e. There are needed, also, devices of education and of
compulsory social service and social obedience which may tend to give
society a fair deal from every adult.

Prodigal sons and daughters, therefore, who are abnormal, weak,
morally invalid, must be cared for in the way easiest and best for the
social whole. Parents must help and not hinder in that task.

Prodigal sons and daughters who are normal save for some accidental
divergence from legal or actual right-doing must be helped to come
back into the line of social usefulness. And, above all, the facts of
juvenile delinquency should give us impetus, strong and intelligent,
toward a social and family discipline that shall make freedom and
happiness of childhood a way to social order and never a pathway
toward social degeneracy or personal wrong-doing.

QUESTIONS ON PRODIGAL SONS AND DAUGHTERS

1. What has been the general trend of social ideal and practice
in the treatment of the criminal and the vicious?

2. What part has the family played in restraint of evil tendency
or in responsibility before the law for offences against social
order?

3. What part should the family now play in these vital social
matters?

4. What is "sentimentality" and what is "justice" in dealing with
the prodigal?

5. What can be done through physical and mental examinations, by
experts, of all children, to prevent development of
criminality, vice, and waywardness?

6. In 1724 the English law held any one legally responsible for
action subversive of law and order unless he was "totally
deprived of his understanding and memory and doth not know what
he is doing, no more than an infant, than a brute or a wild
beast." Since 1843, the criterion of responsibility under the
law is "knowledge of what is right or wrong in the particular
case." Following the same line of change, our statutes now ask,
in addition, if the person on trial is generally competent to
understand and to obey social rules of conduct. Is this trend
toward the lessening or toward the increase of crime and vice?

7. What does social well-being require shall be done for and with
those proved incapable of social habits?

8. Head "The Socially Inadequate; How Shall We Designate and Sort
Them?" by Harry H. Laughlin, Carnegie Institution, Cold Spring
Harbor, Long Island, in _American Journal of Sociology_, Ju