even seen the light of day, steered into directions where society would punish them down to the fourth generation.
An American is entitled to political action at the age of twenty-one. Americans, Europeans, native Brazilians, everyone has done something stupid in those loutish years in-between fifteen and eighteen. Society and the state, cruel as they are, moderately punish these crimes in correctional institutions, prisons of a sort; and a young man goes in with a few flaws and leaves embittered and outraged, looking for revenge. It seems right to me when society breeds its own destroyers with its own poison, and I watch it gladly. But who wouldn’t cry over a broken person?
But now, just before he breaks, Daddy George takes him into his sympathetic hands, and a life is saved. (Many of the lives entrusted to him go back out into the world sainted, but not all!) I think to myself that the destroyers of this absurd modern order should not come out of those who have been beaten crooked, but instead out of the laughing, the unbroken, the overflowing, the unbreakable, whether they were born in the proletariat, the bourgeois or raised in the cradles of kings. Calmly, I let George carry out his idea, which is one of the most beautiful that a person today could live for.
The Republic was built on a vacation spot, which George built with his own two hands in his hometown of Freeville for the poor children of New York. The children got into all sorts of mischief, and George said, like the good and wise person that he is: I will not punish you for the mischief you’ve made -- punish yourselves!
The Republic was founded on this idea. The children give the laws themselves, either obeying them or feeling their consequences.
I’ve made a note of two statements that George told me right from the beginning: There’s not a big difference between a bad person and a good person. And: There’s no big difference between us grownups and children. A man who talks like that speaks the truth. He is a father and a good person, and he’s earned his place on the right-hand side in the kingdom of God.
You can now see a line connecting both of these statements, so it’s clear what this has to do with George’s idea. Children were cajoled into playing a sort of government game, a game which is meant damned seriously. They are allowed to make the laws they later have to follow, but these chains don’t hurt half as much as the ones they would otherwise have to wear.
Up until the age of twenty-one, they are allowed, if they can’t find a way around it, to carry out all the stupidities available in the world -- and will not carry the taint of a convict when they leave at twenty-one.
There’s something to that. A young man who plays a trick outside and runs into the law, stands before a real judge and is stuck in a real institution. This young man becomes a hero in his neighborhood, a mythical persona for anyone of his age or younger. But here in Freeville, his comrades have it in for him whenever he does something wrong. He is nothing like the miserable fellow without any power over himself, because nothing can get in the way of the sentence he has imposed on himself. That, it seems to me, is an excellent idea.
The other key note is the motto of the Republic: “Nothing without labor.” George, incidentally, has sometimes been called the author of Progress and Poverty, but in fact he has nothing to do with Henry George. He continued with me around the places where they work. The boys and girls work. There are printers, field workers, builders, workers in the chicken yard and cow shed, seamstresses and cleaners, in short, every trade there is. They are paid well. If you’re industrious, you can earn two dollars and more in a single day -- the money of the Republic consists of aluminum coins with words wrapped around the value amount.
They have to earn it! Because in the Republic nothing is given away -- outside of the school lessons, which, like in the surrounding states, is free and mandatory. (The hardworking and educated Freeville teachers are quite excellent.) Living arrangements, food, clothing, laundry, everything costs money -- the money of the Republic. If you don’t work, you lose your bed and your place at the table in the boarding house, you become a derelict and -- march right into prison.
Where there are laws, there are prisons, and the prisons (for boys) are not pretty in Freeville. Everything is tailored after the model of the outside, an outside for which they need to be made industrious, which they themselves mimic here and into which they will be marched in earnest at the age of twenty-one. And so the prison is modeled after Sing Sing, iron cages whose beds aren’t all that hard. The beds are good, because anyone who works hard in the day should be able to sleep peacefully at night. These prisoners, the rotten vagabonds, work harder by day than they had for their own paychecks when they were free. They get the hardest work there is to do in the Republic for the lowest wages possible. Then they have to go to bed in their cages and pay the prison fee.
At midday, George takes me to the hotel where the prisoners are fed, the cheapest in the Republic. They sit at one of the long tables and eat a nourishing and frugal meal. A young girl sits at the end of a table and reads something (nothing religious) while she eats. She nods at me as I come in -- it’s the Copper King’s little daughter. She will be missing lunch with her friends at the inn, because right now she has a plate in front of her with the same food as everyone else.
She is completely alone. Her friends and the other lady in their company, a delicate and kindly old woman, are at home or taking their automobile for a sojourn into the country. That makes me happy. This is American and shows independence and strength; but I dislike it too, because on the one hand it looks like snobbery and on the other hand it seems as if rich people do whatever they want -- but I am reserving my judgment for the short time that I am here.
