y one
national body, "to disseminate knowledge concerning the extent and
menace of feeble-mindedness and to suggest and initiate methods for
its control and ultimate eradication from the American people." On
such social effort afflicted parents of a defective child may depend
for aid and direction.

In Whittier's tribute to Samuel Gridley Howe, the pioneer in this
social care of defectives, one false hope is pictured, namely, that
"the idiot clay" could "be given a mind." That hope could not be
realized. The gates of destiny close at birth for many of the children
of men. What we can do and are now beginning to try earnestly to
accomplish is to prevent so many idiots from burdening the currents of
life, to wipe out the social disgrace of leaving neglected wanderers
on the highways of human effort who are unable to find the path of
safety and of success, and to make a protected place of guidance and
possible training for all the weak-minded and abnormal. We can, now we
increasingly understand, do more than this; we can help with ever more
ingenious and devoted care to give the merely slow and backward a
better chance at life's opportunities and help to make these least
able to adjust themselves easily to the common ways of the world more
amenable to life's discipline and happier in life's restrictions.

=The Call for Preventive Work.=--The new call for social service for
the children that never grow up is along new lines of preventive work
as truly as in demand for more tender care of all who cannot be helped
radically toward self-control and self-direction. The family, once
overwhelmed by tragedies of abnormality, can now be aided as never
before in lessening or in bearing the burden of such troubles. For the
less seriously handicapped yet specially in need of social
consideration--the blind, the deaf, the crippled, those of cardiac
weakness, and the children born tired who might become rested and
strong--the family has helps in education, medical treatment and work
opportunities suited to the particular need, such as no previous era
could furnish. Agencies for finding employment for the handicapped now
show ingenuity of the highest sort in fitting the work to special
needs, and the way in which the blind are taught to rise above their
misfortune in happy use of the faculties and powers they actually
possess is marvelous. The deaf have as yet been able to triumph over
their misfortune in less degree, but the art of re