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GUILFORD’S WORST BAD EGG 
 GETS A CHANCE INSTEAD 
 ft OF A SENTENCE 
 
 STATE 
 
 GERALD W. JOHNSON 
 (In Greensboro News) 
 
 1920 
 
 Published by the 
 
 BOARD OF CHARITIES AND PUBLIC 
 WELFARE 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 
 \ 
 
 https://archive.org/details/guilfordsworstbaOOjohn 
 
GUILFORD’S WORST BAD EGG GETS A CHANCE 
 INSTEAD OF A SENTENCE 
 
 Greensboro has just got rid of one of the 
 worst of her bad eggs. The manner of his 
 going is the substance of this tale, wherein 
 for convenience sake he will be referred to as 
 Joseph Smith. His real name will be dis¬ 
 carded, because there is a chance that he may 
 return one of these days distinctly something 
 other than a bad egg; and it is not necessary 
 to the purposes of this story, because you, 
 Mister reader, or Madame, being a well-con¬ 
 ducted person, would not recognize it if it 
 were told. 
 
 Not that it is unknown. On the contrary 
 it is familiar indeed to the judges of the 
 police and juvenile courts; familiar to every 
 member of the police force; familiar to every 
 newspaper reporter; and amounts to little less 
 than an obsession with the probation and tru¬ 
 ant officers. But to those whose business never 
 carries them outside the field of law-abiding 
 respectability it would mean nothing. Joseph 
 Smith will do as well. 
 
 Alias Joseph Smith, then be it explained, lays 
 claim to 14 years and 15 crimes. The latter 
 are not petty offenses, either; they range from 
 burglary down. For the greatest of them the 
 small body of Joseph Smith might be, under 
 the letter of the law, strapped into the elec¬ 
 tric chair and roasted to a cinder; for the least 
 of them a combination of a savage prosecuting 
 attorney and a literal-minded judge might 
 send him to the roads for a year. Joseph 
 Smith is a very bad egg indeed. 
 
 Had you ever imagined that such things 
 happened in the quiet, orderly little city of 
 Greensboro? Fourteen years old, and loaded 
 down with crimes enough to have filled a long 
 and wicked life! Fourteen years old and, un¬ 
 der a strict interpretation of the statute, his 
 
life already forfeit to the state! Fourteen 
 years old and already subject for the lighter 
 of his misdeeds to some centuries of penal 
 servitude, if he were given the limit of the 
 law in every case against him. And yet, for 
 all his appalling history, he is, to outward 
 view, pretty much the same as any other 
 14-year-old boy. He is small for his age, tow¬ 
 headed and bright-eyed, indeed, rather hand¬ 
 some. During the winter months you can see 
 hundreds of just such boys pouring out of the 
 schoolhouses at recess-time. Yet, Joseph 
 Smith has broken into a house where people 
 were sleeping during the night, which is a 
 felony under the laws of North Carolina, the 
 extreme penalty for which is death by elec¬ 
 trocution. 
 
 Why Joseph Was Bad. 
 
 What made of this ordinary school-boy, this 
 potential good citizen of the city and the state, 
 a felon at 14 years of age? Was it Satan, 
 chance, environment, fate—or was it the mis¬ 
 fortune of not having been orphaned early ? 
 Had he been a waif, the city, or the state, or 
 some charitable organization would probably 
 have taken him in hand, and given him every 
 chance to make a man out of himself. But 
 Joseph Smith, until quite recently, had both 
 a father and a mother. The father was a 
 crook, with a police-court record as long as 
 your arm. The mother—well, perhaps the less 
 said about the mother, the better; but it may 
 be worth noting that one of her habits was to 
 go away from the city for weeks at a time, 
 leaving Joseph to knock about the streets, 
 learning all the evil that he could garner 
 there. What small boy, between the ages of 
 12 and 14, has not been filled with the mighty 
 ambition to become a pirate? Joseph Smith 
 became one; and that, perchance, is after 
 all the main difference between him and other 
 boys. Evidence of that is the fact that this 
 very day he is as proud of his lawless deeds 
 done in dead earnest, as other boys are of 
 theirs, done in make-believe. 
 
