190 Heredity and Child Culture 



ual initiative and become little automatons 

 The spread of evil habits and associations can 

 occur very easily under institutional auspices. 

 Thomas Mott Osborne has said that many of 

 his wards at Sing Sing Prison had their early 

 training in institutions. He recently told me 

 that a study of a group of prisoners at Auburn 

 once showed that two-thirds of them had 

 previously been inmates of juvenile institu- 

 tions. 



It is thus evident that every effort should be 

 made to keep children out of large institutions. 

 So far as the child is concerned, the United 

 States is institution-ridden, as there are rela- 

 tively more here than in any other country. 

 Scotland has the honor of maintaining the few- 

 est. If parents die or are utterly unable to care 

 for their children, some form of boarding out 

 should be employed. The Speedwell plan can 

 work with older as well as younger children, 

 as it does away with the usual objection to 

 boarding out, — lack of constant oversight. 



A very great advance has been made in solv- 

 ing the problem of widows with children. Miss 



