4. The beggar colonies and the compulsory workhouses are in practically no sense reformatories. The importance of this fact cannot be over-emphasized. There seems to be a rather general belief in the United States that farm colonies for tramps and vagrants will be important reformative agencies. European experience is directly contrary to this belief. European sociologists, directors of colonies, prison physicians, or prison commissioners without exception stated emphatically to me that the percentage of reformation (by which is meant fairly permanent rehabilitation) is exceedingly small from the colonies and the compulsory workhouses. The history of beggar colonies in Belgium and Holland shows that those colonies began with large hopes of reformation and that in the course of years and generations it has become thoroughly manifest that the tramp and vagrant is what he is through a lack of stamina, will, physique or brain, whatever we may call it in the individual instance, without which it is impossible for him to lead a normal and self-supporting existence. Just as we in the United States are coming to see that the feeble-minded criminal and non-criminal are chronically deficient and that feeble-mindedness means an absence of a quality which cannot be replaced or cured, so with vagrancy and its twin sister mendicancy, European conclusions are emphatic that vagrancy and mendicancy, especially in the more advanced stages, must be regarded as manifestations of a social inefficiency and incompetency which require segregation and custodial care, in most instances permanently or for long periods. If ever a labor colony was organized and conducted with the earnest purpose of reformation of a large proportion of its inmates, the voluntary labor colony at Bielefeld was such a one. Yet after thirty years the parent colony, known throughout the civilized world and quoted more than any other of its kind, bears this testimony through its secretary, given to me on August 6, 1911: “This colony is not successful in reforming many men or in making them permanently self supporting. This colony is successful in furnishing, as do the score of other colonies in Germany, a haven to the “brothers of the highway” who are stranded and unable to live honestly without our help. This colony is a colony not for the permanent rehabilitation of its inmates, but for the temporary succor of those who seek our help. A large proportion of our brothers come time and again to see us. They think themselves strong enough to leave us, but they come back. If they do not come to us, they go to other colonies from time to time. Many of our colonists are discharged prisoners. Many of them are at times in the voluntary labor colonies, at times in the compulsory workhouses. We have many instances of successful reformation and rehabilitation, but the voluntary labor colony as represented by Bielefeld colony has not solved the problem of the elimination of the tramp.”