EMBRYO SAFE-CRACKERS

In an article in a current number of "Good Housekeeping", one William J. Shepherd, who is an author and a journalist, undertakes to show that over one half of America's future citizens now receiving training in the public schools "will, under temptation, have an unethical outlook on life." Scores of school-children, according to Mr. Shephard, assented to such statements as "Cheating a railroad is not so much a sin as cheat a person," and "If a storekeeper gives you too much change, it is all right to keep it, because he would probably do the same if you paid him too much."

Assuming for the sake of argument that the theory presented by able scientists is false, that is that children in their social growth represent the successive stages through which man has passed to reach his present state of civilization-it must be remembered that this masculine Cassandra is both an author and a journalist, which might induce him to take as pleasantly gloomy an outlook as possible on the future of this great republic. If the age of accountability is placed at twelve, as it usually is, and many of the children examined were only ten or eleven, it is fairly obvious that these pseudo-scientific data may be received with several grains of salt.

Also, if Mr. Shepherd really believes that modern society is tottering nearer and nearer the grave, it is indeed fortunate for his own peace of mind that similar experiments have not been made among the generality of college students, for whom, one fears, the age of accountability may be placed lar beyond twelve. Lives there a man in any of the Newtons, for example, who has not found that it is possible to travel from Harvard Square, with transfer, to almost any outlying point for only five cents instead of the legally ordained ten? And yet to argue, as Mr. Shepherd probably would, that all these souls will degenerate into safe-crackers, or that they would under temptation steal any sum on which they could lay their hands, is palpably absurd.