CHAPTER IXToC

1. The eighteenth century was called the century of man, the nineteenth century, of women, and the twentieth, that of the child. What facts justify this statement?2. What are the main elements in the modern standard of child-care, child-protection, and child-nurture?3. What of these elements can and should the private home supply, and what must be the community provision and control?4. In trying to effect both private and public conditions favorable to the best development of child-life, what should be the scale of values used, or what should be the order of effort?5. Dr. Alice Hamilton, in a Chicago study of I,500 families, found that the infant death-rate in large families of six children and over was two and one-half times greater than in small families of four children or less. Was that an indication that infant mortality rises with fecundity or was it one of many indications that the better-to-do have smaller families? In any case, should such statistics always include the statement of the social standing and the income of the groups studied?6. InThe Childof August, 1920, Miss Julia C. Lathrop summarizes the Child-welfare Standards proposed by the Children's Bureau as follows:(1.) Minimum standards for children entering employment:A. Minimum age, sixteen years in all employments; eighteen years in mines and quarries; twenty-one years for girls as telephone or telegraph messengers; twenty-one years for special-delivery service of U.S. Post Office; prohibition of minors in dangerous, unhealthy, or hazardous occupations.B. Minimum education, compulsory education for all between seven and sixteen years for nine months of every year. Between sixteen and eighteen years those legally employed to attend Continuation Schools at least eight hours a week.C. Physical minimum, annual examination of all working children under eighteen years of age; prohibition of work unless found to be normal in physique and health.D. Hours, minors not more than eight hours a day or forty-four hours a week, and prohibition of night-work. Continuation School attendance to count as part of working-day.E. Wages, minimum determined by wage commission or similar agency.F. Vocational guidance and employment supervision.G. Employment certificate as needed protection against industrial exploitation.(2.) Minimum standards for public protection of health of mothers and children:A. Maternity aids; B. Infants; C. Pre-school children; D. School children; E. Adolescent children.(3.) Minimum standards in relation to children needing special care:A. Adequate income; B. Assistance to mothers; C. State supervision; D. Removal of some children from their homes; E. Home care; F. Principles governing child-placing; G. Children in institutions; H. Care of children born out of wedlock; I. Care of physically defective children; J. Mental hygiene and care of mentally defective children; K. Juvenile courts; L. Rural social work; M. Scientific information.(4.) General minimum standards:A. Economic and social; B. Recreation; C. Child-welfare legislation.Read the above and compare your local conditions with these standards. Do you think all these demands necessary?

1. The eighteenth century was called the century of man, the nineteenth century, of women, and the twentieth, that of the child. What facts justify this statement?

2. What are the main elements in the modern standard of child-care, child-protection, and child-nurture?

3. What of these elements can and should the private home supply, and what must be the community provision and control?

4. In trying to effect both private and public conditions favorable to the best development of child-life, what should be the scale of values used, or what should be the order of effort?

5. Dr. Alice Hamilton, in a Chicago study of I,500 families, found that the infant death-rate in large families of six children and over was two and one-half times greater than in small families of four children or less. Was that an indication that infant mortality rises with fecundity or was it one of many indications that the better-to-do have smaller families? In any case, should such statistics always include the statement of the social standing and the income of the groups studied?

6. InThe Childof August, 1920, Miss Julia C. Lathrop summarizes the Child-welfare Standards proposed by the Children's Bureau as follows:

(1.) Minimum standards for children entering employment:A. Minimum age, sixteen years in all employments; eighteen years in mines and quarries; twenty-one years for girls as telephone or telegraph messengers; twenty-one years for special-delivery service of U.S. Post Office; prohibition of minors in dangerous, unhealthy, or hazardous occupations.B. Minimum education, compulsory education for all between seven and sixteen years for nine months of every year. Between sixteen and eighteen years those legally employed to attend Continuation Schools at least eight hours a week.C. Physical minimum, annual examination of all working children under eighteen years of age; prohibition of work unless found to be normal in physique and health.D. Hours, minors not more than eight hours a day or forty-four hours a week, and prohibition of night-work. Continuation School attendance to count as part of working-day.E. Wages, minimum determined by wage commission or similar agency.F. Vocational guidance and employment supervision.G. Employment certificate as needed protection against industrial exploitation.(2.) Minimum standards for public protection of health of mothers and children:A. Maternity aids; B. Infants; C. Pre-school children; D. School children; E. Adolescent children.(3.) Minimum standards in relation to children needing special care:A. Adequate income; B. Assistance to mothers; C. State supervision; D. Removal of some children from their homes; E. Home care; F. Principles governing child-placing; G. Children in institutions; H. Care of children born out of wedlock; I. Care of physically defective children; J. Mental hygiene and care of mentally defective children; K. Juvenile courts; L. Rural social work; M. Scientific information.(4.) General minimum standards:A. Economic and social; B. Recreation; C. Child-welfare legislation.Read the above and compare your local conditions with these standards. Do you think all these demands necessary?

(1.) Minimum standards for children entering employment:

A. Minimum age, sixteen years in all employments; eighteen years in mines and quarries; twenty-one years for girls as telephone or telegraph messengers; twenty-one years for special-delivery service of U.S. Post Office; prohibition of minors in dangerous, unhealthy, or hazardous occupations.B. Minimum education, compulsory education for all between seven and sixteen years for nine months of every year. Between sixteen and eighteen years those legally employed to attend Continuation Schools at least eight hours a week.C. Physical minimum, annual examination of all working children under eighteen years of age; prohibition of work unless found to be normal in physique and health.D. Hours, minors not more than eight hours a day or forty-four hours a week, and prohibition of night-work. Continuation School attendance to count as part of working-day.E. Wages, minimum determined by wage commission or similar agency.F. Vocational guidance and employment supervision.G. Employment certificate as needed protection against industrial exploitation.

B. Minimum education, compulsory education for all between seven and sixteen years for nine months of every year. Between sixteen and eighteen years those legally employed to attend Continuation Schools at least eight hours a week.

C. Physical minimum, annual examination of all working children under eighteen years of age; prohibition of work unless found to be normal in physique and health.

D. Hours, minors not more than eight hours a day or forty-four hours a week, and prohibition of night-work. Continuation School attendance to count as part of working-day.

E. Wages, minimum determined by wage commission or similar agency.

F. Vocational guidance and employment supervision.

G. Employment certificate as needed protection against industrial exploitation.

(2.) Minimum standards for public protection of health of mothers and children:

A. Maternity aids; B. Infants; C. Pre-school children; D. School children; E. Adolescent children.

(3.) Minimum standards in relation to children needing special care:

A. Adequate income; B. Assistance to mothers; C. State supervision; D. Removal of some children from their homes; E. Home care; F. Principles governing child-placing; G. Children in institutions; H. Care of children born out of wedlock; I. Care of physically defective children; J. Mental hygiene and care of mentally defective children; K. Juvenile courts; L. Rural social work; M. Scientific information.

