The step to be taken in order to help the family to deal justly and humanely, but with due response to social duty, with the prodigal sons and daughters, may be briefly outlined as follows: First and foremost, the weeding out from every field of competitive life those manifestly incapable of holding their own in self-protection and self-support.

The unemployable among the unemployed, the hopelessly criminal and vicious who cannot be rescued from their condition, the more permanently backward among the school pupils, the incompetent among parents, and the dead weight of the "born paupers," all these must somehow be socially carried with least expenditure of social force and at least cost to family stability and family well-being.

We have not yet learned to do this, but in every field of social effort the primary need is to see what is the right thing to do.

When the ideal is accepted we are already a long way toward learning the lesson of the method to be pursued to carry out the ideal.
=Moral Invalids.=--In the second place, when we have really ascertained who among criminals and the habitually vicious, and who among the recipients of "material relief" who are constantly returning for more aid, and who among the unmarried mothers, and who among the dependent children are really feeble-minded or morally imbecile, we must segregate these as fast as we are able to supply the right artificial environment for their weakness and treat them as incurable moral and mental invalids.

We must cease to deal with such as with responsible human beings, who might do better if only they would.