Frederick Donaghey to Louise de Koven Bowen, April 22, 1911

Mrs. Joseph T. Bowen,
President of the Juvenile Protective Association,
1430 Astor Street,
Chicago.

My dear Mrs. Bowen:-

I expect that there will be a meeting Tuesday next on the Senate Substitute Bill 233 before the Judiciary Committee of the Lower House. I am sending this note to you in the barely-possible event that you might not otherwise know that we are endeavoring to get a hearing on that day.

I suppose it is vain again to express a wish that you and your associates would come together with us on a conference on the bill in its present form. There is not a man or woman working for this legislation who is not in perfect confidence <[consonance?]> with you and your associates in their outlook on the question of juvenile protection; and we are, and have been from the beginning, willing and eager to make the bill suit your most rigid views short of actual prohibition in the premises. The bill is absolutely clean, decent, and right; it seems incredible to me that there can be any opposition to it whatever on the part of anybody unless that opposition be born in distrust of our ability and intent to live up to its most minute provision.

Again, there is ample precedent for legislation that has been put upon the statutes of various Commonwealths as an experiment. I mean by this, that it is easily possible, at the end of [page 2] one year of trial, to replace <repeal> the bill in the event of our not making good under its operation.

With best wishes, as always,