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Today morons; yesterday colonial outcasts, "disowned" Friends, land pirates, Hessians, Tory refugees, revelers from Joseph Bonaparte's court at Bordentown, and other sowers of wild oats

Elizabeth S. Kite
Of the training school at Vineland, New Jersey

Between the coastal plane and the fertile land east of the Delaware River lies 2,000 square miles of almost pure sand. Beginning in Monmouth County it extends southwest through Burlington, Ocean and Atlantic Counties. It was originally covered with a splendid growth of pines, interspersed with iron-producing bog lands. This primeval wealth of New Jersey was long ago exploited, and there was left only a scrubby growth that but slowly replaces the timber of the past, while modern science is turning the low hollows into marvelously productive cranberry bogs.

In the heart of this region scattered in widely separated huts over miles of territory exists today a group of human beings so distinct in morals and manners as to excite curiosity and wonder in the mind of any outsider brought into contact with them. They are known as the "Pineys" or "Pine Rats" and are recognized as a distinct people by the normal communities living on the borders of their forests, although their manner of living arouses neither surprise nor interest, having always been taken quite as a matter of course. In fact the problem is a mixed one, intertwining and extending itself inward and outward from the country to the pines, from the pines to the country so that more than one old family is found to have in some of its branches an infusion of Piney blood. It is this fact which makes the problem not only complex but one of extreme delicacy, and gives it in a way the protection of its surroundings.

Not a few of our "Pine Rat" friends for instance can be traced back directly to where they branch from excellent families, often of sturdy English stock. Others take their rise from religious communities of the North, while a great many are there without any explanation of their existence, their ancestral line soon disappearing in the mists of the past.

The general opinion current regarding the Piney and his class, has been that he is what he is from environment, that surrounded with other conditions and "given a chance" he would come out "all right." That he is a "problem," that his presence tends to lower standards of living among the normal people who come in contact with him, is a universally recognized fact, but until recently it has been confidently hoped that through education and the opening up of the Pines, he would eventually become a normal citizen. Whether or not he is a being capable of such development or whether he has permanently fallen below that possibility, it is not the object of this paper to discuss. Nothing has been determined beyond what he is today and that he resembles several generations of ancestors.

Meager but suggestive have been the results of research into history to find the origins of this degenerate group. Very faint are the traces which the Swedes, the original founders of New Jersey, left behind them. It was the English, and English of sturdy dissenting stock, mostly refugees from neighboring provinces, who with an admixture of French Huguenot exiles, peopled New Jersey. Desire for personal liberty was the dominating note of all the settlements that took root in her soil. Foremost among the sects who sought homes in the newly opened territory were the persecuted followers of George Fox, whose democratic principles, deeply imbued with religious ideals were so firmly rooted in all that makes for order and civic righteousness as to admirably fit them for expansion in the new world. They were men indeed who had shown themselves willing to die for their principles of equality -- but who greatly preferred to live in the cultivation and enjoyment of the peaceful arts of life. For this New Jersey alone of the colonies offered them an alluring outlook. Under the patronage of William Penn, the Society in West New Jersey began a career of democratic expansion that has no parallel in the annals of any other country.

Outcasts of Religion

But there is another side to the picture. In the organization of the Society of Friends, there is but one method of dealing with the persistent sinner. When a member proves incorrigible or when he commits some flagrant misdeed he is dismissed from their ranks. In this way they unconsciously throw upon society at large the responsibility of caring for what they themselves had failed to control.

Particularly in the beginning of its career of material prosperity the society was severe and summary in its dealings with offenders. The early annals of all communities of Friends testify to this fact. In the province of New Jersey, it is certain that "disowned" youths, cast out by the society did in some cases betake themselves to the loose lives of the dwellers of the Pines.

Outcasts from other religious communities also found shelter there, driven by the laws in force during the early period in east New Jersey. In this province thirteen offences were punishable by death -- among them theft, if incorrigible; burglary; rape, subject to the discretion of the court; gross and unnatural licentiousness. For the vice of un-chastity, there was imposed a fine of three or five months' imprisonment or ten stripes at the public whipping post if the fine was not paid. A marriage to be legal must be published three times, and must have the consent of the parents, masters or guardians. These laws were intended to uphold the high standard of social order by eliminating the persistent sinner by death, thus ridding not only their own, but all communities of the evil. The vicinity of the Pines, however, offered possibilities of escape with which even these stern laws could not cope.

