--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 31 number: 10 published: 1928-08 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "*Improvement Era* 31, no. 10 (August 1928). Salt Lake City: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, August 1928." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera31010unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera31010unse curator_note: Internet Archive issue scan; advertising and unpaginated plates omitted. rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1928-08) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera31010unse publication_year: 1928 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1928, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Improvement Era, August 1928 Improvement Era Vol. XXXI AUGUST, 1928 No. 10 When Fathers and Sons are Comrades By a Grandfather of Today FATHERS, can you work, play, study, camp out, with your boys? When father and son work together, play together, study the same subjects, fish, hunt, hike, and camp out to- gether, then it follows, as experience has shown, that: I. The Father's Ideas of Punishment Change. There is at least one feature in scout work and in what is taught in Bee-Hive work, boyology, and similar courses, that must appeal to all believers in the essential soundness of human nature. This work tends to prove that boys who go wrong are simply the unadjusted boys. Our failure to hold or to reclaim these errant wanderers means only, in the light of scientific investigations of the tendencies of the teens, not that the boy is sinful, but that we do not know what to do with him. Studies of adolescents show that punishment, if it is to serve any purpose at all, must be directed against the cause of undesirable acts, not against the boy who com- mits them, scarcely knowing what he does. It is now an accepted maxim among students of boy life that perhaps the best, if not the only way that is sure to correct faults, is by processes of training and practice, to replace bad habits with good habits. Retributive justice, as the due penalty for wrong- doing, is found in the large majority of cases to be a mere mistake that should not enter at all into the matter of dealing with youth. Experimental studies have given to investigators a new esti- mate of the harm that is done by any sort of punishment that the child considers unjust; and that, it has been ascertained, includes the great bulk of any sort of penalties and practically all punish- ment of children below eight or nine years of age. II. Fathers Get Refreshing Views of the Gospel of Work. Companionship with his sons in their enterprises as distin-