In broad, sweeping, historical outline Zilboorg draws a picture of the emergence from formal legal oppression of the concept of juvenile delinquency as a social and psychiatric symptom. For this recognition and for their successful uphill battle against certain hidebound traditions of law and even medicine, he duly commends the charitable agencies and their humanistic founders of the last century.

The very lucidity of his historical illustration of adult cruelty to the child, 'which has not always been unconscious', makes it a matter of regret that he could not pause longer to discuss the dynamics of society's unrelenting, blindly vindictive attitude toward the criminal 'rebel'.