I watch the youth and their excited, innocent little heads, and yet -- there is the arsonist. One of them has a chain on his foot, an incorrigible runaway, a small Italian. Why doesn’t it immediately seem inhuman and barbaric for a child to have chains on his feet? If he runs away again, he’ll have to resort to stealing, because even in the best of situations he only has the aluminum money of the Republic in his pocket! A small Negro sits at a table to the side -- even here there’s no such thing as friendship between white and black!
Who brought these young people to the clink? They themselves. I ask George: “Aren’t you or other Elders called on as referees in contentious situations?”
He gives me a wonderful answer. He says: “Oh, yes. But we elders stay out of their affairs. A word, a glance or an order from one of us elders could damage the Republic to its core. We know that even the interference of experienced, grownup, worldly men will simply accelerate the amount of problems. But if you grant them -- if you just give the youth some time, they will find a roundabout way to fix their own problems, slowly getting there by themselves, whereas we would have taken them there directly and without any detours. There’s really not much difference between a child and an elder, really.”
At the moment, there are seven Junior Republics modeled after Freeville in the state. The Philippines want one. England has invited George to found one over there. It seems that rich people (Rockefeller and others) will pay money for this sort of venture, and that the things which George calls proper and right just so happen to be the same things that government and society call proper and right (the church has nothing to do with Freeville!). All I really know is that a person has carried out an idea here, and quite a beautiful one at that.
But unfortunately the false, the terrible and the wrong are all gathered around the bright nucleus, and someone says to me that Freeville today, the Republic that has existed for sixteen years, is in the middle of an internal crisis. But I want to be on guard against misjudging the elders, who bring about the results year in and year out. Why should the work of a person, especially someone as noble and pure as William R. George, not be able to bear its various troubles?
Someone whispers a number of things in my ear. The affairs of this place should overwhelm the sort of person who lets the children call him Daddy and who answers them back with Sonny. He can’t be the man, the person whispers, to carry out such a great work. He has set up all sorts of practical people on his right and left. So -- I think to myself -- but then a great feeling in my heart draws me to look through the door into reality -- he’s still the right man for the job. For all his failures, for all his weaknesses in the face of the unrelenting, demanding daily life, I honestly love him, the man whom the children call Daddy.
Now I want to write about something that’s upset me and mars my beliefs in the idea of the Republic.
Friday is a court day in the Junior Republic; and here George’s principles are at work. Everyone is allowed to come and abide by the judgment. On a day like this, Freeville is besieged by people from the surrounding area. People come here from Auburn, Ithaca, Syracuse and Sayre in order to see the children’s court in session. The people who visit have an amusing evening. Even though they behave calmly and seriously, you can see right on their faces the pleasure they’ve looked for and found. But still, this child’s justice is no joke, and what I noticed upset me deeply, maybe more deeply than necessary.
The judge is a young man of twenty years, the attorney is somewhat younger, neither one of them are saints themselves, otherwise they wouldn’t be here. Certainly, they’re made of the best material the Republic has (better than the President and other high functionaries, which I’ll be writing about shortly!).
The session begins, we all stand up, the hall is packed with citizens of the Republic and onlookers. The judge has the law book of the Republic in front of him; the jury is called for, then the clerk calls for the accused as the attorney walks up to the judge’s table.
The clerk reads out the charges, the judge asks the accused if he’s guilty.
The accused stole raspberries (out of Daddy’s garden, no less!). He’s a cute little blond rascal with an unabashed face. He answers: “Not guilty.”
The clerk reads out the oath: “Attorney X., do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
The attorney raises his hand for the oath. Then come the witnesses, the boys who saw this. Each one is heard, one says the accused did this, the others say the accused did that. The accused is cunning and crafty. He knows the tricks, is no greenhorn. He shuffles outside seriously, even though it’s as good as certain that he stole the berries.
More accused walk to the front. One of them was twice caught smoking. These are the third and fourth charges against him since he became a citizen of the Republic. The first time he was sentenced to a one dollar fine, the second to a two dollar fine. Today, for charges number three and four, a total fine of seven dollars is assigned to him. He might be the son of rich parents (there are millionaire’s sons among the citizens of Freeville), but it means nothing for him. He has to pay in the aluminum money of the Republic and can only get it with work. For two puffs on the forbidden cigarettes, he will have to deliver seven dollars of work, in addition to providing himself with meals, lodging and laundry! He is a miserable, sluggish brute, so he’ll probably wind up digging through the pockets of a comrade as he sleeps, maybe he’ll be marched right back into the cages, maybe he’ll break out and begin stealing from a warehouse in the next town -- seven dollars for smoking is too much.