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The first historical mention of these outcasts is to be found in the quaint history of New Jersey by Samuel Smith, published in 1720. Speaking of the white and red cedar, he says "the towering retreat of the former have afforded many an asylum for David's men of necessity" -- here alluding to First Samuel 22:2, where is recorded "And every one in distress, and every one in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto David."

But during the two centuries that have elapsed since Samuel Smith wrote his history, the Pines of New Jersey have had other settlers besides these "men of necessity." In course of time, this valuable timber land was bought up by speculators; first the cedars and later the pines were cut off and shipped from the convenient harbors along the coast. Before the revolution, it had been discovered that the bogs were rich in iron ore, so that a considerable number of furnaces were established at Batsto, Weymouth, Hanover, etc., whose output became the chief native source of the iron supply. Many of the cannons used during the revolution were cast at these furnaces as well as the pots and pans of our ancestors.

Meanwhile the settlers along the river and coast were rapidly developing the agricultural resources of the country and though they had been joined by non-conformists of various sects, the Friends continued to dominate most of the settlements of West New Jersey. As time went on and the great ideas of independence were being developed, the rules of the society in regard to war prevented them from taking active part in the revolution, although many of them were at heart sealed to their adopted country's cause. Their uncompromising attitude in this regard, however, made them seem as a body, to favor the Tory side, and many of them suffered at the hands of their warlike fellow countrymen, imprisonment, exile, and hardship of every sort.

True, there were notable exceptions to the rule that Friends would not fight. Many a noble youth broke the cherished tie of family and faith and went out a double martyr to his country's call, but such were invariably "dealt with" and where they persisted in their determination, were disowned by the society, which then made a formal protest against this breaking down of their "testimony." Through their stern adherence to peace principles, the Quakers in west New Jersey at the beginning of the revolution, became all unwittingly a kind of protecting bulwark, behind which the most atrocious outlawry was carried on in the Pines. With the coming of Lord Howe to Staten Island in 1776, a partly successful attempt was made to form in New Jersey a military organization of native Tories. Tory troops of between five and six hundred men kept up a kind of guerrilla warfare from the edge of the Pines, spreading havoc and destruction among the neighboring farms.

F. B. Lee, in his history of New Jersey, says: "Associated with these regiments, possessing a semblance of military organization, real or assumed, was a disjointed band of land pirates, known as "Pine robbers." Aided and abetted by the loyalists in New York city whose most active spirit was William Franklin, the deposed governor of New Jersey, these "Pine robbers," among whom were many refugees, raided the tide regions of Monmouth, Ocean, Atlantic, Salem, Gloucester, Camden and Burlington Counties, their depredations being yet vividly remembered in local tradition. These "Pine robbers," most of whom were Jersey men hiding by day in the recesses of the Pines or amid the dunes of the seashore, were said to be men of utter depravity whose "lawlessness, cruelty and lust made them a terror to the entire country." The worst of them were subsequently hunted down and killed, the bodies of some being hung as a warning in conspicuous places.

Hessians and Tones

After the battle of Trenton, certain Hessian soldiers and other deserters from the British army found safety in the seclusion of the Pines, and added still another element to its already mixed population.

After the war was over those Tory families who remained in the state were frowned upon with such uncompromising severity as obliged them to take to the woods for self-protection where, despoiled of their possessions and hardened by the passions which war engendered, they fell quickly into the ways of the other outlaws. Thus political animosity added its uncompromising bitterness to the stern disapproval with which the strictly moral, highly intelligent, virtuous and prosperous Quaker population regarded their neighbors of the Pines. The gulf which separated them became impassable except by illicit means.

Today direct descendants of the finest Quaker stock, living still on the edges of the Pines and who have sought to preserve its folk lore, affirm that many of the Piney names belonged to one time prosperous Tory stock. Some of them found legitimate employment in established industries, for the period after the war saw a great increase in the exploitation of the native wealth of the region. New sawmills were set up; charcoal burners were kept busy over the length and breadth of the Pines, while the iron industry took on a new lease of life.