(4.) General minimum standards:

A. Economic and social; B. Recreation; C. Child-welfare legislation.

Read the above and compare your local conditions with these standards. Do you think all these demands necessary?

[8]Described briefly inThe Surveyof November 12, 1921.

[9]In New Zealand, which has so many "modern improvements" in government, the proposition has been made to fix a basic wage for a man and wife without children, and make it the same as for a single man. In addition to this sum, each employer would be required by law to pay into a State Fund a sum slightly in advance of this wage for the single man and the childless married man, and that excess sum would be distributed in the form of a children's allowance to each parent according to the number of children. It is estimated that under this plan the total sum paid out in wages would not exceed that now distributed, but the receipt by the workers would be proportioned to responsibilities.

[10]See publications of the National Child-labor Committee.

"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!"

"Sure, He that made us with such large discourse,Looking before and after, gave us notThat capability and godlike reasonTo fust in us unused."—Shakespeare.

"The apostolic of every age are ever calling for a higher righteousness, a better development of the human race, a more earnest effort to equalize the condition of men."—Lucretia Mott."To every period its leaders: and the rise of every leader is according to his watching for opportunity; and the chief quality of leadership is the jewel of equity, by which alone the obedience of men is justified."—Arab Saying.

"The apostolic of every age are ever calling for a higher righteousness, a better development of the human race, a more earnest effort to equalize the condition of men."—Lucretia Mott.

"To every period its leaders: and the rise of every leader is according to his watching for opportunity; and the chief quality of leadership is the jewel of equity, by which alone the obedience of men is justified."—Arab Saying.

"He presses on before the race,And sings out of a silent place.Like faint notes of a forest birdOn heights afar that voice is heard;And the dim path he breaks to-dayWill some time be a trodden way.But when the race comes toiling onThat voice of wonder will be gone—Be heard on higher peaks afar,Moved upward with the morning star.O men of earth, that wandering voiceStill goes the upward way: rejoice!"—Edwin Markham.

The Proportions of Genius to the Mediocre.—In Dr. T.S. Clouston's suggestive book,The Hygiene of Mind, he estimatesthat at least four-fifths of the human race are legally "sound" and of average capacity. Of the remaining one-fifth who are "unusual" he and other investigators name only one-tenth of one per cent, as entitled to the distinction of "Genius." Clouston adds to this a class of "lesser genius," often extremely useful to the race but often personally unhappy from ungratified ambition or lack of temperamental balance. He lists "reformers" for the most part in this class and "inventors who do not succeed." He also specifically indicates a class of "all-round talent" from which successful social and political leaders are drawn and heads of big business and administrators of large enterprises in educational fields. Dr. Lester F. Ward, on the contrary, believed that we estimate the rate of genius and potential genius far too low and that special talent is vastly more common than the usual observer thinks. He says, "What the human race needs is not more brains but more knowledge." In his clarion call for the better education of all people of every race and condition, he affirms his faith in environmental opportunity and a finer personal development as the chief things needed to send the race onward. Professor Woods, ofDartmouth College, writing on "The Social Cost of Unguided Ability," confirms this conviction of Doctor Ward.[11]He declares that "for ten men who succeed there are probably fifty more who might succeed with adequate development and specialization of effort." He shows how "education as an agency in the selection of personal ability fails because of undue abbreviation of the period of training for most individuals and the omission of elements of training of real significance for the purpose of adjusting individuals to the specific task." When we note that before the fifth elementary grade is reached there is a drop in attendance showing only 80 per cent. of those found in the second grade, and in the sixth grade only 66 per cent., and in the seventh grade only 50 per cent., and in the eighth grade less than 40 per cent. remain of those entering the first and second grades, we see good reason for his statement. When the high school statistics are added, with the drop year by year in attendance until at graduation only one in fourteen pupils remains to the end, we feel that this author is right when he says that "Society suffers less from the race suicide of the capable than from the non-utilization of the well-endowed."

DR. WARD'S CHART vs. DR. GALTON'S CHART

Eugenics.—When Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin and one of the first to apply to human beings the ideas of "selection for better breeds," published in 1873 his article on "Hereditary Improvement," he used the word "Stirpiculture" as indicating the application of evolution to the method of improving mankind by the selection of the superior in the process of reproduction. He later changed the designation to "Eugenics," which is now held as the term best applying in this connection. In 1891 Dr. Lester Ward himself said, "Artificial selection has given to man the most that he enjoys in the organic products of earth. May not men and women be selected as well as sheep and horses? From the great stirp of humanity with all its multiplied ancestral plasms—some very poor, some mediocre, some merely indifferent, a goodly number ranging from middling to fair, only a comparatively few very good, with an occasional crystal of the first water—why may we not learn to select on some broad and comprehensive plan with a view to a general building up and rounding out of the race of human beings?" So keen an observer and philosophic thinker as Doctor Ward, however, could not long accept the first allurement of this idea. Hesoon began to show with his convincing power that "the control of heredity is possible only to a master creature. Man is the master creature of the animal world. Society is the master of its defectives. But normal people are their own masters. Any attempt on the part of society to control the choice of partners in the marital relation would be tyranny." Recognizing the need for "negative eugenics" fully, and declaring in its name that "mental and physical defectives of society should be kept from perpetuating their defects through propagation," he insisted that "eugenists must recognize and admit the enormous force of personal preference" in marriage.

Doctor Ward gives a figure—as above—which might be used to indicate the conclusions of Galton, in hisHereditary Genius, and of Ribot and others. Doctor Galton himself gave in his volume on theSocial Ordera chart somewhat more discriminating. In any case, however, the eugenists must depend upon the mass of the mediocre for a supply of geniuses and those of exceptional talent and depend upon the process of reproduction for securing that supply. Doctor Ward, on the contrary, looks to education, controlled and improved environment, and the stimulus for all people to be gained from more scientific knowledge more widely distributed. In his famous article, entitled "Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics,"[12]Doctor Ward says that "eugenists tend to emphasize unduly the intellectual qualities" and "manifest more or less contempt for the affective faculties." "Nature," he thinks, "is far wiser and seeks to prevent all extremes." He also reminds us that "much that is called genius is pathologic and linked to the abnormal and the insane." Perhaps few would agree with Doctor Ward that "genius is scattered somewhat uniformly through the whole mass of the population and needs only favoring circumstances to bring it to conscious expression." But that thought challenges attention. He would improve mankind, first, by getting rid of error through the full use of demonstrated scientific knowledge and, second, by a "nurture" in accord with the laws of progress.

