(4) Besides free medical attendance, the State must pro- vide free hospitals for the sick, nurses for the poor, asylums for those who are incapacitated by infirmity from self-support.  The care and treatment of the feeble-minded, the insane, the deaf, the blind, the crippled, should always be in the hands of experts; and, so far as possible, work that they can do must be provided.  With the enforcement of the measures we have enumerated, the need of such institutions will become much less; but at present they are inadequate in number and equipment, too often managed by incompetent officials, and not always free from scandal. [Footnote:  Cf.  C. R, Henderson, Social Spirit in America, chap.  XV.]

(5) Most important of all, perhaps, is the work that must be done to save the babies.  Approximately a third of the babies born in this country die before they are four years old; half or two thirds of these could be saved.  Wonderful results in baby saving have followed strict control of the milk supply and the banishing of the fly.  Besides this, mothers must in some way be given instruction in the very difficult and complicated art of rearing infants; for many of the deaths are due to simple ignorance.[Footnote:  For methods and results in baby-saving, consult the Secretary of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1211 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, Maryland.  Also Outlook, vol. 101, p. 190.  J. S. Gibbon, Infant Welfare Centers.] Poverty, the necessity of self- support on the part of mothers, also plays a large part; we shall consider in chapter xxx the possibility of state care of mothers during the infancy of their children.  II.  Poverty and inadequate living conditions?  If human illness can be in large measure averted by state action, poverty can be practically abolished.  The poor we have always had with us, indeed; but we need not forever have them.  There is no excuse for our tolerance of the suffering and degradation of the submerged classes; the causes of this wretchedness are in the main removable.  The initial cost will be great, but in the long run the saving to the community will be enormous.  Individual effort can only achieve a superficial and temporary relief; and even the two or three hundred charity organization societies in the country are impotent, for lack of funds and of power, to stem the forces that make for poverty.  To dole out charity to this family and to that is unhappily necessary in our present crude social situation; but it is not a solution.  It not only runs the continual risk of encouraging shiftlessness and dependence, but it does not go to the root of the matter.  There will always be inequalities in wealth and room for personal gifts from the more to the less fortunate; but the State must not be content with such patching and palliating, but must strike at the roots of the evil.  We will consider the chief causes of poverty and their cure.