rican public life;
and, perhaps chief of all, the very elaborate provision for every child
with the implication that he does the school a favor to use what is
provided rather than the imposition of an obligation upon him both to
help in securing the efficiency and beauty of the school and to
discharge his just debt to society in the measure of his ability as boy
and man.

Another productive cause of poor citizenship is the general contempt in
which immigrants are held, and especially the treatment accorded them by
the police and by most of the minor officials with whom they come in
contact. This primitive disdain of "barbarians" is common among the
school children and tends to make the foreign children more delinquent
and anti-social than they would otherwise be. A very recent case sums up
the situation. A gang of five Polish boys "beat up" a messenger boy,
apparently without provocation. A Juvenile Protective officer visited
the home of one of these young thugs for the purpose of talking with the
mother and getting such information as would aid in keeping the boy from
getting into further trouble.

The mother was found to be a very intelligent woman and explained to
the officer that her boy had been constantly angered and practically
spoiled at school; that it had been ground into him that he was nothing
but a "Polack," and that no good thing was to be expected of him. The
school boys had taken a hand in his education; and by reflecting in
their own merciless way the uncharitable judgment of their elders had
helped to produce this young pariah.

If one will but travel on the street cars in the crowded districts of
our great cities and note the churlish discourtesy and sarcastic
contempt with which "the foreigners" are generally treated, or will take
the pains to ascertain how cruelly they are deceived and fleeced at
almost every turn, one will soon conclude that we are making it very
hard for these people and their children to become grateful and ardent
citizens of the republic.

Looking to the improvement of this condition, while vocational training
promises something by way of an economic basis for good citizenship, too
much must not be expected of it alone. For if vocational efficiency be
created and released in an environment devoid of civic idealism it will
never pass beyond the grub stage. It will merely fatten a low order of
life, and this at the expense of much that would otherwise lend verdure
and freshne