Statistics now available also inform us that more than a million dollars are spent annually to support the public and private institutions in the state of New York for the segregation of the feeble-minded and the epileptic.  A million and a half is spent for the up-keep of state prisons, those homes of the “defective delinquent.”  Insanity, which, we should remember, is to a great extent hereditary, annually drains from the state treasury no less than $11,985,695.55, and from private sources and endowments another twenty millions.  When we learn further that the total number of inmates in public and private institutions in the State of New York—­in alms-houses, reformatories, schools for the blind, deaf and mute, in insane asylums, in homes for the feeble-minded and epileptic—­amounts practically to less than sixty-five thousand, an insignificant number compared to the total population, our eyes should be opened to the terrific cost to the community of this dead weight of human waste.

The United States Public Health Survey of the State of Oregon, recently published, shows that even a young community, rich in natural resources, and unusually progressive in legislative measures, is no less subject to this burden.  Out of a total population of 783,000 it is estimated that more than 75,000 men, women and children are dependents, feeble-minded, or delinquents.  Thus about 10 per cent. of the population is a constant drain on the finances, health, and future of that community.  These figures represent a more definite and precise survey than the rough one indicated by the statistics of charities and correction for the State of New York.  The figures yielded by this Oregon survey are also considerably lower than the average shown by the draft examination, a fact which indicates that they are not higher than might be obtained from other States.

Organized charity is thus confronted with the problem of feeble-mindedness and mental defect.  But just as the State has so far neglected the problem of mental defect until this takes the form of criminal delinquency, so the tendency of our philanthropic and charitable agencies has been to pay no attention to the problem until it has expressed itself in terms of pauperism and delinquency.  Such “benevolence” is not merely ineffectual; it is positively injurious to the community and the future of the race.

But there is a special type of philanthropy or benevolence, now widely advertised and advocated, both as a federal program and as worthy of private endowment, which strikes me as being more insidiously injurious than any other.  This concerns itself directly with the function of maternity, and aims to supply Gratis medical and nursing facilities to slum mothers.  Such women are to be visited by nurses and to receive instruction in the “hygiene of pregnancy”; to be guided in making arrangements for confinements; to be invited to come to the doctor’s clinics for examination and supervision.  They are, we