and Utah, only eight States have laws to allow clothing and other necessities to be given to indigent children so that they may attend school. Clothing is provided in many State institutions for blind, deaf, and feebleminded children. But for normal children from poor homes it is not provided in forty-one States until they are picked up as transgressors from the street.

Here, as in a number of other things pertaining to children, too much is yet left to the initiative and charity of private individuals and organizations.

When it comes to the delinquent child-the child whose chances for right living have already been prejudiced by the neglect or ignorance of those responsible for his bringing up-provisions become plentiful. Penal institutions for the young, whether they are called reformatories, industrial schools, State homes, or what-not, have existed in all States for many years, and the method of committing children or youths to them is everywhere very much the same. It is largely a function of courts and police, although in some instances the school authorities have the first word in the matter. This latter arrangement is found where there are truant officers appointed by the school boards, and where there are truant schools under the management of the school authorities. These truant schools are often styled "parental schools."

With the exception of some of these parental schools, there is too much of prison régime and too little of truly educative discrimination and training in the reformatories and industrial schools to which the youthful criminal, and what has been called the "incorrigible child" are committed. In many cases these children are handed over by the courts to private, often denomi

national institutions, not all of which are conducted on psychological principles.

With some notable exceptions, even the industrial training which the offenders receive is hardly educative in character. Correction, reform, is nominally one of the aims of commitment; but the organization of these institutions is too plainly prison-like to make correction an educational element. This judgment does not fit all, but most of these places, and it is notable that few have educators as heads or superintendents, and that they rarely form an articulated part of the educational system of the State or community which maintains them. Truant schools are the nearest approach to a rational treatment of the habitually vagrant and idle child, as they recognize the educational character of the problem most readily, even though the method of commitment is often punitive. Even here it is only a matter of recent progress that the state of truancy is becoming appreciated as a developmental symptom.

Children's Courts.-The establishment of children's or juvenile courts, with special judges to preside over them, and often a staff of medical officers connected with them, also the system of probation, have done much toward developing a better understanding of the youthful offenders and of the causes of their delinquency. The main portion of the work, however, has been done by private charitable societies, with their visiting nurses, friendly visitors, and field-workers of different kinds. Even the probation system is yet too loosely allied with the school system, and the methods of dealing with child delinquents are still so unscientific that much further research and organization are necessary to make a solution of the problem possible.

Legal Provisions for Subnormal and Abnormal Children. "Incorrigible," delinquent, and truant children are not yet recognized as suffering from impaired potentials, being potentially normal (cf. Chapters VI, VIII, and X). But even for those who are commonly understood to be "defective," that is to say, mentally defective, or physically defective, no clear system is generally followed in States and communities. To quote from a letter received from the United States Bureau of Education:

A number of States provide for the compulsory education of the deaf and the blind, but such provisions are not usually incorporated in the general compulsory laws.

It is not customary for the States to require local school corporations to provide special schools for their deaf and blind, since the care of those unfortunates is generally considered a State duty. Certain States, however, specifically authorize the districts to maintain such schools, and some do so.

State provision for the feeble-minded is not universal, but provision is made for such children, more or less effectively, in perhaps the majority of the States. I am not able to make general statements with confidence concerning the laws for the care of the mentally deficient, however, for such laws are often classified with those relating to charities or the insane, and I am not by any means sure that our information upon that subject is complete. It is not customary to establish State institutions for merely dull or backward children, nor are they excepted from the compulsory attendance laws. So far as I know there is nothing to prevent any school board from segregating such children in special classes.1

Concerning children of sound mind but with crippled or deformed bodies, the laws are silent in most of the States. In Illinois boards of school directors may establish schools or classes for them, and in Wisconsin they may be sent to the State public school for neglected or dependent children (!)

1 Cf. p. 382.