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To carry on these enterprises, skilled workmen, as well as laborers were imported. Record and tradition show that from one to two hundred men or even twice that number were employed at the different centers. Some of the landowners, as at Weymouth, built for their men convenient dwellings, grouping them into a village, with a church, store and school house. Others again allowed them to live in more or less crude huts or employed the people living in isolated cabins throughout the Pines. Generally a mansion house stood on a rise of ground overlooking the furnace or saw mill and here the owner lived with his family for a whole or part of the year. Traces of the ancient colonial elegance of these mansion houses can be seen today in the ruins scattered here and there.

Charming Weymouth, sleeping like a lizard in the sun, is the best preserved of these, but the rushing torrent of the great Egg Harbor river where it sweeps its black current madly over the dam amid the ruins of huge walls of solid masonry is all of Weymouth that today shows any signs of life. During the last half century, all these earlier industries of the Pines have been steadily on the decline, for the forests once cut down, renewed themselves slowly, while the cost of transportation over the sandy roads together with the lessening supply of bog ore made competition with the developing iron industry of Pennsylvania impossible.

A Yankee and the Cranberry Bogs

It was the Yankee agent of one of the owners of the furnace at Hanover who in 1850, as tradition has it, first conceived the idea of improving the wild cranberry through cultivation. Up to this time, the fruit had been gathered and sold much as the huckleberry is at present. As an old wood-chopper of the district put it: "Used to be, cranberries was everybody's -- you could go or I could go or anybody." To keep this "anybody," namely the Piney of Brown Mills, from trespassing on the bog adjoining the Hanover Furnace, this shrewd Yankee, while making his first experiments, put up warning signs bidding the natives keep off, which signs they very naturally ignored, since none were able to read. Not discouraged by this failure, the pioneer in cranberry growing hit upon the ghastly expedient of killing a cat, smearing an old coat with its blood and leaving the latter along with scattered fragments of the cat's brain on the path that led from the wilderness to the bog. A terrible time ensued, for it was soon noised about that a man had been murdered. Although they could not find that any one was missing, the Pineys were terribly frightened and thereafter gave the experimenter and his bog a wide margin. From that day to this, there has been a steady development of the cranberry industry which today ranks as one of the most lucrative of the state and forms the chief outlook for speculators of the pines as well as for the inhabitants who have any desire or ability to work.

But the real Piney has no inclination to labor, submitting to every privation in order to avoid it. Lazy, lustful and cunning, he is a degenerate creature who has learned to provide for himself the bare necessities of life without entering into life's stimulating struggle. Like the degenerate relative of the crab that ages ago gave up a free roving life and, gluing its head to a rock, built a wall of defence around itself, spending the rest of its life kicking food into its mouth and enjoying the functionings of reproduction, the Piney and all the rest of his type have become barnacles upon our civilization, all the higher functions of whose manhood have been atrophied through disuse. This comparison, however, serves only as an illustration and must not be carried too far, for into the degenerate human problem enters an element which has no force, where it is a question of mere physical degeneracy. It is this moral element which entering in makes the human degenerate such a profound menace to social order as to demand the careful consideration of those interested in the preservation of the high standards of our commonwealth.

From the beginning of the existence of the Piney type, and especially with the development of industry and prosperity in the Pines, there have been men of leisure, young men of good families, foot-loose men of no character, adventurers of every sort, who for shorter or longer periods have delighted in losing themselves in the pleasures of the Pines. There has always been hunting and fishing, the wine of the air, the tonic of the pine breath, and always the unhindered possibilities of sensual enjoyment. Not every one who has come under the fascination of the Pines has succumbed to its illicit pleasures. Far from it, as such a book as Van Dyke's Days Off abundantly testifies. But the way is open to those who seek it and many indeed are they that have succumbed as well as they who have deliberately gone for that purpose. In the gay days when Prince Joseph Bonaparte held his miniature court at Bordentown, many were the revels and hunting parties in the Pines which were indulged in by the members of his suite. All these revelers came back, leaving a train of nameless offspring to complicate still further the mixed social problem of the Pines, so that today, in tracing the ancestry of any particular group, one runs up continually against the impossibility of proving exact ancestry.

