Institutional Life Improving 313 



cially improved. The industrial (reform) schools are 

 now practicing a system of balanced activities of 

 study, work, play, and the like such as the findings 

 of these investigators have warranted. The method 

 of paroling the delinquent child, after he has spent 

 a term of preparation, was proved most helpful 

 through the careful tests of a large number of cases. 

 Recently the parole system has been effectively 

 applied to certain classes of penitentiary convicts. A 

 most productive agency for good now in use in many 

 of the prisons and all the industrial schools is that of 

 building up the waste places in the individual life 

 through specific training and instruction. The first 

 question raised in such cases is, What is the particu- 

 lar moral defect of the individual ? second, What 

 are the causes ? third, What will reconstruct his 

 character and give permanent relief ? That is, the 

 expert psychologist and the expert sociologist are 

 being called into service with the expert alienist 

 and physician. The purpose is to save and recon- 

 struct the whole man. Compulsory education and 

 trade schooling are now very common in state prisons. 

 In the care and protection of the insane and the 

 feeble-minded our country can boast of but slow 

 progress. Many of the members of these classes are 

 permitted to run at large and even to marry and beget 

 their kind. Now, while our human stock is in its 

 mass very sound and sane, there are constantly being 

 thrown off from it these mentally defective classes. 



