Geraldine is a girl of eighteen, wrecked on the moving picture industry. She was seduced by an under-director in attempting to sell a scenario, and was passed from hand to hand until her health broke. Her experiences were unbelievably tragic and unbelievably common. Her health, self-confidence, and charm were restored at El Retiro. She took to nursing but the key to her interest in everything was affection. A professional man understood her real and genuine capacity and married her. She is an exceptional wife and mother. She too is a club member, proud of her school and eager to assist. Maggie was a rollicking, buxom girl of seventeen. Her parents were dead and her living relatives of doubtful reputation. Indeed all the female members of her family had “gone to the bad.” Maggie’s own escapades were many. At El Retiro she was rough, noisy, daring, fearless, impetuous, in short filled with the spirit of adventure. She did not graduate but was returned to the custody of the probation officer. While on probation she became pregnant. She refused to tell who was responsible but concocted a story of nameless attack. The court commented on her strength, her bravery, her resourcefulness, and gave her two weeks in which to find the man and bring him herself, unaided to court. Surprised but not daunted the girl succeeded. The man proved to be a soldier with a temperament much like her own; on careful examination, physical, mental, and social he was proved to be a fit husband and was permitted to marry Maggie. This social rehabilitation has restored her to club life, much to her delight. For several months she has been happy and successful.[97] In the meantime another important step has been taken,—the attempt to forestall delinquency by working on the maladjusted, neurotic, predelinquent child, or to adjust the delinquent child without resort to the court and the consequent court record. In the larger cities departments of child study, children’s welfare committees, bureaus of children’s guidance, institutes for vocational guidance have been formed in the public schools or working in connection with the schools. In this work the object has been to work by cases, bringing the girl under the influence of the social worker, improving the home conditions and the attitudes of the parents, placing the girl in a better environment, moving her from one situation to another until one is found to which she responds, and developing in her some activity interests. The ideal is to coördinate the girl immediately with the large society in which she lives instead of building up a complete institutional community about her as in the case of El Retiro. The possibilities of this type of approach to the problem are illustrated by the following cases reported by Doctor Jessie Taft of Philadelphia.