Tests applied to a group of children of working age by the Bureau of Educational Guidance of Cincinnati were also used on a group of 20 maids at Vassar as a norm for testing the women committed to Bedford. 100 reformatory subjects were used for the tests. It is a matter for question whether loss of the parent is the cause of the child’s leaving school and going to work early and of the ultimate unsocial conduct in the case of the Bedford group, or whether loss of parent, retardation, misconduct, etc., are not for the most part but manifestations of the same thing—irresponsibility, mental, physical and social inferiority on the part of both parents and child. The facts at our disposal and eugenic investigations lead us to believe that the latter is in the larger measure true. Out of 100 women recorded 30 had had from one to five illegitimate children. Of the 100 tests for syphilis and gonorrhoea, 45% positive, 4% doubtful, 51% negative, for syphilis. 60% positive, 22% doubtful, 18% negative for gonorrhoea. At best strong character cannot be the rule among individuals ⅔ of whom have less intelligence than that possessed by the average individual among a group of children of 15, (of whom half are themselves retarded), and almost surely not when they have been too untrained industrially and too unschooled socially to have acquired simple every-day habits of restraint and inhibition. Even the more intelligent third of the reformatory subjects differed very obviously and unmistakably in stability and emotional control from the group of Vassar maids. _THE MENACE OF MENTAL DEFICIENCY FROM THE STANDPOINT OF HEREDITY.[51] By Henry H. Goddard, Ph.D., Vineland, N. J. New Jersey Training School._ Footnote 51: Read before the conference of the Massachusetts Society for Mental Hygiene, Boston, November 19, 1915. From the standpoint of the child, something can be done to make them a little happier; from the standpoint of society, no amount of mental hygiene can ever render them efficient citizens. Society can, by proper treatment, render them less of a menace than they are naturally, and the ills that we now suffer on account of them can be largely reduced. It is estimated that there are from 300,000 to 400,000 mental defectives in the United States. That is based upon the United States census of 1890, in which the question was asked “Whether defective in mind, sight, hearing or speech, or whether crippled, maimed or deformed, with name of defect.” Now if anyone can estimate what proportion of the true number of the feeble-minded would be returned in answer to that question, he will be able to estimate how near the truth is the 200,000 which the census report gives. Three hundred thousand or 400,000 seems to be a conservative estimate.