, in his annual report, said: "There is growing up in this city
a menacing army of boys and young men who are the most troublesome element
we have to deal with.... From the ranks of these rowdies that are organized
in bands, or bound up with chums or pals, come most of the crop of
burglars, truck thieves, holdup men, gun-bearers, so-called 'bad men' and
other criminals and dangerous characters. Without reverence for anything,
subject to no parental control, cynical, viciously wise beyond their years,
utterly regardless of the rights of others, firmly determined not to work
for a living, terrorizing the occupants of public vehicles and disturbing
the peace of the neighborhoods, they have no regard for common decency."

But it is to the records of the Children's Society that one must go for
reliable statistics of the potential criminal, as there the only systematic
study of their conditions is made and recorded by one of the greatest
neurologists in the country, Dr. Max Schlapp, of New York. As a specialist
in nervous diseases he has been connected with the Children's Society and
the Children's Court, where he has had wide opportunities for observing the
relation between delinquence and mental defectiveness. In cases of
viciousness or feeble-mindedness exhaustive studies have been made by Dr.
Schlapp. And the extent to which society is daily at the mercy of
uncontrolled potential criminality is alarming.

"Feeble-minded children and feeble-minded men," says Dr. Schlapp, "are
roaming about the streets of New York to-day as free agents. Parents are
not compelled by law to put a feeble-minded child in custody. Yet that
feeble-minded child unsuspected as such, amiable and care-free as he
usually is, is potentially a criminal, and at any moment may commit a
crime. That child is permitted to grow up without restraint, except [40]
such as the parents exercise, and this has no effect whatever in these
cases. The child is allowed to marry and bring forth children of his own
kind, more feeble-minded and more dangerous. There is no system designed to
pick out from the community persons so afflicted, and no law whatever to
prevent their untrammelled movements.

"The city street is a recruiting ground for the gangster because it is full
of defective children, mental and moral, who are potential criminals. This
question has never been seriously considered. When brought under corrective
restraint it has hitherto long been the custom