s were arrested
charged with crimes ranging from vagrancy to murder and that the majority
of these boys and girls were not normal children, but degenerates who
required medical rather than penal treatment. 'Boys and girls,' says he,
'should not receive correction in the city jails, the work house or
reformatories. These should be the last resort. To correct a boy you must
have an idea of his mental processes. It is natural that the parents
understand something of the child and use that knowledge to make a good boy
out of him. Certainly it cannot be done in the reformatories, for although
the authorities there are competent, they are hardly medical psychologists.
In my opinion, if any progress is to be made it is the parent and the
doctor that must do the work, not the police and the courts.'

"That our Chief of Police deserves credit for not only publishing this
report, but also for the advanced position he takes in recognizing the
appropriate care and treatment of the juvenile offender, is certain, [43]
for he understands the fact that the parents are often the chief culprits
in the child's delinquency and that medical rather than penal treatment is
more often indicated than is at present allowed or practiced.

"When we come to inquire into the cause of feeble-mindedness, alcoholic
heredity, syphilitic heredity, and consanguineous marriages are found to be
the chief etiological factors. Bourneville claims that 48 per cent. of the
idiots and imbeciles are the offspring of alcoholic parents.... Acute and
chronic diseases in the parents, fright, shock, injuries, parental neglect,
faulty education, poverty, malnutrition, social dissipation and lack of
proper control are all well-known factors in the production of
feeble-mindedness.

"Segregation of the feeble-minded is advocated by medical authority the
world over, and when this is done they can be made under appropriate
medico-pedagogic treatment to become largely self-supporting.

"As an economical as well as a humane measure, the various States can well
afford to make such provision, more especially for the large body of
feeble-minded who are now without any medical care whatever. Moreover,
where it is possible, laws prohibiting the marriage of such as well as all
other defectives should be passed and enforced."

WHAT THE CARE OF THE INSANE COSTS.--The total cost of the care of the
insane, in this country, has been estimated to be $165,000,000 a year. In
estimatin