Of the 250,000 babies lost last year we are safe in estimating at least one-half whose lives could have been spared with even a minimum care.

The effort now making all along the line of social advance to give every child a decent start in life is obviously necessary and wise.
If the mother is proved wholly incompetent in mind or character we have acquired a social right to take her child from her and place it where it can receive better nurture and training.

We are beginning to recognize the corollary duty of social aid to all women of good character, motherly feeling, and any fair degree of intelligence in their function of motherhood.

There are those hopelessly incompetent who should never be allowed to have children.

There are far more with power to bear and rear children successfully whom adverse circumstances submerge to incompetency.