Euthenics and Eudemics.—The pioneer treatment of "Euthenics," or "The Science of Controllable Environment," with its "Plea for Better Living Conditions as a First Step Toward HigherHuman Efficiency," was given by Ellen H. Richards in 1910. Doctor Ward, in alluding to this, reminds us that "there is a tendency for the avenues of progress to become choked and normal upward movements checked" and that "we must at all times take vigorous action and in the direction of the betterment of the human race." In respect to "Eudemics," or the doctrine of the welfare of the masses of the people-at-large, Doctor Ward uses the term first suggested to Doctor Dealey, of Brown University, by Doctor Koopman, Librarian of that University, with approval, and gives it a meaning of the greatest social helpfulness. In his view it is not a misfortune that society is being to so great an extent recruited from the so-called "lower classes." If there are signs of decadence anywhere, he thinks, they are not in the "proletariat;" they are among the "pampered rich," not the "hampered poor."

New Types of Genius.—Again, his plea is for universal education in real knowledge and true inference from facts of life and a universal sharing of the really best things to secure a just quota of genius and talent from all classes. It seems clear that we are not obliged to limit our hopes for "flowers of the family" to the few at the top of the social pyramid. For the testimony of history agrees rather with Doctor Ward than with the extreme eugenists, and we have often had arising from the common life splendid examples of human capacity and achievement. When the eugenists list their double columns of those whom humanity takes pride in and those of whom humanity is ashamed it is most often from the degenerative or defective members of society that the second list is taken. From the great common life of average condition, neither too rich nor too poor, too cultured nor too ignorant, for "human nature's daily food," one rises now and then to leave a mark high up on the list of great ones of the earth. Hence, humble fathers and mothers can build magnificent hopes on the newborn baby of their love. It is to be considered also that there is difference of opinion as to what constitutes genius and what may be called exceptional talent. One sociologist thinks that there are but three really important classes of men, namely, "Mechanical Inventors, Scientific Discoverers, and Philosophic Thinkers." Another type of judgment may consider that genius shows itself almost exclusively in those creative minds that give us great music,great pictures, great sculptures, great temples, and great books of poetry, drama, and the novel. Another type of mind, now growing fast among us in this machine-dominated industrial era, may find genius the most appropriate name for the master engineer or business-builder who rules a wide realm of successfully administered economic order. There is, also, although it is not often bold enough to claim loud voice, a small section of those who look for supreme excellence in religious or ethical attainment, a line of genius in mastery of the Way of Life. Certainly serviceable goodness, that which does big things for others' safety or help, may be given some place among the specially talented. For example, the little French girl of nine years of age who, bereft of her mother by the accidents of war, has brought up almost unaided five little brothers and sisters, the youngest only seven months old when her task began, and for two years, it is said, washed, cooked, and dressed her charges, and "saw to it that those old enough went to school where she went herself and took prizes for her scholarship," might well be called one of the "unusual." The prize of 500 francs awarded this "little mother" after two years of such able family engineering and personal care of those dependent upon her shows that some people at least rank those with ability to do social services and the high purpose to achieve the best possible for others' welfare as having a place In the company of the specially talented.

In an inconspicuous book calledThe New Party, edited by Andrew Reid and containing selections from many "labor" leaders, these words occur: "We have had politics for politics' sake, religion for religion's sake, science for science's sake, literature for literature's sake, art for art's sake: we want politics for justice, religion for right, science for happiness, literature for love of humanity, and art for the social pleasure of all." Those who can thus translate the separate achievements of mankind which taken at the top have won the title of works of genius are beginning to be seen above the human horizon as among the great of earth.

It is still, however, as of old, the man or woman who has a special gift of voice or pen or brush or sculptor's tool or command of instrument or ability to compose music or to write literaturefit to live forever, or build temples that command wonder and admiration, or who in some form of creative activity makes his mark upon history, who is most often spoken of as a genius. It is now only a little while since we began to add to this list the scientific, the commercial and the political genius. The military genius has held a place for ages, but his specialty is losing standing as a social asset, and we can foresee a time when he must learn constructive rather than destructive methods of action in order to qualify for the "Hall of Fame."[13]

Only Men in Lists of Geniuses.—Genius along any line has for its topmost reaches the names of men only. Few women have even attained the secondary place of the talented. When we remember that higher education for women is a child of less than a hundred years' growth, and that all the higher walks of achievement in the intellectual, the political, the scientific, and the industrial field have been masculine monopolies in custom and even in law for ages after men had opportunity of specialized development and work, this is not a sure proof of the intellectual and vocational inferiority of women. Until women have had several centuries of equal education and freedom of activity with men no one can tell what they can do in any special line. It is therefore idle at this date for any one to argue either for or against the possibilities of a more balanced list of the sexes in those at the top of human achievement.

What we are now beginning to be sure of is that all talent is precious, all special power a social asset, all leadership to be conserved, and all real genius a priceless treasure—hence, that all children who are gifted, whether boys or girls, shall be developed to the height of social power. This means that although every gifted child is born in a private family, society must see to it that its chance for right nurture and fitting education is not limited to the resources of any private family, especially to those of the poorer in economic power.

Galton estimates two hundred and fifty in a million as in the "distinguished class," If, as Doctor Ward and others think, manymore might be able to qualify for that position if favorably situated, then society, which is the loser by every undeveloped person, must learn to know the possibilities of children as indicated by scientific study and lessen the present waste of potential talent. Dr. Carl Kelsey says "Heredity determines what a man may become, but environment determines what he does become." This is not entirely true, perhaps, since many noble and wise have risen from untoward surroundings, but it is largely true.

Social Need to Learn What Children Are.—If society is to really set about the business of getting from the mass of mankind all the intellectual and moral power and all the real leadership that may be available for social uses, then surely we must learn first to know more about all the children in every family. How can this be done? In many cases children are slow in development and may have powers quite unsuspected until the time for most skilful cultivation has passed. In many cases parents are so partial that "all their geese are swans." In other cases the nervous excitability may be such that precocity leads to overstimulation and later there is arrest of development, and the promising bud does not develop into the flower of the family. In any case, the parents alone can not, as a rule, attain full comparison and due balance of judgment even between their own children and certainly not as between their own and the children of other parents.

"Charting Parents."—There is, to be sure, a new plan of "Charting Parents" to find out what they are able to do and what they are actually doing in the moral training and physical care of their children. "The Parents' Score Card," prepared by Dr. Caroline Hedger, of the Elizabeth McCormick Memorial Fund, and published in theWoman's Home Companionof March, 1922, aims to enable fathers and mothers "to size themselves up as parents." The points to be noted and on which parents have a rating as good, bad, or indifferent, comprise those concerning "physical defects attended to," "adequate supervision of athletics and recreation," "regulations concerning the below-weight or nervous child," on "team-work in parents" (whether they pull together or apart in the discipline of the child), and some very drastic examination points on "fault-finding," "lying to child," "punishingwhen angry." The chart deals, in general, with the character influence of the parent. It is said that only one child in three hundred had a perfect "score card" in an investigation of a large number of children, and hence only a small proportion of parents could be supposed to measure up to all the requirements of the parent's outline of duties.

