ITS NATURE, IMPORTANCE AND AIMS 3 



realized. Nearly half a million of these infants die before 

 they attain the age of one year, and half of all are dead be- 

 fore they reach their 23rd year — ^before they have had 

 much chance to affect the world one way or another. How- 

 ever, 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 milUon square miles of territory, in otherwise 

 utilizing the unparalleled natural resources of the country, 

 and in forming a united, altruistic, God-serving, law-abiding, 

 effective and productive nation, leading the remaining 93 

 per cent of the globe's population to higher ideals. On 

 the contrary, of the 1200 thousand who reach full maturity 

 each year 40 thousand will be ineffective through temporary 

 sickness, 4 to 5 thousand will be segregated in the care of 

 institutions, unknown thousands will be kept in poverty 

 through mental deficiency, other thousands will be the 

 cause of social disorder and still other thousands will be 

 required to tend and control the weak and unruly. We 

 may estimate at not far from 100 thousand, or 8 per cent, 

 the number of the non-productive or only sUghtly produc- 

 tive, and probably this proportion would hold for the 600 

 thousand males considered by themselves. The great 

 mass of the yearly increment, say 550 thousand males, 

 constitute a body of soUd, intelligent workers of one sort 

 and another, engaged in occupations that require, in the 

 different cases, various degrees of intelligence but are none 

 the less valuable in the progress of humanity. Of course, 

 in these gainful occupations the men are assisted by a large 

 number of their sisters, but four-fifths of the women are 

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

 The ineffectiveness of 6 to 8 per cent of the males and the 