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Immigrants, the Latest Comers

No study of the component forces of the Pines would be complete without mention being made of the thriving Jew colonies established at different points, and of the Italian communities. A superficial observer has often been lead to believe that there is much similarity between these people and the native denizens of the Pines, but no one who knew them intimately could ever be so deceived. Whatever resemblance there is, is indeed superficial, such as: large families, often unsanitary and crowded conditions of living, small and incommodious dwellings; but beneath the surface we find on one hand, loose disjointed living, with attendant lack of intelligence, absence of ambition, dearth of ideals of every sort; on the other, solid, compact organized existence; the father head of his home, protecting his wife and daughters, teaching the same attitude to his sons; both parents training their offspring to thrift and industry.

Naturally there are exceptions to this rule, and it is most certainly true, especially in our large cities, that the foreign population tends to lose its characterizing virtues and assume our vices much more quickly than the reverse, leading thus to another problem -- not the problem of mental deficiency, but one which though of immense significance to the future of our country scarcely enters into the rural question at all.

To illustrate: one rather exceptional case in the Pines, yet characteristic, is that of "Italian Mike" who eighteen years ago left work in a railroad gang and, burdened by a debt of $40.00 incurred through illness, took up on credit twenty-five acres of woodland in the heart of the Pines and near a small community of typical, thriftless Pineys. Aided only by his faithful wife, "Mike" built a small shack and set to work clearing his land. What he could not sell as timber or cut up into cordwood he converted into charcoal. As soon as he had sufficient land cleared, he set out two thousand strawberry plants. In this small way he began, and during the years which followed he has had the usual round of discouragements, droughts, insect pests, etc., and yet today, besides a considerable bank account and credit good anywhere in the country, he is owner of more than a hundred acres of land, has a comfortable frame house, a large vineyard which is used exclusively for wine which he himself makes for home consumption, to say nothing of a family of eleven fresh, clear-eyed, attractive children who have helped him piece together his competence. In one year he cleared $2,600 on his small fruits which he himself takes to a city thirty-two miles away; his habit being to leave home about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, reaching his destination at 2 o'clock in the morning, his fruit then in perfect condition to command the best price in the market. The next day his oldest son leaves at the same hour and meets his father half way on the road, where they exchange teams, and the next day's market is made in the same way as the preceding one. "Mike" has never had the advantage of schooling for himself nor of much for his children, owing to the lamentable state of affairs in this regard in his section of the Pines, but his alert mind has had time amidst the stress of his active life to acquire the essentials of the three "R's" so that he is by no means an illiterate man.

In striking contrast to "Mike" is a family living on the same road, under the same natural environment, not a quarter of a mile away. Here too, is a family of eleven children, but they live in a ramshackle house for which they pay no rent and the father and mother gain a living by gathering moss in winter and berries in summer. The oldest boy is in the reformatory at Jamesburg, and the oldest daughter, having been committed to the State Home for Girls, had later been put out on probation in a good family. Here she got into trouble with a butcher boy and finally came back to her home a greater problem than she was when she went away.

Questioned as to his neighbors' habits of life, "Mike" showed neither surprise nor interest in what was asked him. Frankly he knew nothing about them at all, and in a few moments his mind came naturally back to home topics which absorb his entire interest. Truly the most convincing proof of a strong progressive mentality.

Down a Sandy Road on the Edge of the Pine Belt

My first introduction to the remarkable community which is the product of outlaw ancestry came one day by way of a sandy road on the edge of the Pine belt. I stopped at a little store to inquire about a certain Harry Reed who was a distant connection of one of the inmates of the Vineland Training School.

"I stopped at Harry's house on my way here," I said, leaning over the counter, "but he wasn't at home. His wife told me that Harry worked for you."

"Yes, Harry does work for me, but that wasn't his wife you saw," said the store-keeper half laughing, half sneering. "Harry has a wife, but she's left him and is living with a man down near Milltown -- Bertha there, the woman you saw, just lives with Harry."

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"But what about the child I saw?"

"Yes, that's Bertha and Harry's child all right, but they can't get married because Bertha has a husband living. You see," he went on, glad of an attentive listener, "these people in the Pines have ways of their own and I suppose they seem strange to an outsider."

"Are these the 'Pineys' or 'Pine Rats' one hears so much about?"

"Exactly. Some of the better among them dislike the name but most of them do not care. That Bertha you just saw is a case I can tell you; before she went to live with Harry she lived with Bill Forman over at Gull's Point."

