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"Let them have their own way."

"That's what you do, isn't it, Ford?"

"Yes, I never make trouble."

"How about your brother George?"

"Well George likes a fuss, but then George drinks."

Needless to say, Ford, like Beckie, fell completely under the suggestion test, but, unlike her, he quickly and accurately copied the diamond as well as the square, although he protested that he had never tried to draw anything in all his life.

Ford could not grasp an abstract idea nor hold two ideas together to compare or relate them; all this was particularly significant when taken in conjunction with his life. Kind-hearted and gentle by nature, as well as strictly honest, Ford's crimes had come about through lack of realizing the responsibility of his acts or relating them to one another. Although he proved himself the most atrocious liar, perjuring himself repeatedly, his lies were those of a frightened child and so easy to detect that no intelligent child of nine would have uttered them no matter how malicious he intended to be. Moreover, Ford's lies were usually about things that he could not fully understand, while he showed an equally childish veracity where it was question of simple things which an intelligent adult would keep to himself. His brother George, with about the same mentality, has distinct criminalistic impulses, which make of him a much more serious problem. Opportunity has so far been lacking to make an equally minute and precise examination of him.

The Problem of the Pines

In course of time Vineland Training School hopes to be able to conduct similar studies upon other adult Pineys, but with the material which we have in hand it is possible to point some things of vital importance; for example, the folly of giving to a man, whose mentality is that of a child of nine years, the right of franchise, thus permitting him to become the prey of men who will buy his vote. Imagine a man living thirty years in the world and not learning to know what month it is, and yet being given a voice in political affairs ! Also it is with no small surprise we discover that our laws, which were made to regulate the lives of normal people, do not touch the degenerate problem, for we find that a man cannot be legally punished for bigamy if his wives are of the same type and happen to have extra husbands themselves. Thus it becomes literally true that two wrongs make one right in our commonwealth!

In all the neighboring communities, one is told that conditions in the Pines are better today than they have been in the past. New roads are opening up the country, while delightful winter resorts here and there are giving employment to many and are bringing the Piney in touch with those who do not take his manner of living as a simple matter of course, while the development of the cranberry and chicken industries offer a means of livelihood to those who are willing to work, at the same time that an improved school system, pushed forward by trained workers, is offering the advantages of education to those capable of receiving it. To all this, it may be said that this apparent improvement scarcely touches the real problem at all, for the Piney is known to penetrate deeper into the woods as civilizing influences approach. It is more than a question whether or not he is capable of receiving sufficient education to make of him a desirable citizen, while the lowered moral tone which his presence ensures is a perpetually undermining influence to the work of the schools. Only recently, a prominent lawyer dragged a relative of his by main force out of a cabin in the Pines where he had been living for a few weeks or months perhaps, with a Piney girl, himself drunk most of the time. The lawyer in question, who is in a position to know, asserts that such things are common. It is this phase of the subject, far more than the actual personal problem of the Piney himself, that demands attention. What is true of the Pines is true, with local variations, of all outlying districts, and is also true of certain portions of the slums of our great cities.

Certainly the time has come for us as an enlightened community to set about clearing up these "backdoors of our civilization" and so to save from the worst form of contagion what remains of moral health in our rising generation.