It was a knock-out blow. Classification by measurement had ceased
at the first broadside; the last gave us the truant school which
the law demanded. To make the most of it, we shall apparently have
to have a new deal. I tried to persuade the Children's Aid Society
to turn its old machinery to this new work. Perhaps the George
Junior Republic would do better still. When there is room for every
boy on the school bench, and room to toss a ball when he is off
it, there will not be much left of that problem to wrestle with;
but little or much, the peril of the prison is too great to be
endured for a moment.
It must have been about that time that I received a letter from an
old friend who was in high glee over a statement in some magazine
that I had evolved a "scientific theory" as to why boys go to the
bad in cities. It was plain that he was as much surprised as he
was pleased, and so was I when I heard what it was all about. That
which they had pitched upon as science and theory was the baldest
recital of the facts as seen from Mulberry Street.
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