"Seriously, who believes any of this stuff nowadays? The protectionist is not reckoning with such popular impotency and stupidity. He believes in his fellow-man, and wants to give him a helping hand. He does not care what effect it has on England or Ireland. He is not sure that a protective tariff in and of itself will increase the wages of the workmen. He is even inclined to think that less wages and profits would do well enough for every man, if it were cheaper to live and there were not such extravagant demands upon every person from all sides--this without being a socialist. He is certain that 'a cheap coat' does not necessarily make 'a cheap man,' but the cheaper the coat the better it will be for the wearer. That is what we are all trying to do, improve our processes, increase our effective working power, which means, if you please, to make things cheaper."--_The Manufacturer_ (organ of the Manufacturers' Club of Philadelphia). MENTAL DEFECTIVES AND THE SOCIAL WELFARE. BY MARTIN W. BARR, M. D., CHIEF PHYSICIAN, PENNSYLVANIA TRAINING SCHOOL FOR FEEBLE-MINDED CHILDREN, ELWYN, PA. Periods of extraordinary efflorescence or fruitage are followed by exhaustion and sterility not infrequently demanding the free use of the pruning knife; and, just as we remark how frequent is idiocy the offspring of genius, so do we find the same seeming paradox, of mental defect in rank and increasing growth the product of this most wonderful nineteenth century. True, science has contributed to numbers by revealing as mental defectives the many "misunderstood," "the backward," "the feebly gifted," as well as by showing what was once esteemed moral perversion to be moral imbecility; but a truth to which science also attests is, that unstable nerve centers uniting and reacting through successive generations, producing various forms of neuroses, evidenced in insanity, moral and mental imbecility, idiocy and epilepsy, do show the influence of a highly nervous age.