 4 
 
But a short time ago came the inevitable 
 crash, and the career of Joseph Smith as a 
 bad egg was ended. After exasperating 
 months of fruitless endeavor, the police got 
 him with the goods; and in the juvenile cell 
 in Guilford county jail he confessed his 15 
 crimes with perhaps more pride than peni¬ 
 tence; for after all, he is only 14 years old. 
 
 In the big courtroom, two stories below, 
 the mills of justice were grinding away. Un¬ 
 der the law, up until last year, it would have 
 been possible to drop Joseph Smith, 14 years 
 old, into the hopper of that ponderous ma¬ 
 chine, designed to break the hardest of hard 
 men, and ill equipped to deal with small boys 
 whose mania for playing pirate no father’s 
 stern kindliness had repressed. But, luckily 
 for Joseph Smith, the legislature of 1919 had 
 written it into the statutes of North Carolina 
 that naughty children shall no longer be 
 crushed in the iron grip which the state, for 
 its own defense, is compelled to lay upon 
 grown men, hardened in crime. 
 
 Therefore Joseph Smith never went into 
 the big courtroom, never faced his honor, the 
 judge of the Superior court of this district, 
 the battery of lawyers, the 12 unwilling ju¬ 
 rors, never heard his doom pronounced from 
 the formal bench of justice, never was 
 marched away by some brawny officer of the 
 law, never made the tragic journey down to 
 Raleigh, never entered the massive, gloomy 
 walls of that dreadful building by the railroad 
 tracks, whose very shadow casts a chill upon 
 the hearts of travelers as they pass upon the 
 trains. Strong men find written over the por¬ 
 tals of that house, “All hope abandon, ye who 
 enter here.” How much less chance of bring¬ 
 ing out anything worth saving would there 
 be for a 14-year-old lad! But Joseph Smith 
 has not gone there; he is in the hands of the 
 law, but the law of North Carolina no longer 
 thrusts wayward children down into the maw 
 of hell. 
 
 5 
 
Under the New Order. 
 
 On the contrary, one perfect, green and 
 golden morning in the month of June, Joseph 
 Smith was taken for a long automobile ride 
 with some gentlemen, not one of whom 
 wore a blue coat with brass buttons, or car¬ 
 ried a revolver on his hip. People along the 
 road certainly saw nothing resembling a con¬ 
 victed criminal being taken to serve his sen¬ 
 tence for multiple crimes against the statutes 
 made and provided and the peace and dignity 
 of the state. All they saw was a motor car 
 containing some men and a couple of small 
 boys; and even had they been informed as to 
 what was taking place, they might have hesi¬ 
 tated to say which of the small boys was the 
 criminal and which the son of the committing 
 magistrate, merely going for a ride. 
 
 There was nothing in the least tragic about 
 the journey of Joseph Smith to his place of 
 detention. On the contrary, it would be diffi¬ 
 cult to imagine a pleasanter ride than that, 
 through the rolling wheat fields of Guilford 
 and Davidson, across the long toll-bridge that 
 spans the tawny Yadkin, into the cotton fields 
 of Rowan and Cabarrus, through city streets 
 and country lanes, and many little towns, 
 where porches and fences along the street 
 were all aflame with pink and red climbing 
 roses. 
 
 Nor was it at any forbidding pile of ma¬ 
 sonry, with narrow slits, heavily barred, for 
 windows, and armed guards prowling up and 
 down outside, that the journey ended. Three 
 miles beyond Concord the automobile drew 
 up before a red brick building with tall white 
 columns in front, like some unusually magnif¬ 
 icent country residence. Stretching away 
 from it in a stately row facing the highway 
 were four red brick cottages, a shop, and a 
 schoolhouse still in course of construction. 
 All in front were lawns and graveled drive¬ 
 ways and flower-beds interspersed with shrub¬ 
 bery. At the rear was a trellis loaded heavily 
 with a magnificent red rambler, blazing with 
 
 6 
 
flowers; and in front of it holly-hocks, pink 
 and the reddest of all imaginable reds, added 
 to the riot of color. 
 
