Humphrey: The Menace of the Half-Man yp) 
These youngsters have a way of getting 
on fairly well with their normal school- 
mates until they are near the limit of 
their mental growth; then they begin 
to show unmistakable signs of wobbling. 
A child, for instance, who will never 
get beyond the mental age of ten can 
usually manage to keep out of the 
special room until he is nearly ten years 
old; it follows, then, that children 
destined to go through life with men- 
talities of fourteen or fifteen, get 
through all the grades and leave school 
without disclosing their limitations— 
yet they couldn’t have got by a year 
in the high school to save their lives. 
These less obvious of the feeble- 
minded are the ‘‘borderliners,’’ or 
“morons,” as they are technically 
known—men and women in appalling 
numbers who stumble along through 
to old age with just enough wit to 
escape the foolish house and not enough 
to connect with the social order. Their 
shiftiness begins with their first job— 
they bulk large in the great labor ‘“‘turn- 
over, so disastrous to industry; they 
qualify more readily for jails and 
institutions than for steady effort, and 
naturally take the easier way.  Irre- 
sponsibility is their outstanding, lifelong 
characteristic. 
THE GROWING DANGER OF THE ‘‘HALF- 
MAN”’ IN SOCIETY 
Ignorance, as a disturber of social 
peace, is giving way to education; we 
are righting injustices which cause 
turmoil; but the Menace of the Half- 
man is growing almost unchecked. 
By instinct they follow any and every 
designing agitator who happens along. 
For them, life is one round of spiritless 
work, rebuffs, hardships, failures and 
futile beginnings over, such as would 
kill us normals within a few years. 
This world, as we now manage it, is 
run for full-made men and women— 
that’s why it is such a difficult place 
for grown-up children. 
And these are essentially grown-up 
children. It is all very well to dub 
them facetiously, “I Won’t Work’’— 
some of them deserve it; but when will 
we learn to read the pathetic message 
stamped as a birthmark on the crooked 
features of so many more, “I Can't 
Work’’? Precious few humans are born 
with a distinct inclination for crime, 
but a sorry lot of them are born every 
day with too meagre brains to make a 
living in the paths of virtue. Then 
why be surprised at their readiness to 
take up with the forces of disorder? 
We merely expose our crass ignorance 
of human nature in one of its rapidly 
growing phases. 
And how they do multiply! Next 
to their irresponsibility, the chief 
characteristic of these half-equipped 
humans is their astonishing fecundity. 
Evidence of this is so thrust upon 
the senses of every man or woman who 
knows the improvident that it needs 
no further elucidation. The common 
acceptance is that this grade is increas- 
ing at about twice the rate of the 
normal population; this probably is an 
underestimate. A western city, re- 
cently having rounded up nine hundred 
of its deserters of families—and habit- 
ual desertion of family is a common 
mark of the half-man—discovered that 
they had abandoned forty-seven hun- 
dred children, not to mention those 
they had left along the trails of their 
wanderings. This is an average of 
more than five children each. From 
observation of human nature in general 
it is safe to say that nine hundred of 
the most progressive families in that 
western city could not muster an 
average of two children each. Five 
from the worst stocks, against two 
from the best—this is a condition that 
holds in a general way for our whole 
population. 
INCOMPETENTS INCREASE DEMAND ON 
CHARITY 
No wonder that we have had to 
develop such enormous corrective and 
philanthropic machinery everywhere. 
This sort of people is doubling on our 
hands with every generation. The 
number of charitable organizations in 
New York City runs into four figures; 
they are counted by hundreds in 
every other large center of population. 
Charities originally were supposed to 
