ation that five and a half millions of our young men were
illiterate. These facts show that in the mass of people from which
criminals and vicious people are recruited, large numbers have defects
of body, mind, or education, which handicap them in pursuit of an
honest living or in the search for helpful pleasures. The step to be
taken in order to help the family to deal justly and humanely, but
with due response to social duty, with the prodigal sons and
daughters, may be briefly outlined as follows:

First and foremost, the weeding out from every field of competitive
life those manifestly incapable of holding their own in
self-protection and self-support. The unemployable among the
unemployed, the hopelessly criminal and vicious who cannot be rescued
from their condition, the more permanently backward among the school
pupils, the incompetent among parents, and the dead weight of the
"born paupers," all these must somehow be socially carried with least
expenditure of social force and at least cost to family stability and
family well-being. We have not yet learned to do this, but in every
field of social effort the primary need is to see what is the right
thing to do. When the ideal is accepted we are already a long way
toward learning the lesson of the method to be pursued to carry out
the ideal.

=Moral Invalids.=--In the second place, when we have really
ascertained who among criminals and the habitually vicious, and who
among the recipients of "material relief" who are constantly returning
for more aid, and who among the unmarried mothers, and who among the
dependent children are really feeble-minded or morally imbecile, we
must segregate these as fast as we are able to supply the right
artificial environment for their weakness and treat them as incurable
moral and mental invalids. We must cease to deal with such as with
responsible human beings, who might do better if only they would. The
"indeterminate sentence" is a step toward such treatment, but it is
often rendered wholly futile by being mixed with "reward of shortening
term for good behavior in prison." Good behavior inside prison walls
gives no proof of ability to take good care of one's self outside
those walls; it may be only a proof that the moral weakling has to
have an external conscience and a strict watch in order to be amenable
to even simple rules. The parole system is also liable to great
misunderstanding and serious social dangers when it is used