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"Until recently we have never included among the mental defectives the high grade group. We have children who, to the uninitiated, would never be described as feeble-minded. That group is made up of at least 25 per cent of all the feeble-minded. A boy who has just left us you would say was a grumbler. You would never think he was feeble-minded, and his grouchiness was one of the effects. He is a marked menace to society. Relatively to this moron group he imbecile is not so great a menace, for he is more apt to be placed in some institution. These types are capable of giving birth to children. It is questioned by some whether the low grade idiot has the power to bring children into the world.

"The menace of the feeble-minded and he imbecile is illustrated in the case of an almshouse in Chester, Penn., where I made tests. There were eight women in this institution, all of whom would become mothers within six weeks. They were all imbeciles. They had gone there to be cared for until their children were born, and then they would go out, to come back the following year in the same condition. When the social workers want to stir up the animals let them go at the almshouse proposition.

AS REGARDS TO CRIMINALITY.

"I would not say absolutely that if we got rid of feeble-mindedness we would be rid of all criminality, but we would have reduced it enormously. I suppose we shall always have criminality. The higher we rise in the social scale the higher our ideals become, and what is not now considered criminal may be so considered some time. The popular mind has taken up Lombroso's theory very strongly, but I do no believe there is a criminal type. As regards sterilization, we really do not know fully what the effect upon the subject will be.

"The chief argument against the release of a person who has been thus treated is he might debauch persons who would otherwise be kept straight because of the fear of consequences. I am more and more inclined to consider his a bogey. Those who are inclined to debauchery would not be likely to be restrained by fear As to the physical and mental effect upon the subject, there is no evidence of bad effect whatever. In Indiana about eight hundred persons have been operated upon, about half of them at their own request, in the course of the last six or seven years. So far as they have gone there is not the slightest evidence that the operation has been of disadvantage to anybody."