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From the answers to a questionnaire sent to all institutions in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio it would appear that certain definite trends predominate. First, we have admitted to this country and to our institutions a proportionately large number of mental defectives from abroad. Secondly, we have admitted into this country a relatively large number of mentally defective producing stock. Without casting reflections on racial or national immigration but simply to show what available statistics seem to imply this study indicates that relatively few mental defectives or individuals of mentally defective stock are from:

1. Scandinavian
2. French
3. Spanish
4. Welsh
5. Scotch
6. German
7. English

On the other hand a relatively large number come from the following groups:

1. Negro
2. Italian
3. Hebrew
4. Irish
5. Polish
6. Russian
7. S.E. Europeans

This study is too incomplete to offer as an answer to the problem of increased mental deficiency yet the trends indicated seem to be of importance. A thorough screening by the immigration authorities would eliminate, not only the mental defectives, but those of mental defective or psychopathic stock who will be clamoring for admission now that World War II is at an end.

The second answer to the question: "Where are they coming from?" is well-known to us in this field. We are cognizant of the fact that those of the lower strata of society as far as mentality is concerned are tremendously outproducing in offspring those of normal or superior intellectual capacity. In this fact we are faced with a dilemma. How to curb the reproductive activity of the one and at the same time to increase the fertility of the other. Both need to be done. Adequate legislation incorporating the known principles of preventive medicine can help reduce the numbers of the first group. Yet legislation will be of little avail to the second. Families of the normal and superior intelligence are wont to raise only the number of children they feel they can properly care for and educate. European countries have tried subsidies with some success as to increased population but this applies to all levels of intelligence.

If the political powers could offer normal members of society a decent and peaceful world in which to live no doubt the birth rate would soon reach desirable levels.

Thus far in trying to gaze into the future I have dealt largely with the potentialities of this organization and its functions. It has been frequently stated that we have been standing at the crossroads for humanity. An Axis victory would have meant a severe setback in man's ultimate upward progression. Now that this calamity is averted we can, with a degree of confidence, face the future. In recent years we have noted certain trends in our field. Some will be followed to the good of all concerned and others should be abandoned. Let us examine a few of these trends.

It is twenty-five years since our association held an annual meeting in this lake city of Cleveland. Let us survey the changes in special education in these intervening years. Dr. Frank E. Spalding, superintendent of schools here in Cleveland in 1920 presented a paper on "Some Questions Concerning the Care of the Feeble-Minded in the Public School System."

The first question Dr. Spalding raised was on the desirability of segregating these children from their normal brothers and sisters. The second question concerned the curriculum for the retarded child in the public school. The third question was on the kind and degree of handcraft to be taught. The next question he raised was: "Is it possible to arrange any kind of legal or semi-legal control of the feebleminded when they pass out from the control of the school?"

As a general answer to his own questions Dr. Spalding stated: "It would seem to me that it is the function of the public schools as far as these children must be handled in public schools, to go the limit in giving them some kind of appropriate and suitable vocational skill, or semi-skill or partial skill, or whatever you please to call it, by which they can either earn their living or contribute to some extent to their support."

Isn't Dr. Spalding's aim basically that of special education today? The final question that Dr. Spalding asked is one that is being asked today: "How much can we afford to spend on the education of the feeble-minded?" Dr. Spalding did not attempt to give concrete and concise answers to his questions nor were they answered in the discussion which followed. Are we prepared today to give concrete and concise answers to the same questions?

A few years later at the Detroit Convention in 1923 Dr. Charles Scott Berry gave a partial answer to some of Dr. Spalding's questions in his paper on "The Mentally Retarded Child in the Public Schools." Dr. Berry stated: "Our aim in the education of the special class child is to make him a law abiding member of society and to enable him to become wholly or partially self-supporting through engaging in unskilled labor. The folly of attempting to make skilled laborers out of this type of individual when twenty per cent of the normal population gainfully employed are engaged in unskilled labor, is self-evident."