I am to discuss this topic from the standpoint of heredity. It has not yet been successfully contradicted that two-thirds of this army of 300,000 or 400,000, owe their condition to heredity. A quarter of a million of these people are feeble-minded because their ancestors were feeble-minded. They have inherited the condition just as you have inherited the color of your eyes, the color of your hair, and the shape of your head. There is a tendency in these days to attribute a great deal to heredity. But of this particular thing there seems to be no question. The menace of the problem comes, not from the fact that a quarter of a million inherited their condition, but because they are transmitting that condition to their offspring. Of that quarter of a million feeble-minded persons in the United States, do you know how many are being cared for, guarded and kept from propagating their kind? About 24,000 out of 250,000 are to-day being cared for in such institutions as you have here at Waverley. The rest are living their lives, are raising families, and providing abundant opportunity for the exercise of the charitable impulses of numberless generations to come. And that condition of things is getting worse rather than better. What shall we do? There have been two answers. Some say, “Segregate, shut them up. Keep the sexes apart.” We are told that if we could do this for a generation our problem would be largely solved. The two-thirds in which the condition is largely hereditary would be eliminated. I want to assure you that the problem is larger than that. In the first place, looked at from the practical standpoint, we do not seem to be able to segregate. We are taking care of 24,000, and there are at least 250,000 to be cared for. If the State of New York cared for its estimated proportion of mental defectives, it would require thirty institutions of 1,000 each. They find it hard to raise money for the three or four institutions they now have. Their appropriations are cut every year. In the State of Massachusetts there are at least 14,000 feeble-minded persons. It would require ten institutions the size of Waverley,—a demand upon the public treasury which we are not willing to meet. I have not found anyone yet who is optimistic enough to think that we shall meet the demand within any reasonable length of time,—a time so short that we can safely rely upon that as a solution of the problem.