the problem is still serious when all possible allowance has been made for these. In districts where the number of foreign-born children is very small the percentage of backward children is very great. The percentage found in the schools of California by Professor Monroe is probably not too high for the country as a whole. In a general way it corroborates the findings of European investigators, and a number of educators to whom I submitted the question have given estimates based upon their personal observations ranging from 10 to 15 per cent. If we accept the California figures and apply them to the whole country, we get a total of about 1,500,000 such children enrolled in the public schools, for not more than one-fourth of whom has any special provision been made or attempted. The seriousness of this aspect of the problem will be apparent to teachers and others familiar with school work who know how seriously 1 or 2 such children in a class of 40 or 50 will impair the efficiency of the teacher’s efforts. By reason of their dulness and slow mental action such children absorb too much of the teacher’s time, which might more profitably be spent upon other children, and thus act as a drag upon all the members of the class. Moreover, they become discouraged by their failures, and, hardened by constant rebuke and the taunts of their brighter companions, finally careless, defiant, and altogether incorrigible. In many cases they leave school before they are of the legal age, their leaving welcomed, and often suggested, by the teachers, who not unnaturally tire of the hindrance to their work. Yet they are the very children who can least of all afford to miss whatever education they are capable of. They, more than any others, need the training and development of their minds to fit them for the battle of life. How can they otherwise be expected to earn their daily bread in the competitive labor market, where dulness of brain must inevitably prove a serious handicap? And unless they can stand the test of that competition, they must become paupers. Many of these children are taken away from school and sent to work, because, their parents say, “they can’t learn and are better helping to pay the rent than wasting their time in school.” In connection with the movement for the prevention of child labor, we have come across hundreds of instances of this kind. Factory inspectors and physicians in industrial centres where child labor is prevalent have frequently pointed out that a very large number of child workers are quite unfit for work. They were sick and backward in school, and instead of that special care being given them which their condition demanded in order that they might be equipped for the struggle for existence, they were removed altogether from the school’s influences and subjected to conditions which tend to further deterioration, physical, mental, and moral.[67]