"Bill Forman? Why, he is the uncle of one of our Vineland girls! Do tell me, where is Bill now?"

"State's prison. They got into a fight and Bertha had him locked up. Bill has a wife and children living somewhere -- down at Gooseneck, I believe."

Family Tree of a "Piney"

"Who is this Bertha anyway," I asked for I had a consuming interest in genealogy.

"Why, her mother was 'Caddie,' 'Caddie Dink' they call her, and her father, but that would be rather hard to tell. Caddie married when she was a young girl an old man 'Stumpy Joe,' who had a lot of boys. Caddie ran with all of them; the old man finally hung himself in the woods -- they say, because he couldn't stop her -- some say that Caddie and 'Snapper Bill,' another fellow she used to run with, did it -- anyway he was found dead, hanging there. Simple old fellow, he hardly had enough sense to hang himself. All Caddie's children are like her, unless it is the youngest May -- she's a pretty little girl that something might come of if she only had a chance."

"Has Caddie many children?"

"Nine or ten. 'Joe boy,' Stumpy's son, is the father of some of them. He stays home with them and when Caddie isn't running with somebody else she comes back to them. He's too lazy to work and when she's away the county has to keep them. Bertha is the oldest child. When she was only sixteen her mother made her marry old Jim Bently who was sixty-eight. Jim had had three wives and eleven children by the last wife -- but that didn't stop her running off with Dan Zahmey who left a wife and six children. Bertha and Jim didn't get on, as might have been expected, so they went back to old Squire King who married them, and got a writing of separation. Of course, it isn't legal but they think it is. To come back to Harry that you first asked me about, he's a pretty good fellow to work; he doesn't drink, and what's more, he always pays for what he gets at the store, a matter of seven or eight dollars a week."

The calm tone of acceptance with which these facts were related, astonished me almost as much as the facts themselves. It was soon apparent that they were but an index to the situation in the whole community.

The Manner of the People

Caddie Dink was somewhat exceptional owing to her abounding vitality, but the standards of living were much the same for all. Caddie's youngest sister was married to "Sammy boy" another son of Stumpy. They lived in a shack in the woods on the edge of a cranberry bog and there were five feeble-minded children whose paternal parentage was very uncertain. "Sammy boy" like "Joe boy" was too lazy to work and what his wife did not earn she begged. There were rumors that his shack was a rendezvous for the men and that Sammy drew quite an income from their visits. Suse, his wife, was an energetic, sharp-tongued, shrill-voiced woman, with black hair, sparkling black eyes, finely shaped oval face, and dark gypsy coloring. The freedom of her life gave strength and vigor to her limbs and a rosy coloring to her cheeks. In the woods, on a cold day, with a bit of shawl wrapped about her, the fragment of a scarf on her head, a sack half full of potatoes over her shoulder, she was a wild, almost graceful creature that seemed the genius of the place. Only when togged out in the forlorn cast-offs of civilization could one see how coarse and vulgar she was. One day Suse came into the kitchen of a farm house to warm herself and was left there a minute alone. A few days later she came back and asked to see the mistress of the house.

"I brought back this ladle," she said, drawing something from under her coat. "My conscience wouldn't let me keep it, and I thought," she went on, "perhaps if ye had an old hat you'd give it to me, cause I ain't got nothin' to wear on me head."

The astonished mistress recognized a valued family heirloom in the large silver spoon which Suse held out. The indulgent woman not only readily forgave Suse but gave her the hat besides.

There were several other sisters of Caddie and Suse who were of similar intelligence; one of these was taken into a good family. These people for over ten years labored to make of her a self-directing, virtuous, and respectable young woman. They were finally forced to admit that their efforts had been fruitless, and to let her go her own way. Then there was an imbecile sister who had always been cared for in the county insane asylum, and an imbecile brother who had been sent to the Vineland Training School in the early days. He was a strong and uncontrollable creature who could not be detained in the institution owing to a peculiar violence of disposition, nor were the bars and bolts of the county asylum capable of keeping him safe inside, so for self-protection the community was forced to get him committed to state's prison. After serving his term he was liberated and soon after was killed while walking on the railroad.

