In recent years, the Maryland Training School for Boys has been
able to reduce the average length of stay for boys. This means that
you boys may look forward to an early return to your communities,
if you earn such privilege, under the school's citizenship program, but
it means also that the school can provide service to a larger number
of boys. I am told, for example, that 701 boys have been admitted
for the first ten months of the fiscal year. I would like to take this
opportunity to commend you boys, as well as the administration of
the school, for the splendid way in which you have maintained the
appearance of the buildings and of the total campus.

This is a training school in which the State of Maryland takes great
pride, and I know that it is not without some considerable hard work
on the part both of the boys and the staff that an institution of this
size is kept in such excellent physical condition. As your Governor,
with a deep pride in all that our great State does well, I commend
you most heartily for your successful efforts. I believe that all of you
boys understand that your hard work has a purpose, and that hard
work is good for men and boys alike.

I am told that during the summer months more than 100 of you
will be returning to your communities. It is needless for me to tell
you that it is never too easy to make this transition without a great
deal of preparation and without the fullest cooperation of the families,
the courts and other agencies, and the individual boy himself. And
yet, this is the test of the Maryland Training School of Boys and its
program. Each one of you will be given the opportunity to demonstrate
to the school, to the community—and most of all to yourself—that
you have earned the right to take your place in the State as a junior
citizen.

I know that a great majority of the boys who have been released
from the Maryland Training School for Boys have passed the test success-
fully. It is my sincere hope that every boy in this audience today
will remember this fact. I earnestly hope, also, that you will face the
future with the determination to be even more successful than the
thousands of boys who, over the past 40 years, have left this campus
and have enriched their community, your State and your nation as
successful citizens in the business world, in industry and in the military
and professional fields. Once again, my sincere thanks for inviting
me here. I wish all of you good health, prosperity and happiness in
the future.

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