This new device of putting parents to the test is being adopted in many differing ways by health boards, by school boards, by children's courts, by church committees of investigation, and by the superintendents of charitable agencies. This all means that a standard of child-life is being attained, a measure of the normal, divergence from which is an indication of the abnormal, either in capacity or condition. This is a wholesome movement, although sometimes carried out in unwise and unsympathetic ways. This should enable parents to find out if they have average children and what to do with defects that are remediable. This is also one of the ways by which we measure the social need to help parents who are themselves handicapped in any way to do their duty by their children.

What we need, however, is more than this—we need some definite knowledge of what sort of children we have in one generation with which to build the next generation. We need to be able to take account of our social stock as we go along. To do this the home must be supplemented specifically and adequately by the school. In the school we have opportunity of wide study of varying types, of comparison of differing rates of progress, of getting at actual knowledge of actual quality and capacity in a child as related to the like in other children. This investigative function of the school has been used for the most part to ascertain what children were defective. This is useful. We need, also, to use it with far more ingenuity to ascertain what children are most promising and most likely to dower the race with special gifts.

New Observation Records for Children.—A very important "Observation Record for the Selection of Gifted Children in the Elementary Schools" has been drawn up by Julie A. Badanes, which has been published with an introduction by Dr. Saul Badanes.In this introduction it is well said that "the idea of establishing a norm for every school year" is a new one. The measurement of intelligence by Binet dates only back to 1905. In the treatment of the "Intelligence of Pupils," Meumann declares "that the problem of measuring the intelligence of school children is the basic problem in education." Recently William Stern has dealt at length with "The Selection of Gifted Children in Public Schools" and with related elements of investigation of the intelligence of children. William H. Allen, in his book,Universal Training for American Citizenship, has, as Doctor Badanes notes, given a chapter to the "Training of the Specially Gifted." We are all concerned with growing earnestness in the problem of getting in democracy the leadership which all social organization requires. It is, therefore, of the most intense interest to all thoughtful people how the flower of the family is nurtured and in what manner it is made to bloom.

This "Psychological-pedagogical Observation Record," which has been devised as an aid in finding out if a child is specially gifted, and if so in what way its gifts should be developed and how it should find its way to achievement, is very suggestive. Any parent might well study its itemized outlines for help in effort to understand the child that is unlike the average. The "Record" requires attention to the "general condition of the senses and nerves," to "memory and power of learning," to qualities of "imagination," to strength and expression of "emotions," to facility in "language," to "manner of work," to "relation to home and community life," and in respect to "adaptation to new demands." These things are vital not only to know about and understand as respects one personality but to compare on the same basis a number of personalities in order to get a ranking that is just and useful for guidance in education. Suppose a father and mother feel sure that a child of theirs is one of the exceptional, the gifted, perhaps of great talent, even possibly a genius in the making. They may get much help in arriving at sober judgment by many books and treatises now available. But far clearer would be their own approach to the matter in hand if they could study some such chart as is here alluded to and get a clear direction as to what to look forand how to measure what they find. If such parents, however, would be really assured in their first appreciation of their child they need the coöperative observation and fuller opportunity of comparison which a teacher of a school, who is herself or himself a good psychologist, can place at their service. All of us can see our own children at their best; few can justly estimate what the power of that best may be in a competitive world.

What to Do with the Specially Gifted Child.—The child may be one of the few elected to leadership in some field. All who watch and study and understand may agree that it is the gift of its birthright. Then what is there to do? The question often arises, Shall the other children in the family be given less opportunity in order that this gifted one may have the larger chance which genius and great talent really demand for fulfilment of promise? There was no doubt of the answer to this question in the minds of those who believed that a special gift carried with it special privilege provided the special gift discovered were of a sort understood by all. For many generations a boy feeling a "call" to the ministry of religion as rabbi, priest, or preacher would be sure to have, if necessary, all the resources of his family at his command and all possible aid of friends even at the sacrifice of the elementary education of his brothers and sisters. In the same way in a more limited circle the child who could do any creative work of imagination in art would be considered entitled to any self-sacrificing devotion of other members of the family which might be needed to carry forward his work. In a larger way many have looked upon all higher education as solely for those who have shown a power of potential leadership. Not long ago the old saying was revived: "Colleges are for the exceptional individuals who may become the world's intellectual élite." On the other hand, the growth of State Universities and of many forms of adult education, and the offering of college courses in the evening to those employed in earning-work during the day, show that the opportunities of culture are more and more made free to all and that the conviction is growing that it is not alone leaders who should be educated but that the common life must be raised in mental and moral power in order for true leadership to work effectively for the advance of social well-being.

In the family the genius or near-genius is likely to get all that should be its privilege and often more. And this not only from pride in his talent and from desire to give that talent its proper chance of expression but because genius and near-genius have often a self-protecting and self-acquiring quality that make sure of much unselfish care from others. If, as has been said, "The genius is composed of a man, a woman, and a child," and there is much in life to give color to that idea, then it is easy to see why the flower of the family so often gets the larger share of every family advantage and when the family resource fails is sure to find friends and helpers on every side to help on his development. This is not unjust provided the talented member can serve well in this specialty. The great trouble is that many think themselves geniuses and find others, in youth at least, to confirm their judgment of themselves, who are only a trifle above the commonplace. This leads too often to selfish claims upon others that tire even the family affection. It would be well on this account, if no other, if every child could be wisely and adequately diagnosed in respect to mental power so that fewer mistakes would be made in confounding greatness with showiness or creative power with mere discriminating taste.

If the family really cuts off the education and vocational opportunities of the less gifted below the point required for average success in life, in order to give greater advantages to the gifted one, it is an injustice. The mediocre have their innings now, and it is one of the great demands of democracy, both within and without the family, that the commonplace shall not miss its chance for learning how to serve and enjoy the best it can. The family life must be for all, the one place in which no life is wholly sacrificed to another life.

