"Greater tasks than those contemplated in the broadest scheme of the Eugenics committee have been carried out in this country. If only one half of one per cent of the 30 million dollars annually spent on hospitals, 20 millions on insane asylums, 20 millions for almshouses, 13 millions on prisons, and 5 millions on the feeble-minded, deaf and blind were spent on the study of the bad germ plasm that makes necessary the annual expenditure of nearly 100 millions in the care of its produce we might hope to learn just how it is being reproduced and the best way to diminish its further spread. A _new_ plague that rendered four per cent of our population, chiefly at the most productive age, not only incompetent, but a burden costing 100 million dollars yearly to support, would instantly attract universal attention, and millions would be forthcoming for its study as they have been for the study of cancer. But we have become so used to crime, disease and degeneracy that we take them as necessary evils. That they were, in the world's ignorance, is granted. That they must remain so, is denied." Of course one should not jump from this to the conclusion that the fact of heredity is responsible for all of this defect. Disease is so often the result of infections to which none is immune, and defect is frequently the result of such disease. Warbasse has recently stated that "At least one fourth of our public institutions for caring for defectives is made necessary by venereal disease." Doubtless an appreciable share of this fourth is the result of hereditary tendencies, the expression of which gives the opportunity for such infection. Here as elsewhere no single factor accounts for all of the facts, although when, as the result of the increase of knowledge, we shall become able to make more definite statements, we no doubt shall find that heredity is the most important single factor in the disgraceful prevalence of crime, disease, and defect in our communities: indeed this is practically demonstrated to-day. These are questions of the most fundamental importance in our national life-history: our only "hope of perpetuity" lies in the right solution of such problems. And the crying need is for facts, always more facts. The Galton Laboratory for Eugenics is already doing much in this direction and is publishing in the "Treasury of Human Inheritance" scores of human pedigrees. An agency is already in operation in this country. The American Breeders Association has appointed a Committee and Sub-Committees under highly competent leaders for the collection of exact data of human heredity upon a large scale. There is opportunity for everyone to help in this work in connection with the Eugenics Record Office already referred to.