the difficulty. Furthermore, the mother's name should be accompanied by that of the father, if it is known or can be known. The Latin idea that inquiry into the paternity of the child must not be made is absurd, and savors of the time when women were mere property and the tools of men. The men who are ashamed to be recorded as the fathers of their children need to be held up to public obliquy, and if this were done, illegitimacy would decline. There is no question but that in the great majority of cases the first advances are made by men and that more than half the blame rests on them, yet they escape the physical responsibility entirely and most of the moral responsibility. The birth certificates usually used in the United States carefully designate that if the child is illegitimate, the facts about the father need not be entered!

The responsibility of the fathers must be enforced, and without doubt should take the form of support for the child and of certain other obligations. Public authority should take the initiative in ascertaining the paternity of the child and then require the father to assist in its support. In the District of Columbia a delinquent unmarried man may be punished by a workhouse sentence and be compelled to support his child by paying part of his earnings while a prisoner, the law of 1913 extending the provision for support of children to all fathers.

The recent Norwegian law is perhaps the most drastic yet enacted. It provides that the father shall pay the confinement expenses of the mother, shall support the mother and child for a certain period, and shall pay a certain sum toward the education of the child. It also provides that the child may take his father's surname and inherit property in a manner similar to that of a legitimate child.

In the United States the burden is usually borne by the mother, but in a small proportion of cases a marriage is consummated. More often a compromise which affords temporary relief to the mother and her child is effected with the putative father for a specified sum of money. There is a growing demand for increased responsibility on the part of the father. The Norwegian law goes to the heart of the problem, for if a law can en

force for the illegitimate a standing that makes illegitimacy a grievous burden to men, then a powerful deterrent force will have been set in motion. The Norwegian law adapted to American needs but without substantial modification should be adopted in every American state.

Paternal responsibility need not involve marriage; furthermore, many forced marriages are disastrous. The development of stronger claims by the child upon his father, coupled with paternal responsibility, will produce better results. In many cases, however, marriage should be brought about, and this is sometimes desirable even though the husband and wife do not live together, for it gives a better standing to mother and child. It is a great advantage to the child to have a legal name and standing.

Mother and child must be cared for. Probably a majority of the confinements occur in maternity homes, which may be of three varieties: the public or municipal hospital, the private philanthropic hospital, and the commercial maternity homes. The latter are demoralizing agencies which usually take women for confinement, and then for a specified sum agree to dispose of the child. The children are given out for adoption to applicants, with little or no investigation, and many children enter the most depraved homes, where a large percentage die. Usually they are not legally adopted, and foster parents do not bind themselves to support the babies, so the children are helpless. The parents often pay a certain sum for the child, and this added to the remuneration from the mother represents the income of the establishment. Rigid state legislation should control all maternity homes and all boarding homes for infants in order that vicious institutions of this character may be abolished. All others should be required to meet specified standards of efficiency. Among the best laws regulating these agencies are those of Indiana, Michigan, and Nebraska.

Whenever possible the illegitimate child should be kept with his mother, for in this way love for the child is developed. Otherwise he is liable to suffer from neglect. The efforts to find situations in the country for the mother with her child are

quite successful. The mother should be removed as far as possible from temptation, be given wise supervision, and be accorded the opportunity to regain her position in society. If this can be done, the child also will become a respectable member of the community.

c. The Defective Child.

At the National Conference of Charities and Correction in 1906, the Committee on Children favored the use of the institution for temporary care only, but it opposed the principle that underlies the orphan asylum. On the other hand, it favored permanent institutional care for the feeble-minded, epileptic, and certain groups of crippled, deformed, and otherwise incurable children. It requires no argument to show that the principles applying to normal children must be modified in the case of the abnormal, and furthermore the development of the eugenic point of view has checked all tendencies toward the placing-out of distinctly subnormal children. Most of them are the victims of a bad heredity which we can under no conditions afford to perpetuate, besides the helplessness of these children usually makes special care advisable. The feebleminded should be given permanent institutional care and reproduction should be made impossible. State care is the accepted plan, and all feeble-minded in almshouses and prisons should be placed in proper institutions. The principle of action in regard to the high-grade types of feeble-minded is not satisfactorily determined, because the number is so great that institutional care seems financially impossible for many years; yet, they are the real menace, for no objection is made to custodial care for the lowest classes. The high-grade imbeciles, however, are a distinct racial menace and several plans for preventing their reproduction have been suggested. The chief

ones are:

Complete institutional care with farms and workshops attached where inmates may become partly, or in some cases wholly, self-supporting.

Temporary care and training in an institution and sterilization on release.

Provision for the permanent care of all feeble-minded girls and women of child-bearing age first, so as to reduce the number of illegitimate births, and the care of the remaining feebleminded as soon as provision can be made.

None of these plans has received general acceptance, but the problem of the feeble-minded is steadily increasing in seriousness and a plan of adequate control must be developed.

The physically defective classes are also in need of special care. Many children are permanently crippled, and institutions should be provided for them where they will have the advantages of home life as far as possible. The plan of a state institution for their care as developed by Minnesota, Massachusetts, and New York, embodies a good principle because cripples are usually distributed among institutions having no special provisions for their care and are practically neglected. Private philanthropy can also well afford to equip institutions properly so as to educate and maintain permanently those crippled and deformed children who cannot be taken to the public schools. Orthopedic hospitals and medical service are primary requisites, but first of all, efforts should be made to cure as many as possible of the physically defective. Then, if necessary, permanent institutional care should follow.

3. Conclusion.

The general principles and methods of child saving center about the fundamental fact that the interests of the child are paramount. Adequate care and training of children are the most effective forms of preventive work. The child of to-day becomes the useful citizen or the adult dependent or delinquent of to-morrow, therefore the conditions of future society are contingent upon our present methods of providing for our children. The home is fundamental, and its importance as an institution surmounts the value of a child, but the children of any particular home are to be preferred to the continuation of that home. The child rather than the parent is the proper object of consideration, for the child is the man in the making, and it is work well worth doing well.

CHAPTER III

PRIVATE CHILD-SAVING AGENCIES

1. Home and Aid Societies.

Although public agencies have in most states made some provision for dependent children, the bulk of the work has been accomplished by private organizations, of which the most important are the "Home" and "Aid" societies. Children's "Home" societies have been formed in 31 different states. These organizations are federated into a national body which, however, has little control over the constituent members. The typical home society practically confines its work to placing dependent children in foster homes. It receives children from the courts and from other sources, but does not usually deal with those who are expected to remain in their homes, a fact, however, that has not prevented some of these societies from expanding their functions. Their work is usually state-wide, only one such society existing in any state.

The societies are equipped in most cases with temporary homes for the housing of the homeless children pending their transferal to their new homes. As children have been prohibited from being sent to the almshouse, the home society has been utilized to a large extent for the care of dependent children. Public officials find it a necessary part of the charitable organization of a community, and instead of competing with it enlist its coöperation. South Dakota is an example of a state subsidizing the home society and using it for public child-caring work.

In many cities organizations known as "Children's Aid Societies" have arisen. These differ somewhat from "home" societies, both in method and ground covered; for in addition to the task of handling children who need foster homes, they