What, then, shall be done for the gifted whose talent, like that of music, for example, means a high demand for expensive culture? The answer we are beginning to give is that social agencies shall aid the parents in securing that culture. Aristocracy had its "patrons" for artists. Democracy must have its special educational aids for the gifted. Already that demand is being met in countlessways that will readily occur to all. Meanwhile, there is the public school organized to meet the needs of the "average child." At first the grade-system had a Procrustean bed that made it impossible to meet the needs of those below the average and almost as difficult to meet the needs of those above that average. We started special schools and special rooms for those subnormal, retarded, slow, or specially difficult to manage. Now we are beginning to consider how we can best make the tax-supported public school serve the interests of the specially gifted. The first thing we see clearly now is to find out which children are exceptional on the upper side, and for that the newly devised forms of scientific observation and measurement may be useful if care is taken to mix every formula with common sense, patience, and human sympathy. The next essential is to decide whether the children who can go faster shall be passed along through the grades by special arrangement more rapidly or whether they shall be kept on the regular track of school promotions and be given extra lessons to "enrich their curriculum." The part of wisdom, it would seem, is to find out what kind of gift the exceptional child has and hasten his regular course, or add to it, in accordance with his type of talent. If he is to be one of those who are to mix with men and lead others in professions that demand administrative and executive power, the chances are that he should have the regular course in the usual order and add studies that will early give him the facts of practical life and an acquaintance with many phases of political, business, and scientific activity that would serve in such work as he is likely to find to do. If, on the other hand, the gift is creative, and the career nature has seemingly marked out is one where the impulse will come from within, and some special technical training can alone give that impulse expression, then the chances are that the sooner such a child "gets through with school," emerges from formal education into his own atmosphere and his own free alignment with the masters in his own art, the sooner he will really begin to be educated for his task. It seems to be true that the more a human being is set apart by nature for a specialty of art the less he gets from all teachers save those in his own field of interest. It seems also true that the wider a human being's range of dealing with other human beings inbusiness, in politics, in religious organizations, in educational work, the surer it will be that "all is grist that comes to his mill" and there can be no study that is at all worthy that fails to enrich his mind. Hence, the new tendency to examination for the sake of finding out the specially gifted children and giving them the special opportunity in education which they need and will profit by, must be one guided toward details of differing gifts as well as toward quantitative power.

Genius Universal in Nature.—If any family has in it a real genius, that family shines forever in the reflected light of its choicest treasure. Yet a genius belongs to no family, even to no country. Such belong to the world. Mary, we are told, "pondered the things in her heart" which marked the boy Jesus out from all the other lads who played about the carpenter shop of Joseph. And it is not alone poetic imagination that shows her as troubled as well as humbly proud at the testimonies of His coming greatness. Many other mothers of those destined to high achievement have had misgivings as the shadow as truly as the sunlight of that greatness passed across their vision. For true greatness is solitary and often dedicated to tragedies of experience. The family life may be the only refuge from a misunderstanding world while the hero lives and only after death may the high quality of his service be known to all.

Genius Its Own School-master.—The most comforting thought to parents who have children "different" and perhaps different in ways not yet appreciated by the world around them, is this: nature, which takes care that we shall not have too many geniuses and doubtless will still take such care when we grow wise enough to give all the children a chance to prove whether or not they are geniuses—nature sees to it that the most gifted among the children of men carry within themselves their own school-master. If the regular lines of education do not suit their needs they promptly emancipate themselves from the useless pedagogy, and going after what they personally demand for inner nourishment, get it at all hazards. Sometimes, not infrequently, all the gifted child needs is a library and a chance to be free, or a studio and the companionship of an artist and just his own sort of training, at the time he can best appropriate it.

Varieties of the Gifted.—Happily all the flowers of the family are not geniuses or specially talented. Some are just beautiful to look at and yet unspoiled by flattery. It is a great gift of nature to be able to give happiness just by allowing people to look at one! The contour of the face, the turn of the head, the light in the eye, the freshness of the complexion, the grace of the movement, and the sweetness of the voice all go together, if the manner and the feeling only match the coloring and the form, to make it well worth while just to be alive.

And some flowers of the family are not beautiful but charming, those of tact and graciousness and understanding of others and consideration and unselfish behavior. These are they of whom one has said, "The charm of her presence was felt when she went, and men at her side grew nobler, girls purer, as all through the town the children were gladder who pulled at her gown."

Some flowers of the family bloom late and come to their beauty only when some disaster threatens destruction of the home or some sorrow wrecks its happiness. Simple, plain, unassuming, neither very wise nor very strong in other matters, they have a heart that can love with such intensity that it warms the coldest spot and is the refuge most sought when misfortune appears.

And sometimes the flower of the family is but a memory of one who early passes on. Emerson sang in his beautiful "Threnody":

"The gracious boy, who did adornThe world whereinto he was born,And by his countenance repayThe favor of the loving Day,—Has disappeared from the Day's eye;Far and wide she cannot find him;My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Nature, who lost, cannot remake him;Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .the feetOf the most beautiful and sweetOf human youth had left the hillAnd garden,—they were bound and still."

It is of such that affection speaks most tenderly.

1. How far should the general family life be burdened for special development of the genius, the near-genius, and the specially talented member?2. What added social provisions should we seek to secure to aid in the self-training of the specially gifted?3. What type of education may lead more surely to the discovery of talent and special faculty in the mass of children?4. Should the chief aim be to bring the subnormal or backward up to grade or to give a free and helpful range of opportunity to natural qualities of leadership? If both should be aimed at equally, how can the public school aid in the double task?5. A suggestive list of Books for Parents, issued by the Federation for Child Study, headquarters at 2 West Sixty-fourth Street, New York City, includes several of special value in determining the mental powers and special requirements of children diverging from the average quality and capacity. Read at least one of the books indicated and compare local provisions for examination of children with those advocated as desirable.

1. How far should the general family life be burdened for special development of the genius, the near-genius, and the specially talented member?

2. What added social provisions should we seek to secure to aid in the self-training of the specially gifted?

3. What type of education may lead more surely to the discovery of talent and special faculty in the mass of children?

4. Should the chief aim be to bring the subnormal or backward up to grade or to give a free and helpful range of opportunity to natural qualities of leadership? If both should be aimed at equally, how can the public school aid in the double task?

5. A suggestive list of Books for Parents, issued by the Federation for Child Study, headquarters at 2 West Sixty-fourth Street, New York City, includes several of special value in determining the mental powers and special requirements of children diverging from the average quality and capacity. Read at least one of the books indicated and compare local provisions for examination of children with those advocated as desirable.

[11]SeeAmerican Journal of Sociologyfor November, 1913.

[12]SeeAmerican Journal of Sociologyfor May, 1913.

[13]See chapter on "Democracy and Distinction," inSocial Organization, by C.H. Cooley.

"It was perhaps an idle thoughtBut I imagined that if day by dayI watched him and seldom went away,And studied all the beatings of his heartWith zeal (as men study some stubborn artFor their own good) and could by patience findAn entrance to the caverns of his mind—I might reclaim him from his dark estate."—Shelley.

"One man, at least, I know,Who might wear the crest of BayardOr Sidney's plume of snow.Behold him,The Cadmus of the blind,Giving the dumb lips language,The idiot clay a mind.Wherever outraged NatureAsks word or action brave,Wherever struggles labor,Wherever groans a slave,—Wherever rise the peoples,Wherever sinks a throne,The throbbing heart of Freedom findsAn answer in his own.Knight of a better era,Without reproach or fear!Said I not well that BayardsAnd Sidneys still are here?"

—Whittier's, tribute to Dr. Howe.

The Defective Children.—Not those who die young, full of promise, to leave a memory of exquisite budding loveliness cut short by untimely frosts, but those who live on from infancy tochildhood and from youth to physical maturity and even on to old age, yet never become responsible adults—these are the children we must consider.

