The prisons are not the only places which are inhabited by the sub-normal and the misfit.  The hardest and most disagreeable and most poorly paid labor is largely done by this class of people.  Very few people of superior intelligence and education do manual labor and the more disagreeable the manual labor, the more certain it is that the job is done by the sub-normal and the misfit.  A large part of the farm labor, the odd jobs and common labor in small towns, the cheaper labor on railroads, in factories and all industrial plants is given to this sort of men.  In the country and small village, where life is easy, this class seldom makes trouble and is hardly known.  These men and women easily and naturally fall into a place in the industry and society of the village and are often among the most useful members.

A general examination of all men to discover the defective and the sub-normal, coupled with a demand that all such be sent to some place of confinement, would meet with such a protest from all classes seriously affected as to end not only the demand but the further agitation of the subject.  Any such law, if carried out, would not only seriously increase the cost of all industry, but in many instances would make it impossible to carry it on.  It is hardly conceivable that above the idiot, society shall make examinations and tests and confine or sterilize large classes of people who have not yet developed anti-social tendencies, but who on account of feeble intellects might sometime commit crime.

The world has ample data at hand to show more humane and at the same time much cheaper ways, even methods that will yield a profit.  These ways have been abundantly illustrated by history and can be witnessed in operation every day.

England was repeatedly conquered and settled by brigands and misfits.  When her people grew more homogeneous and orderly she sent her anti-social to New Zealand and to Virginia.  In New Zealand with its opportunities these outcasts and their descendants prospered and were as orderly and conventional as the English society that banished them for England’s good.  The colonies in Virginia with access to land and a chance to make homes for themselves established a social order and formed communities more prosperous than the ones that sent them out.  Many of their descendants are now successful and important members of every western state.

In fact, most of the European immigrants who have settled in the United States were the poor and the outcast, the misfits of European countries.  With better opportunities and a chance to build up homes in a new land, their descendants are at least the equals of those who stayed behind.  The growth and development of the United States westward from the Atlantic seaboard has been effected by the poorer and less intelligent, but often the more venturesome, who constantly turned West to get cheaper land and a better chance.  The residents of these western