CHAPTER VIII

At such prices, each state maintains hundreds, sometimes thousands, of feeble-minded, and the number is growing each year. In the near future the expenditures must grow much more rapidly, for public sentiment is beginning to demand that the defectives and delinquents of the community be properly cared for. The financial burden is becoming a heavy one; it will become a crushing one unless steps are taken to make the feeble-minded productive (as described in the next chapter) and an intangible "sinking fund" at the same time created to reduce the burden gradually by preventing the production of those who make it up. The burden can never be wholly obliterated, but it can be largely reduced by a restriction of the reproduction of those who are themselves socially inadequate.