The demand of the eugenists that such, if obviously defective, should be prevented from bringing forth after their kind is clearly the only social wisdom. The statistics of social pathology all point to mental defectiveness as the prolific cause of crime, immorality, vocational incompetency, illegitimacy, family failure, and marital tragedy. In a recent study of one hundred families in which feeble-mindedness was obvious, a study carried on by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, immorality was found in 58 per cent. of them; extreme filth and bad home conditions were found in 30 per cent.; and in 47 per cent. one or more members of these families were public charges. Where the mother is subnormal there is almost certain to be a line of feeble-minded progeny, and in this study, while there were only 7 per cent. of the fathers hopelessly deficient, in 25 per cent. the mothers were notably defective in mind. Thirty-seven of these families showed illegitimate children—a far larger number than the average of normal population. Physical deficiencies also figured largely in these family records.

This particular study takes us into the region where Doctor Fernald, Doctor Goddard and many others have prepared material for convincing the public mind that no one thing so increases social degeneracy and so adds to the sum of human misery as the unprotected freedom of defectives to procreate and pollute the family currents.[14]This is not a treatise on social pathology and elsewhere must be found the details of investigation and information that justify this statement. What is here attempted is only a study of what should be the attitude of fathers and mothers toward feeble-minded children if such should be their tragic problem.

Custodial Care of the Defective.—In the first place, the attitude of mind of the parents, if they are themselves normal, is to be considered. What gives us feeble-minded children from feeble-minded parents is clear. The social prevention for carryingon known degeneracy cannot be too strongly stressed, and hence the first duty of normal parents is to consider the social danger of leaving a feeble-minded child, especially a feeble-minded girl, to any chance of parenthood. This leads to the question of removal from home of feeble-minded children to permanent custodial care in institutions provided especially for their segregation, possible teaching and thrifty use of small work-power. Alexander Johnson, who has done so much in the United States to make all philanthropy wise and effective and particularly has helped to form public opinion concerning right methods of care and training of the feeble-minded, tells us that "one-half of the mentally defective can become one-third of a normal person," can be made happy and useful to the extent of considerable aid toward self-support if under constant supervision and given the trained care of special teachers.

There are few private homes in which any feeble-minded boy or girl can attain such a condition. The children who are "different," if having the sole devotion of father and mother, may be protected and made happy in the measure of their power for happiness. But if there are other children in the family neither they nor the afflicted one are comfortable. The measure of feeble-mindedness is usually the measure of unhappiness when the normal and abnormal are in close companionship. In most families it is not possible for either or both parents to give entire time, strength and devotion to one subnormal child. Where it is, there is no security that death will not prevent the permanency of that devoted care. Hence, it is generally safer and better for all concerned to place the feeble-minded in collective homes where their own kind are cared for exclusively and where segregated control can be complete and permanent through life. There is no horror of such places for those who have seen what flowers of happiness and what miracles of devotion may be found in "Training Schools for the Feeble-minded."

The affectional side of the nature of a mental defective may be of unusual strength and may find special objects of love among those still more handicapped than itself. Those visiting intimately in such School-homes may see a higher-grade imbecile caring for a lower-grade with patience and devotion; they may see the competitive element in training, reduced in levels for the accommodationof the slender stock of mentality, producing on that lower level the same good results that normal children gain from trying to imitate and to excel. Small attainments are sources of pride in a class of defectives which if exhibited among the normal would give bitter experience of contrast. By making the standard of behavior and of attainment suited to their little power, the delight of conquest over difficulties need not be denied to the feeble-minded.

Hence, again, it is far from wise and often far from most loving to keep the child who can never grow up in the company of those who follow the usual path from infancy to maturity. This means, of course, if this idea of the more general use of special homes for the subnormal is to be carried out, a large increase in provision of such homes. Such large increase is often opposed by short-sighted economy. The expense of establishing and maintaining such homes in adequate number and of scientific and humane provisions is counted over and taxpayers made alarmed at the sum total. What is lacking usually in the count is the sum total of the enormous sums society now pays out for the unregulated and socially dangerous neglect of this class of unfortunates. Doctor Goddard's "Kallikak Family" and many other accurate showings of what it costs to leave uncared for one feeble-minded girl in unbefriended freedom should convince any sane person that the most wasteful extravagance any community can commit is such neglect of what Mr. Johnson has called "the divine fragments" of humanity.

To make provision for the insane is seen to be a social necessity and the family more than any other social institution profits by the hospitals and asylums for the treatment and care of such. The relief of having an insane relative taken away from the home, after months and perhaps years of anxiety, fear, and suffering on the part of every other member, cannot be too strongly pictured. The effort now making to secure early treatment for the first symptoms of mental derangement and to give even "border-line" cases and exceptionally "cranky" and nervous people special treatment in mental hygiene marks the beginning, we must believe, of effective preventive work in this line. The feeble-minded, however, have a claim of perpetual childhood upon the parental sympathy, and that, together with common ignorance concerning their conditionor numbers and the social dangers inherent in their neglect, give us the alarming discrepancy in numbers between the feeble-minded in suitable segregated care and those left to find their way or lose it in the usual walks of life. Since Doctor Seguin wrote hisTreatise on Idiocyin 1846 the verdict of science and of philanthropy has been accumulating as to the need for the full and complete protection of all who cannot manage successfully, even in the simplest details, their own lives and the lives of those with whom they are most closely related. Yet to-day, it is claimed by many observers, we have only about fifteen per cent, of those requiring special protection on this account adequately cared for by society.

The family must be relieved of personal care of its insane, its lower-grade feeble-minded, and its moral idiots. It must be so relieved for the sake of the normal members of the family. It must be so relieved still more for the sake of lessening vice, crime, degenerative tendencies, and actual waste of public money in public court procedure and in other public institutional provisions.

To induce the state of mind in parents which will help on the better and more adequate social care of these afflicted members of society, the sense of shame and the keen suffering from social stigma in such cases must be mitigated. It must be seen that although it may be the fault of one or both parents that such a child has come into the world, it is an added and deeper fault, even in many cases a social crime, to leave that child in ordinary relations of life. It is true that what Dr. Caleb W. Saleeby well calls "racial poisons" are often the cause of the damaged germ plasm that starts the handicapped human being along his devious course. Alcohol, syphilis, and other elements of degenerative action may have doomed the child and in such cases the father's or mother's sin or carelessness is the cause of the child's tragical condition. In such cases the dullest conscience must feel remorse. It is, however, not always the fault of the immediate parents. It may be a far more remote inheritance that has started the degenerative psychosis that results in either insanity, feeble-mindedness, dipsomania, or "general debility of character."

