186 
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters. 
/ 
measures of prevention like the various phases of child-saving work have 
been already fruitful of good results. In other cases it is still doubtful 
what is best to be done in the way of prevention. But I believe the time 
is coming, when by the combination of public and of private effort we 
shall greatly reduce, if we do not entirely eradicate the defective classes. 
In my dealings with them I am sometimes tempted to despair of human¬ 
ity. But then I look at our churches and schools, our literature and our 
industries, and best of all our happy homes, the pledge of the future; and 
I take heart again, and I remember that after all the total number of pris¬ 
oners, paupers, insane, deaf and dumb, blind and idiots in the United States 
is only one per cent, of the population, a less proportion than any other 
civilized country has. 
