and for the most part is a product of the city.

All crime is doubtless much more common in the city than the country,
and the young criminal especially is a product of the crowded community.
To those who look for natural causes for all phenomena the reason is not
far to seek. The city itself is an abnormal thing. Primitive man and his
ancestors were never huddled together in great multitudes, as are the
dwellers in cities today. To a degree almost all animals are gregarious,
but the units of organization are much smaller with them than with man,
excepting possibly in the case of the ant and the bee, insects which
seem specially adapted to live a highly automatic and cooperative life,
such as human beings cannot possibly reach. But primitive men and their
direct ancestors lived in small groups. They could not have preserved
their life in any other way. They lived by fishing and hunting and by
gathering roots, berries and herbs. Later they tended their flocks and
cultivated the fields in a simple way.

With the introduction of the modern machine, the factory system and the
railroads, in the last century, our great modern cities were evolved. As
they grew more complicated, new problems arose. The life of the crowded
city is most difficult even for normal men and women. The adjustments
are too numerous and too complex for an animal made with simple tastes
and for a pastoral life. But, if it is hard for men, it is almost
hopeless for children, especially the children of the poor who fill our
prisons, asylums and almshouses.

Every child needs the open air and the open life of the country. He
needs, first of all, exercise which should be in the form of outdoor
play. No healthy boy wants to live indoors, even though his home may be
a convenient city "flat." The woods, the fields, the streams, the lakes,
the wide common with plenty of room, have always made their natural
appeal to the young. And as sunlight kills most of the deadly germs, so
outdoor life with exercise and play takes care of most of the unhealthy
thoughts, habits and ideas of child-life. In the past, our schools both
in the city and country have done little to help the young. For the most
part healthy children have always looked on them more or less as
prisons. Here they have been confined and kept from exercise and play,
to study useless and unrelated facts and to commit to memory dry rules
which are forgotten as soon as their minds are ready to retain anythi