WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO 257 



— before they have had much chance to affect the world 

 one way or another. However, were only one and a 

 quarter million of the children born each year in the 

 United States destined to play an important part for the 

 nation and humanity we could look with equanimity on 

 the result. But alas! only a small part of this army will 

 be fully effective in rendering productive our three million 

 square miles of territory, in otherwise utilizing the un- 

 paralleled natural resources of the country, and in foi ming 

 a united, altruistic, God-fearing, law-abiding, effective and 

 productive nation. On the contrary, of the 1,200,000 who 

 reach full maturity each year, forty thousand will be 

 ineffectual through temporary sickness, four to live thou- 

 sand will be segregated (placed apart) in the care of 

 institutions, unknown thousands will be kept in poverty 

 through mental inefficiency, other thousands will be the 

 cause of social disorder, and still other thousands will be 

 required to attend and control the weak and unruly. We 

 may estimate at not far from 100,000, or eight per cent, 

 the number of the non-productive or only slightly pro- 

 ductive, and probably this proportion would hold for the 

 600,000 males considered by themselves. The great mass 

 of the yearly increase, say 550,000 males, constitute a 

 body of solid, intelligent workers of one class and another. 

 engaged in occupations that require, in the different cast s, 

 various degrees of intelligence but are none the less valu- 

 able to the progress of humanity. Of course, in these 

 gainful occupations the men are assisted by a Large num- 

 ber of their sisters, but four-fifths of the women are still 

 engaged in the no less useful work of home-making. 



"It is a reproach to our intelligence that we as a people, 

 proud in other respects of our control of nature, should 

 have to support about half a million insane, feeble-minded, 

 epileptic, blind, and deaf, 80,000 prisoners, and 100,000 