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Just one out of this notorious family turned out to be a virtuous, self-respecting woman with ideas of loyalty surprising in a person of her mentality. "Old Iz," her simple-minded, kind-hearted, sensual old man, was indeed a trial to her, but she bore up bravely before the world. She raised eleven children in a little two-room shack that stood on the edge of the woods. She was fond of her brood as a mother might be, though she never bothered much with such small matters as shoes and stockings, brushing the hair, and washing the hands and faces of her offspring. She kept herself fairly clean, for she had been brought up in a respectable family, but "with an old man like hers," and having to go out three days a week to work, her eleven children added too much to the already heavy burden. She was far too wise a woman to bother about what she couldn't help, or to attempt to control the uncontrollable. That she would have preferred cleanliness and order had they been easy to attain was attested by a box in the corner in which were laid away in excellent condition a pile of patchwork quilts of her own making. Bed quilts were most satisfactory objects to Hannah Ann; they stayed where they were put and had no perverse habit of rolling in the dirt. Her mentality was equal to caring properly for them -- but alas, this was not the case when it was a question of her babies! She did, however, prepare for them food when she was home and at night there was a hole under the roof into which those might crawl who could not find room in the bed.

Moron Types

It would be easy enough to stamp both Hanna Ann and "Old Iz" as mentally deficient, yet there is about the latter in particular a shrewdness, an ability to take care of himself that is characteristic of his class and is very misleading. To give him a precise test would be impossible, and though it is easy to find his children in the schools and to test them along with other boys and girls of the same mental stamp, the result does not enlighten us as the test of an adult Piney would do, so we bided our time.

The opportunity finally came in a round-about way. Caddie Dink had a daughter Beckie, who had married a man named Ed who was much older than she. He had come over at cranberry time and Beckie and he had got to "carryin' on." The squire married the pair after Ed swore that he was not a married man. Of course, Ed had a wife and child living farther up in the Pines, but she didn't count since long ago she had gotten tired of Ed and gone off with another man. But the newly married pair did not live happily; it was only a few weeks after the second child was born that Beckie left him for good, taking the baby with her. Ed, left with the older boy, carried him over to his other woman who agreed to care for the child and he went back to his lonely shack. Soon after this he took a colored man in as lodger. The two got into a fight when drunk and Ed did him up in such shape that he got twelve years in the state prison for attempted murder.

Beckie in the meantime began running the roads and was soon a notorious character. She was finally arrested for criminal neglect of her child and sent to the county house, from which place, aided by a Piney woman who worked there, she ran away within a week of her commitment. Some time afterward she was located in a nearby city, brought back by the constable and sent to jail, thus giving ample opportunity to study and test her mentality.

Beckie is twenty-three; well-formed, robust, healthy looking and bearing no stigma of degeneracy, unless it be a rather flat head, low forehead, and protruding lower jaw. She is fairly clean in her personal habits, is conscious of the value of pretty clothes and likes to look well, also likes what she calls a good time. She can do all sorts of coarse work, and occasionally is willing, but left to herself her idea of housekeeping seems to consist in preparing some sort of food, clearing up the dishes, sweeping the dirt under the stove or just outside the door, after which she sits and rocks herself or walks the streets or the roads smiling at every one.

She can neither sew nor cut out the simplest garment, not even an apron. She has perhaps no stronger characteristic than that of indifference. Fond as she is of dress, when she has no decent clothes, which often happens, she does not mind, but seems to take it as a matter of course. So also with the love of freedom which belongs to her wild, untamed nature. When she was brought back by the constable, her attitude was that of perfect unconcern. I met her at the station.

"Well,. Beckie," I said, laughing and shaking a finger at her, "what do you suppose they will do with you now?"

"Send me to jail."

"Well, don't you care?"

"What's the use of caring?"

"Were you ever at school, Beckie?"

"Yes, but I didn't get no learnin'; been awful sorry since."

"Can't you read or write?"

"No."

"Why couldn't you learn?"

"Didn't seem as though there was anything in my head could take it."

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Beckie and the Binet Test

When given the precise mental tests it was found she had the mentality of a child of between eight and nine years. She knew the colors, days of the week, almost all the months and the date; she had an excellent memory, could give in immediate repetition seven figures, or sentences of fifteen words, where the thought was within her grasp. She could compare simple objects, as tell how snow and milk are alike, how glass and wood are different, but could define objects only in terms of use; for instance, when asked "What is a table?" She replied, "To eat on." "What is a chair?" "To sit on." "A mouse?" Silence; being unable to think of any use for a mouse she could say nothing. "A spoon?" "To-eat with." "A horse?" "To go out ridin' with." (Interesting! Beckie is used to being taken out riding).

