92 THE TREND OF THE RACE 
no means convinced from the evidence presented that the delin- 
quents are as nearly normal in their mental development as the 
author contends. I fail to find in his volume any record of the 
application of mental tests, and in fact there is very little discus- 
sion of the réle of mental retardation in juvenile crime. This 
omission is probably due to the fact that the application of mental 
tests has been carried on for only a few years. Under the circum- 
stances, aud in view of the contrary findings of other investi- 
gators, little reliance can be placed on the estimate just cited. 
The number of boys and girls who get into trouble through bad 
home conditions, evil associates, loss of one or both parents, 
and various other unfavorable influences is doubtless large, as 
most students of the subject have shown. While many a boy or 
girl of good natural mental or moral qualities has been led into 
criminal ways, nevertheless a considerable proportion of the 
conditions which predispose children to delinquency are indirectly 
the result of bad heredity. Intemperance, vice, pauperism, 
separation of parents, lack of parental control, ignorance, and 
many other factors to which juvenile delinquency is so often 
attributed, are very frequently the result of inherent incapacity or 
defect. Environment, as in so many other cases, gets the credit 
for what in the long run should be laid to the door of heredity. 
It is probable that an investigation of the men who constitute 
our tramps and vagrants would demonstrate a degree of mentality 
much like that in the inmates of prisons. According to Dr. C. H. 
Parker, ‘‘the Department of Education of Stanford University 
tested two hundred unemployed of the migratory labor class, and 
almost an even 25 per cent were found to be feeble-minded. 
Binet tests made in 1913 by the Economic Department of Reed 
College, Portland, covering 107 cases taken from the unemployed 
army showed the percentage of feeble-mindedness to be 26.” 
Bonhoeffer has made a study of 404 individuals as they were 
committed to the central prison of Breslau, Germany, for begging 
or vagrancy. The investigation was confined to individuals who 
had served repeated sentences before their prison confinement, 
the number varying from 6 to over 60. These social parasites and 
