DO THESE 
Popular ignorance tends to confuse the feebleminded with the insane and imagine that they 
should be caged in the interests of public safety. 
individuals who are, mentally, merely good-natured, irresponsible children. 
BOYS LOOK DANGEROUS? 
Asa fact, most of them are strong, healthy 
They require 
careful supervision, but giv en that they may live not only happy but productive lives. 
The campaign for “negativ e eugenics”’ 
should be devoted to putting the defectives not only 
where they can do no harm but even more to putting them where they can do good. The 
conservation team here shown is made up from boys at the Rome State Custodial Asylum, 
N. Y. (Fig. 11.) 
was left on a siding of the railroad 
nearby. The door of this car was open, 
and boys will be boys. Two by two 
they carried off the young trees, and 
planted them over a space of some one 
hundred and fifty acres. They did the 
work admirably, so well indeed that the 
State Commissioner of Conservation 
commended it warmly, and said it 
ranked as high as any work done by 
regular paid labor. Just one hundred 
and fifty thousand trees were set out, all 
in a spirit of fun and play. The keep of 
these boys as state wards, plus the cost 
of transportation, amounted to $400. 
The net value to the State of the work 
they did was $1,000 and in twenty years 
time there will be a broad green monu- 
ment to the boys’ memory. 
There are hundreds of thousands 
acres of national land that need re- 
310 
foresting and conservation work. There 
are several hundred thousand unfortu- 
nate young men and boys who cannot 
compete favorably with their fellows in 
the world who could do this work if they 
were rightly directed. Camp colonies 
in summer, transportation southward in 
cold weather for work down there, insti- 
tutional housing in winter where neces- 
sary—all these things are coming, and 
they will come all the more quickly as 
people are told such stories as this, and 
stories such as Alexander Johnson, of 
Vineland, can tell by the ream of the 
possibilities that lie in subnormal ner- 
vous systems. 
Eugenics will make progress just about 
in proportion as it eliminates its em- 
phasis on pathology and concentrates on 
the positive aspects of human possi- 
bility. 