Her judgments, when it was a question of something she could understand, were always good.

"What ought you to do when people give you good advice?"

"Sit down and take it."

"Take what, Beckie?"

"Why the good advice."

"How did you ever learn so much Beckie?"

Quickly -- "Oh, I know right from wrong, I knew that when I was fifteen, more'n I know now."

"You know but you forget, is that it ?"

"Yes, I forget."

"Tell me, Beckie, you people don't think of it as wrong to marry a man when he has another wife?"

"No, we don't think it wrong."

"Tell me, what ought you to do when the house is on fire?"

"Get out what you can."

"When you want to buy something you see at the store?"

"Do what's right and pay for it."

"When another contradicts you no matter what you say?"

"Tell him when you're right you're right," came from Beckie with so much unction that I asked laughing,

"Did Ed contradict you, Beckie?"

"Sure he did!" and her whole expression grew sullen and injured.

Beckie, however, reached the height of her capabilities in answering the following question:

"Why do you judge a person more by their acts than by their words?"

Beckie's experience came to her aid and she instantly caught the sense, and said bitterly: "Why his acts show what he is. You can't believe half he says."

Questions like the following conveyed no idea to her mind and she made no attempt at reply: "Why is it better to persevere in what one has begun, than to try something new?'

All her descriptions were extremely crude and unworthy of a child of seven.

"Look at this picture, Beckie, and tell me what you see."

After long pause there was no answer forthcoming.

"Oh, Beckie, you surely see something, tell me what it is!"

Explosively -- "All I see is that man a-shavin' the girl's head!"

"Well, that's just what I wanted you to see! Now, what else?"

After a pause, "Only that comb, an' them things," pointing to some bottles on a shelf.

A great stack of pictures was disposed of with the briefest description for each. It seemed an exertion that positively produced pain to hold her attention so long on a subject for which she had no interest. When shown a collection of human figures, in all of which some prominent anatomical feature was lacking, as arms, eye, nose, or mouth, Beckie could see nothing wrong. A Mulatto girl serving a term in jail, who was listening, was much annoyed at this and said with irritation, "Can't ye see that woman ain't got no mouth?" Beckie, still gazing at the picture, protested she could not see.

She was able to make correct change when given two ten-cent pieces in exchange for four imaginary oranges at four cents each. She could not, however, tell how much three two-cent and three one-cent stamps would cost when placed before her, and this not because she could not count, but because she lost her directing idea and forgot what she started to do -- a much more significant failure. She could only think of five words in three minutes, even when helped, nor could she understand a rhyme or make a sentence using a given word. She was able to copy a square but after several attempts to copy a diamond was obliged to give it up -- she simply could not bring the lines back to the starting point, although encouraged to the utmost.

In giving her the test Beckie was praised for everything she did well and even her failures were covered up by expressions of satisfaction no matter what the answer, or by hastening to give an easier question to which her reply would be correct. By this means she was all the time stimulated and was greatly pleased with herself.

"I ain't so stupid as you'd think," she said.

"Indeed you're not, Beckie" I answered with conviction, and left her supremely satisfied.

The Male of the Species

Another typical case is that of "Ford," a man thirty years old, whose face is still fresh and boyish. When first seen he was taken to be normal. His manners were pleasant and courteous, and, although in working clothes, there was something about him that suggested good blood. It was amazing that a fellow so decent looking should be planning to marry Beckie's youngest sister May, who was following rapidly in Beckie's footsteps. Subsequent acquaintance revealed surprising facts. Although Ford had sworn before a squire that he was a single man and had secured a license and subsequently married May, it was found that he had two other wives living at that date. For several months after this the young man was followed and his past life investigated, and the conviction began to grow that he was not normal, and therefore not responsible for the crimes he had committed. Finally, he was arrested for bigamy and the case was tried. The prosecution could not be continued, however, because in the meantime one wife had died and Ford's marriage with the second wife turned out to be illegal, since, though only eighteen years old when he married her, the wife had a legal husband living whom she had deserted.

