the House's attempt to police itself, the New York State Assembly conducted an investigation in 1884. The legislators found that the institution was a "half prison" paired with a "money-making" operation that preyed on a population of children whose sole "crimes" were often nothing but homelessness or insolence. Five hundred boys as young as eight, who were allegedly being taught skills to "reform" them, were forced to spend most of their days as contract laborers, making shoes and garments for local businesses. After attending perfunctory night "classes," the children were caged in "exceedingly repulsive" cells that lacked toilets, were bathed once a week in two tubs shared by all other boys, and were subject to "excessive," "frequent," and "cruel" punishments that included beatings, forced starvation, solitary confinement, and transfers to adult prisons. The Assembly concluded that the House, which was instilling "evil" and "corruption" into the children it housed, needed "radical" change. The major recommendation was to transform the institution into a vocational school. Reform In the wake of the scandal, the state and local leaders worked to drastically overhaul the school and the juvenile detention system in New York as a whole. In the 1880's and 1890's, the state banned contract labor by juvenile inmates across the state, while the leaders of the House created a parole system, stopped accepting children who had not committed felonies, segregated children on the basis of age, and banned corporal punishment. The school was renamed as the "State Industrial School," with its focus shifting from profit-based contract labor to skills-based training in agricultural life and vocations like masonry. In the early 1900's, the school was relocated from Rochester's urban area to its rural surroundings in Rush, New York. (What replaced it would be one of the country's first state-run vocational schools, which is now known as Edison Technology & Career High School). On a 1400-acre site, the state built 20 cottages designed to house 25 children each. Inmates would complete schoolwork at their cottages before performing farm chores centering around a nearby barn. In the 1930's, the School added counseling services and an industrial arts building, though it remained a prison, where inmates regularly attempted to secure their freedom through escape. While priding themselves on a more "progressive" vision of incarceration, in the face of the labor shortages of World War II, the School's leaders returned to the old practice of hiring out