rk, the County Courts for children, in which the
limitations of local sentiment and neighborhood reluctance to testify
of family conditions are surmounted and yet the near-at-hand interest
in the children is preserved.

All modern philanthropy tends toward dealing with wayward boys and
girls as those who need and should have not punishment but education,
necessary but kindly restraint, protection from bad surroundings and
training toward self-support. To this we are adding Domestic Relations
Courts dealing with juvenile delinquents not, as some one has said,
"so as to punish parents for the wrong-doing of their children," but
rather as indicating the recognition of the fact that one member of
the family cannot be "saved" without an effort to save all the other
members, and that in the family relationship there are permanent bonds
that courts should recognize and seek to enforce and make more helpful
to every individual concerned.

=Domestic Relations Courts.=--When the history of cases coming before
either Children's Courts or Domestic Relations Courts is studied,
certain facts of social condition stand out prominently as causes for
juvenile delinquency. First of all, the broken family, one in which
there has been separation of father and mother, is a cause of
child-neglect and consequent wrong-doing. The death of either parent,
also, is often the cause of such unhappiness or privation in the home
as to induce disobedience to law and bring the child before a court.
The lack of employment by the father or his too low wages, which
reduces the family income dangerously and makes the mother attempt to
be both breadwinner and care-taker of the home, and hence lessens
family comfort and sends the children on the streets for amusement, is
also a cause often appearing as a reason for delinquency. The evils of
housing congestion, too many families living in one building or in one
neighborhood without chance for privacy, choice of companionship or
household arrangements conservative of domestic virtue or happiness,
these evils constitute a heavy indictment of society in the returns of
Children's Courts. The complex problems which the immigrant faces,
with his children early learning the language of the country to which
he has come, while it is to him a sealed book, are responsible for
much juvenile delinquency. Jacob Riis has told us, in compelling
description, the story of the evolution of the "gang" and of the
"tough" from th