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The prosecutor in dropping the case said: "Legally, Ford is not guilty, but morally he is, and I wish that I could punish him, for he deserves it."

"Would you punish a child of nine years?" I could not help asking "would you send a child of nine to state's prison?"

"Perhaps you are right, perhaps that is the way to look at it," the prosecutor answered.

In jail ample opportunity was afforded to study Ford at leisure. Although his mentality was proven to be on the whole little superior to Beckie's it was of a different type from hers. The chief difference, however, seemed to be in their characters. Instead of indifference at his fate Ford showed a profound interest in what was in store for him.

"Do you think they can punish me?" he kept repeating with pitiful insistance. "I know I done wrong and I'm not sayin' this 'cause I'm in here, but when I get out I'm going to lead a different life. I'm going to join church and me and May's going to live like man an' wife ought to."

There was no possibility of questioning the sincerity of his intentions. But Ford, like all mentally defective persons, and like all children, is open to suggestion and unconsciously takes on the attitude of those with whom he is conversing. For the moment their attitude is his, and without any though of insincerity, he is capable of changing completely round in an incredibly short space of time. What he lacks is the power to hold a directing idea, which would enable him to follow any chosen course of action; nor has he any conception of right conduct beyond what the impulse or desire of the moment may inspire.

Anxious to draw out his ethical ideas I took occasion to question him about the conduct of some of his friends. His brother George, for instance, has been in three different state's prisons and married a girl with several other husbands who was also a state's prison case. She happens to be a microcephalic, low grade moron whose strikingly small head obtained for her the distinction of having her photograph placed in the rogues gallery of her state. Last winter one of her husbands traded her off to another man who tried to set a license to marry her. Knowing that Ford had been privy to the transaction I questioned him in the following manner:

"What kind of a fellow is Lem Oltman?"

"Lem's all right, I guess; I ain't got nothin' agin' Lem."

"He tried to give Clarissa to Jim Jenks last winter didn't he?"

"Yes, he tried."

"Jim has a wife, hasn't he?"

"He says he has."

"Say Ford, didn't your brother George marry Clarissa once?"

"Yes, an' she's got four other husbands, only one's dead."

"Who are they, Ford?"

"Well, Tom Faust, he's dead, an' Gus Poss, he's livin', and George and Lem."

"She lived once with Bert Ivans, didn't she?"

"Yes, last summer."

"What sort of a fellow is Bert?"

"He's all right only he won't work, an' he swears somethin' awful."

"Tell me, Ford, do you think Clarissa is bright?"

"No, I don't believe she is."

A Nine-Year-Old Man

Given the precise tests, Ford succeeded in attaining the nine-year limit. As compared with Beckie his memory was a little weaker, but his powers of calculation were superior to hers. Like her he could neither read nor write but evidently for a different reason. Ford has never had any schooling, while Beckie had attended school off and on for four years. His descriptions of pictures, far from being crude like hers, were original and interesting. He was not satisfied with describing what he saw but often went back to causes, a distinctly normal trait.

"My, there's trouble here! Guess them boys must a' been doing' somethin' or that man 'ud never be a-chasin' 'em so.... Guess that fellow must be haulin' flour in them sacks, anyway he's been to the mill."

For the imperfect human specimens, he instantly gave correct diagnoses. His language, however, was poorly developed ; he could not make a sentence, using two words given him, nor comprehend a rhyme, nor make comparisons in answer to such questions as: "What is the difference between a butterfly and a fly?"

His definitions were those of a child of seven, he did not know the names of the months of the year, or the date, or even the season. He could not see any absurdity in the statement: "A man painting a house fell off a ladder and broke his neck by the fall. They took him to the hospital and do not think he will get well."

"It's all his own fault," replied Ford, who was in a supersensitive state of personal humiliation. In fact, Ford's consciousness of mistakes is one of his striking characteristics. In this, he shows a judgment superior to Beckie, whose self-satisfaction would prove an effectual barrier to any higher development.

His answers to comprehensive questions were interesting when compared to hers.

"What ought you to do if the house is on fire?"

"Do what you can to put it out."

"When you want to buy something you see at the store?"

"Wait till you can pay for it."

"When another contradicts you no matter what you say ?"

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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.