Heredity.—Prof. E.G. Conklin says, "Heredity may be defined as the appearance in offspring of characters whose differential causes are found in germ cells." Doctor Galton says "the twoparents between them contribute on an average one-half of each inherited faculty, or each parent one-quarter. The grandparents contribute between them one-quarter, or each one-sixteenth." The responsibility for a poor specimen of humanity, therefore, is not solely the parents'; they may share it with a considerable group. Many a defective obviously owes his condition to some remote ancestor, "to the third or fourth generation," as the old Scripture said; and many a charming trait, for which the immediate parents would like to take credit, is really a gift from some great-grandparent.

This fact should make it easier for parents of defectives to bear the burden and easier to make it seem less a shameful confession of individual responsibility and more a sad confirmation of the fact that we are all members one of another and no one lives to himself alone.

Difficulties in Care of Morons.—The case is clear as to treatment, so all enlightened social workers and social students agree, in respect to the obviously defective or insane. The difficulty is to care protectively and yet justly for the higher-grade defective or what is now called the "moron." Doubtless we should all see it best to begin at the lower levels of defectiveness and abnormality for pressure upon society to socially protect in segregated institutions all the afflicted. The point at which compulsory methods should be used might be placed at a widely differing level by many most acquainted with the need for some form of social control of and for this class. Parents in particular would resent any snap judgment and should do so as to the mental condition of children not obviously imbecile. It is certain that the high-grade moron makes much trouble and gives social tragedies without number, but it is still more certain that no social machinery has yet been devised ingenious enough to really classify such persons and place them where they can do no more harm. As Dr. Lightner Witmer well says in his warning against careless diagnosis, "In training clinical examiners I advise them not to diagnose a child as feeble-minded unless they feel sure they have sufficient facts to convince a jury of twelve intelligent men that the diagnosis of feeble-mindedness is the only logical conclusion to be drawn from the facts." It is undoubtedly true that many high-grade imbeciles ormorons would be adjudged not feeble-minded by most juries. It is also undoubtedly true that many youths who are "peculiar" or "backward" or unusually susceptible to influence from others or especially lacking in power of self-control are in social danger and need some form of social protection more effectual than is required in the case of the normal child and youth. Higher grades of abnormality and those less understood must be approached, however, both in matters of examination and of care, from different angles of observation from those used in discovery and treatment of the obviously imbecile.

In this connection mention must be made of the efforts to give supervision of special sort and under official direction to those able to earn their own living or partially so, at least, and who yet need special protection and care.The Proceedings and Addresses of the Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Sessions of the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-mindedcontain specially valuable articles on "Extra-institutional Care" and on education of the higher-grade defectives. Two articles published inMental Hygieneof April, 1921, on the vocational elements in such extra-institutional care are most enlightening as to possibilities in this difficult field. The first of these, entitled "Experiments to Determine Possibilities of Subnormal Girls in Factory Work," by Elizabeth B. Bigelow, shows that certain kinds of routine work may be followed successfully by girls who are mentally under the normal. The second article, "Vocational Probation for Subnormal Youth," by Doctor Arnold Gesell, of Yale University, shows how the courts may use probation power and agency in the interest of self-support and a helpful industrial relationship. The new Children's Code recently recommended to the Connecticut Legislature by a special Commission advocates giving Juvenile Courts power at discretion to establish the status of "Vocational Probation," under the supervision of officers of the Court, in place of commitment to an institution, provided helpfully supervised employment may be found for the boy or girl in which they may become self-supporting.

The Colony Plan.—The Report of Dr. Anne T. Bingham, Psychiatrist of the New York Probation and Protective Association, based upon 839 mental examinations of girls and womencoming under notice because of breaking the laws or because manifestly in moral danger, is an important study. Doctor Bingham highly recommends the "Colony Plan" for the care of the higher-grade feeble-minded. In this plan small groups of those who show mental deficiency or any special need of social care are established under necessary supervision and control in colonies, near their own homes if possible, and given suitable work in the profit of which their families may share if destitute. The natural homes of such girls and women are often lacking both in helpful discipline or moral protection and to leave them in full charge of the parents is often the worst possible neglect. This Colony Plan is described in an article by Charles Bernstein, entitled "Colony and Extra-institutional Care for the Feeble-minded," published inMental Hygienefor January, 1920. The needed supervision, protection and care for higher-grade morons is difficult to secure unless some form of official control is initiated. That official control is often only available for those who have already suffered some serious consequence of their abnormal condition. What we need to work out is a better and more effective means for helping the family to do what is needed for the mentally handicapped child.

Mental Hygiene.—No adequate treatment of this vital movement can be given here, but the family need for social provisions along this line must be urged. Few families can afford the money, few parents have the wisdom, to secure the right sort of special treatment for minds not so diseased as to be legal subjects for insane hospital care or for institutions for the feeble-minded, which yet make the family life miserable and the family success difficult. There is growing a conception of the need, especially in our complex modern life, that so often unsettles or overburdens the mind, to have all manner of free clinics and economical methods of care for those who can not well care fully for themselves. This movement will go on until the mental invalid of every sort will find as ready social sympathy and as adequate social aid as does the physically weak, ill, or crippled. Such a serviceable little pamphlet as that of Mr. Brady's on "Mental Hygiene in Childhood" gives useful suggestions. Meanwhile, the family interest is keen and must become more active and commanding in ridding society of the inducing causes of diseased germ plasm. The whole"social-hygiene" movement, so-called, is in the direction of cutting off the supply of the defective and making every family less likely to have children who never grow up.

The call during the War, and a call heeded by many who had been ignorant of all the facts taught them in training camps, was "Keep Fit to Fight," The call of peace, and may it be heeded as the facts of inheritance are better known by all, is, Keep Fit for Parenthood. The sins of youth, so often sins of ignorance, carelessness, and unbridled passion, which doom childhood to blindness, to congenital deficiency of all kinds, to permanent twist of mental powers, or to lack of ability to meet life's demands—these sins of youth will be less in evidence when education is fitted to life's full responsibilities of choice instead of being side-tracked in narrow lines of scholarly acquirement alone.

Meanwhile, for the parents whose children number one or more of the handicapped there is the comfort of securing for such all that science and special arts of teaching and institutional provision can give to make the life of those who can never grow up at least comfortable and free from exploitation by evil influences. That some of the noblest and best of men and women are giving their lives in wise and loving ministration to these least among the children of men is proof of the overmastering power of human sympathy. Meanwhile, again, we are finding out that the more discriminating observation of children and their more truly scientific rating will take many children from the lists of the "backward" and the "difficult" and even the supposed feeble-minded into the ranks of the educable toward full normality.