 On the driveway in front of the big building 
 were assembled the reasons for all this—some 
 50 or 60 boys, ranging in size from an eight- 
 year-old to some sturdy lads of 16. They were 
 dressed in blue denim overalls that bore evi¬ 
 dence of frequent scrubbing. They were tanned 
 and fairly riotously healthy, as they proved 
 by skylarking all over the place while they 
 waited for orders from the two or three soft- 
 spoken, tanned and stalwart men about the 
 place. Presently one of them spoke, and in¬ 
 stantly the assemblage fell into what the sol¬ 
 diers call “column of twos,” each boy picking 
 up a hoe as he moved. They were graded by 
 size from the head of the column, and at the 
 rear the hoes were well-nigh twice as tall as 
 their bearers; but as one of the men stepped 
 to the head of the column and it moved off, the 
 rearmost pair swung their hoes to the shoul¬ 
 ders with a flourish, and carried them jauntily 
 away. 
 
 North Carolina’s New Idea. 
 
 Nothing mournful, nothing morbid, clung to 
 that procession; yet only a few years since 
 many of these would have been flung into the 
 midst of the worst criminals that the state has 
 produced, because the last one of them had 
 violated some of the statutes written in the 
 books of law. The great state of North Caro¬ 
 lina, however, no longer looks upon her bad 
 boys as in the same class with forgers and 
 murderers and embezzlers; and instead of 
 hurling them into the gloom of her prison 
 walls, she puts them to live among flowers and 
 green trees, and sets them to work in the sun¬ 
 shine where the crops are growing. 
 
 Such was the punishment meted out to Jo¬ 
 seph Smith, bad egg of Greensboro, for his 15 
 crimes. He didn’t like it at all. In that place 
 of sunshine and cheer he was a fish out of 
 water. Least of all was he favorably impressed 
 by the tall, sinewy man, whose otherwise grave 
 
 7 
 
face was lighted by a humorous gleam about 
 the eyes, who seemed to be in charge of the 
 whole business. Joseph Smith demanded at 
 once that he be taken back to spend the rest 
 of his days in Guilford county jail. In that 
 place, and under that man, Joseph Smith will 
 have to walk a chalk line, and he knows it. His 
 15 crimes will not make him a hero there; he 
 has an uncomfortable certainty that if he un¬ 
 dertakes to boast of his lawless deeds in that 
 atmosphere he will be simply swept away by a 
 great gale of laughter, and the thought of be¬ 
 ing suddenly reduced from the grade of a des¬ 
 perate character to that of a particularly 
 simple-minded fool is gall and wormwood to his 
 spirit. Why, they will not even do him the 
 compliment of locking him up, and there is 
 not so much as a picket fence around the place. 
 So perhaps Joseph Smith will run away, at 
 first; but after he has tried that a time or two, 
 and found that all it gets him is an ignominious 
 return by the chief of police of the first neigh¬ 
 boring town he strikes, followed, perhaps, by 
 a painful interview with one of the teachers 
 equipped with a small, but distressingly tough 
 and limber twig, and then by gibes from his 
 fellows, he will drop that. Then presently he 
 will take an interest in something else—maybe 
 in his school books, maybe in what his increas¬ 
 ingly cunning fingers can accomplish with tools, 
 maybe in the literary and debating society of 
 his house, but in something. And at that very 
 moment Joseph Smith will have set his foot 
 on the long upward grade toward decent citi¬ 
 zenship, possibly toward that eventual return 
 to Greensboro at which he will be glad that 
 this article did not print his real name. 
 
 But Joseph Smith is not in yet. First it is 
 necessary that his traveling companions be 
 escorted through the plant, to marvel at the 
 spotless cleanliness that pervades every nook 
 and cranny, and the military tidiness of the 
 living quarters. Then the officials of the party 
 retire with him and the superintendent to dis¬ 
 cuss his enrollment, and the unofficial members 
 of the party wait outside, where they are in- 
 
 8 
 
voluntary witnesses to a little drama that they 
 cannot forget, nor would, if they could. 
 