A pretty Negro girl is interrogated. She’s run away for the third time -- prison. (The prison for girls is a clean dollhouse compared to the one for boys.)
A tiny youth, barely fifteen years old, smoked, and when he was caught he ran away and threw a couple foul words at the people who had caught him. Three crimes: smoking, running away and filthy language. (All these offenses were committed in the chicken yard, where the little one is assigned.) These are the fourth, fifth and sixth punishments for the little one. Four and five and six dollars; a little much.
The little one looks at the judge with an open mouth. My neighbor, a woman from the surrounding area, laughs to herself so much that she shakes. She forgets: a child, fifteen dollars worth of work and in addition food, lodging, laundry. He is a poor child, he comes before the judge in flimsy shoes and overalls, he’s not having a good time, he stands there with an open mouth, that small mouth, and hasn’t even heard that the next accused has already been called in. If he doesn’t have the money, the tiny boy must work it off slowly in prison. Maybe that will help, maybe he won’t smoke, run away or talk like a pig. Maybe!
(The saying goes that the citizens once wanted Daddy George to go to prison himself, because he had said, “Gee!” in their presence. Gee means Jesus and is a swear. A dollar for the first offense.)
I ask everyone I meet how these accused are brought before the judge, George, the citizens, the judge, the kind old lady, the copper princess, the fine young graduates of Cornell University in Ithaca, whom I’ve become acquainted with -- how do the accused get here? Is there a network of informants among the children? Everyone tells me no. The children feel lucky here, free and strong in equality before the law; desertion is very seldom, many youth who have been released come back to the Republic, because they have it better here than they do on the outside. They maintain good friendships with each other, respect prevails above everything else, absolute respect before the law! I can’t quite understand it.
I’ve also seen the Kingdom of Freeville. We gradually come up to George’s house on the border of the Republic. George showed me his beautiful house and the beautiful library in the atrium -- a rich elderly couple donated it in memory of their deceased child. A few citizens of the Republic sit on one of the legal books in the library -- we walk out and return to the Republic -- it’s three in the afternoon, and two young people, teachers, walk up to us laughing. George smiles and suspects something. But he does not move a finger in the internal affairs of the government, he can explain all the minute details, but he stays quiet and smiles.
In the summer in the state of New York, there are conferences, congresses and discussions about schools in many towns, and many citizens of the Republic have received holidays to travel to these congresses. Only the best citizens, naturally, are allowed to exchange their honestly acquired aluminum money for a few days’ worth of government currency.
Except for the judge, the attorney and a couple dozen praiseworthy exceptions, there are some terrible citizens in the Republic. Very terrible, I hear.
These terrible citizens, following proven models, have grabbed control of the presidency, its deputies, the police and similar positions, and a true Tammany Hall economy has gone on under the eyes of Daddy and the good youth. With bribery on one end and blackmail on the other, petty thievery and misappropriation, they quickly carried out all their political maneuvers in the shadows, just like those outside do in the terrible world of politics, and not only in America; they did it all quickly, because the good ones should be returning soon.
And then in a few days a couple of the good ones returned. Among them were several temporarily suspended functionaries of the Republic. Immediately they saw that all these crimes were their own responsibility. They collected evidence, put it together, got the police on their side and then today, while George showed me the house, the President, Vice-President and a score of other wrongdoers were arrested. They’re all in prison now.
We walk over to the prison -- overflowing. We go by the house with the tower, where the government is run. Two pieces of paper are stuck to the blackboard. The President explains that he’s resigning his office, and the Vice-President is doing likewise.
Daddy George stands there and rubs his hands. The good boys stand there and laugh. What can I do, I laugh with them. --
And on the last evening, it is already late, we sit on the front steps of the beautiful, small Republic Inn: the delicate old lady, the Copper King’s daughter and her friends, a young, cute, frizzy-haired citizen of the Republic and myself. On the veranda behind us, the young graduate from Cornell plays a sonata on his cello for graduates of Sibley College in Ithaca. He plays well, better than a dilettante; the night is wonderfully clear, and out in the distance, in the Republic, a few windows are lit.
The young man from Cornell plays. Certainly the tones of the cello are heard in the surrounding dark country. Certainly the President and Vice-President hear them from their cages. The good and bad boys sit upright in their beds and listen. And hopefully the tones lull the Daddy in his beautiful house into a good night and a good sleep after the efforts and confusions of the day.