Special Rooms in Public Schools.—The special rooms in the schools and the special schools in the school system and the school nurses and school doctors and the visiting teacher, with her power of making connection between the home and the school and playground, all show that we are coming to a point where every child will have a better chance for having his mental and moral as well as his physical diagnosis correctly made. And such a diagnosis we have already learned often shows that no congenital doom marks the child labelled "different," but rather some curable bad condition in his life that needs only wisdom and economic power to correct. The "Observation Cards" to which allusion has been made ashelping toward discovery of the specially gifted may also, if used with discriminating judgment, show that many whom we thought lagged behind their mates from native disability can be made to keep up with the procession if they are rightly fed, have enough sleep, get a chance at fresh air, and are not made the victims of industrial exploitation.

The new gospel of environmental change in the interest of better physical, mental, and vocational opportunities for all, includes not only the better care of all incompetent for self-control, self-support, and self-direction, it also is coming to include a far more searching investigation of the causes of degeneracy and backwardness, and many children are thereby lifted from the hopeless classes to the group of those requiring only special care and teaching to be able to be classed as normal.

Training the Nervous System.—Professor James said, "The great thing in education is to make the nervous system the ally, not the enemy. For this we must make automatic and habitual as many useful actions as we can and carefully guard against growing into ways which are likely to be disadvantageous." His advice for self-discipline is to "seize every first possible opportunity to act on any resolution made, and on every emotional prompting in the direction of habits one aspires to gain." Professor Thompson, in his book onBrain and Personality, says, "We can make our own brains, so far as special functions or aptitudes are concerned, if only we have wills strong enough to take the trouble." These and many other admonitions in the direction of more effective mental training show the trend of modern education. How many a will has been weakened by bad methods of family influence! How many nervous systems made the enemy of education rather than its ally by bad family conditions!

The Parent-Teacher Associations are doing valiant service in bringing to the home the best thought of the school and in bringing to the school the best feeling of the home. It is not too much to hope that when the jointure between real education and pure affection is made more complete we may lessen the toll of incompetent personality and raise the social standard of human powers. In this connection one vital thought must not be over-looked, namely, the social advance we may reasonably expect fromthe new power of women to select the fathers of their children. Doctor Sumner said, "During the ages of the man-family men could not make up their minds what they wanted woman to become." If that be so, it is still more true that now, as the age of the man-and-woman-family begins, women are undertaking to make up their own minds as to what they want to be and to do and are attaining a freedom of sex-selection such as they have not had before in the civilization we call our own. Doctor Todd says truly, in hisTheories of Social Progress, that "from now onward the centre of selection is shifted from without to within, from passive adaptation to active self-determination;" and he adds, "To rationalize sexual selection and make it serve progress will be to revise the 'mores' and inject into them new principles." While women had no real power to select their mates in marriage; while their economic helplessness led them almost universally to marry as a means of support even when no real affection softened and sanctified the process; while they had no power over laws or customs, or knowledge of actual life outside the household, and hence had to take wholly on trust the character and protestations of the man they married; while women were in this subject condition they could not contribute to family life either a high standard of choice of parental quality or a forceful demand for previous purity and right living in the husband. Hence, women have up to a recent time been more sinned against than sinning if they passed on defective germ plasm or doomed their children to suffering lives.

Responsibility of Women in Marriage.—Now the case is different. No woman of usual physical strength or natural ability or average vocational efficiency is necessarily tempted to make "marriage a trade." If she has any strength of character she can make her own way and find many good things in life for herself. She can, therefore, exact such a standard of character and attainment from any man who seeks her in marriage as he may well demand of her and can pass by as incompetent to family demand all who do not measure up to the requirements.

This may mean (in some circles of society, it is already coming to mean) what Wallace indicated when he said, "Woman is to be the great selective agent of the future." This cannot be, however, unless women hold themselves to the best standards that men inthe past have exacted of their sex and so holding themselves (where the race needs that they should stand) hold men also where the race needs that men should find their place. The defrauded children of every generation call with pathos of unique appeal upon men and women that the "racial poisons" shall be abolished, and evil inheritance be checked, and that every potential father and every potential mother shall hold sacred the torch of life to pass it on the brighter for their handling.

Meanwhile, such agencies as "The Committee on Provision for the Feeble-minded," with its central office in Philadelphia, and the "National Committee for Mental Hygiene," with its headquarters in New York City and its important quarterly publication, together with local associations of similar type, are at work, as is well stated by one national body, "to disseminate knowledge concerning the extent and menace of feeble-mindedness and to suggest and initiate methods for its control and ultimate eradication from the American people." On such social effort afflicted parents of a defective child may depend for aid and direction.

In Whittier's tribute to Samuel Gridley Howe, the pioneer in this social care of defectives, one false hope is pictured, namely, that "the idiot clay" could "be given a mind." That hope could not be realized. The gates of destiny close at birth for many of the children of men. What we can do and are now beginning to try earnestly to accomplish is to prevent so many idiots from burdening the currents of life, to wipe out the social disgrace of leaving neglected wanderers on the highways of human effort who are unable to find the path of safety and of success, and to make a protected place of guidance and possible training for all the weak-minded and abnormal. We can, now we increasingly understand, do more than this; we can help with ever more ingenious and devoted care to give the merely slow and backward a better chance at life's opportunities and help to make these least able to adjust themselves easily to the common ways of the world more amenable to life's discipline and happier in life's restrictions.

The Call for Preventive Work.—The new call for social service for the children that never grow up is along new lines of preventive work as truly as in demand for more tender care of all who cannot be helped radically toward self-control andself-direction. The family, once overwhelmed by tragedies of abnormality, can now be aided as never before in lessening or in bearing the burden of such troubles. For the less seriously handicapped yet specially in need of social consideration—the blind, the deaf, the crippled, those of cardiac weakness, and the children born tired who might become rested and strong—the family has helps in education, medical treatment and work opportunities suited to the particular need, such as no previous era could furnish. Agencies for finding employment for the handicapped now show ingenuity of the highest sort in fitting the work to special needs, and the way in which the blind are taught to rise above their misfortune in happy use of the faculties and powers they actually possess is marvelous. The deaf have as yet been able to triumph over their misfortune in less degree, but the art of reading from the lips and other educational devices used in their behalf make their condition so superior to that of the deaf-mutes of old that it is cause for gratitude to every parent of a deaf child. The crippled children now are seen not to be different from other children in their educational rights and as needing only more consideration of physical requirements to be fitted for useful work.

The significance of the removal of educational provisions for the blind, the deaf, the crippled, and the invalid children from the provisions of Boards of Charity and their assignment to departments of state and local Boards of Education, is great. It shows that we are becoming as capable in the community-at-large of understanding the radical difference between those who are defective in mind and those who are merely handicapped by loss of some special sense or some physical power as loving and wise parents have been when either defective or handicapped children have called upon them for special care. The children that find it harder than most of their age and station to grow up to full enjoyment and use of life's opportunities, because of some weight of affliction, are, we now know, entitled to all the training that the normal child receives and whatever else of special education their condition requires. The children that can never grow up to mental maturity, even with all that educational ingenuity can offer, are the permanent members of Society's Infant Class.

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