 A Training School Drama. 
 
 A handsome motor car drives up, containing 
 a middle-aged gentleman, and a lady, apparent¬ 
 ly his wife, and three young girls. The size 
 and equipment of the automobile indicate 
 wealth, and the dress and bearing of the party 
 are no less eloquent of breeding. There is a 
 consultation with one of the teachers and a 
 messenger is dispatched somewhere. Ten min¬ 
 utes later another automobile, this one obvious¬ 
 ly belonging to the farm, drives up, and out of 
 it leaps one of the lads who a while ago 
 marched off at the head of the column. He is 
 apparently approaching 16, dressed in the usu¬ 
 al blue overalls, and as he whips off his big 
 straw hat his face appears as sunburned as the 
 others. Nor is it a bad face—on the contrary, 
 rather a manly one, as the supple, strong figure 
 is distinctly manly. What it may have been 
 when it first arrived, one can only guess; but 
 the rush of the elder woman to his arms, and 
 the passion with which she throw T s her arms 
 around him are ample evidence that the mother 
 has never ceased to love him, no matter how 
 egregious his folly. 
 
 Nobody knew the beginning of the story. 
 Nobody could have had the brutality to inquire. 
 What did it matter, anyhow, since in the boy’s 
 face, in his attitude, in his every gesture, the 
 wayfaring man, though a fool, could have seen 
 a happy ending and that right soon ? But 
 suppose that boy had been born 10 years 
 earlier, and had committed his error, whatever 
 it was, before this school was established ? 
 The other institution, the one at Raleigh, would 
 probably have received him, and when it 
 spewed him out not even his own sisters could 
 have looked upon the thing he would have be¬ 
 come without loathing; and while the mother 
 might have thrown her arms around him still, 
 it would have been with death in her heart. 
 
 9 
 
“And some people/’ said one of the unofficial 
 observers, blowing his nose mightily and then 
 carefully polishing his glasses which had sud¬ 
 denly acquired a suspicious dimness, “some 
 people have said that this thing wasn’t worth 
 while.” 
 
 That is the end of the story of how 
 Greensboro got rid of one bad egg. But there 
 is an epilogue. The officials added that when 
 they returned from the interview with the 
 superintendent, Joseph Smith got into the 
 Jackson Training School by the skin of his 
 teeth. There are four cottages. Each cottage 
 is built to accommodate 30 boys. When Joseph 
 Smith arrived, there were already 132 boys in 
 the institution. Figure it out for yourself. 
 
 Guilford county some time ago resolved to 
 erect another cottage at the school so that her 
 own bad eggs might be taken care of, at least 
 to the number of 30; but legal obstacles have 
 been encountered which only the legislature 
 can sweep away. There is a special session 
 of the legislature next month, and if Guilford 
 asks, it will grant the necessary permission for 
 the county commissioners to go ahead with 
 their plans. 
 
 There are other Joseph Smiths in the coun¬ 
 ty, several in the city, and the child welfare 
 officials are at their wits’ end to know what 
 to do with them. Of course, the penitentiary 
 is always open, but the county officials hesitate 
 to use that means of egress from the dilemma. 
 They somehow do not feel right, even if they 
 have express authorization in the written law, 
 about thrusting a small boy, even one who has 
 violated the law, down into the Bottomless Pit. 
 They remember certain remarks that once were 
 made about people who do that sort of thing— 
 remarks to the effect that in the case of such 
 a man, which they fear might be construed to 
 mean such a county, “it were better for him 
 that a millstone were hanged about his neck 
 and that he were cast into the midst of the 
 sea.” 
 
 10 
 
!U> 
 
 
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 Photomount 
 
 Pamphlet 
 
 Binder 
 
 Gaylord Bros. Inc 
 
 Makers 
 
 Syracuse, N. Y 
 PAT. JAN 21. 1908 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 00043606847 
 
 FOR USE ONLY IN 
 
 THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION