1129. 736 Analysis of America's Modern Melting Pot. The frequency of mental defect varies greatly with races and communities, but if we define feeble-mindedness as the inability, on account of deficient native mental equipment, to cope with the present social complex without custodial assistance, we may quite properly think of the feeble-minded as constituting one-half of 1 per cent of the whole population. Studies of institutional populations and field surveys have shown that only about 5 per cent of the feeble-minded persons needing custodial care are actually receiving it from their prospective states. The rest remain in the care of their own families, much to the social and economic detriment of both family and community. Mr. Box. These studies concern the very lowest or more degenerate grades of the feeble-minded. Is there not a wide range of low-grade mentality between the positively degenerate and the normal population, which really constitute a great menace to the effectiveness of the Nation? Doctor Laughlin. So far as general ineffectiveness is concerned, the great drag to the population is caused by the border-line group which you have delimited, much more than by custodial levels of mental deficiency, because it is the border-line group which is much more humerous than the custodial cases; it is also the group which is able to reproduce itself in the community at large, and which recruits a large portion of the still more degenerate individuals. The Literacy Test. Mr. Cable. To what degree is out present literacy test for immigrants also a test for mentality of the absence of feeble-mindedness? Doctor Laughlin. The literacy test is a partial, occasional, and indirect criterion of inborn mental capacity of a certain rather low level. Mr. Cable. Will you please explain further the difference between literacy tests and mental tests, as each might be applicable to immigration? Doctor Laughlin. The literacy test became applicable on May 5, 1917. It is applied only to aliens over 16 years of age, with numerous exceptions. This test requires the would-be immigrant to read, from printed cards, in a language of his own choosing, 30 or 40 words in common use. Because of the low standard thus required, the test is more an examination into opportunity, especially educational opportunity, than it is into native inborn and hereditary mental ability. Given fair or even low educational opportunities, anyone except for a very low grade, feeble-minded person, or one physically unable to read, should be able to pass this examination. The fact, however, that an adult can be coached to read a few printed words is prima facie evidence that the individual is not an imbecile. It is not, however, complete evidence that such an individual may not be a moron or on the border line between technical feeble-mindedness and inferior normality. On the other hand, it may be said that, even in countries where educational facilities are very low, the most energetic and mentally ambitious will learn to read in spite of his environmental handicap. Therefore in such cases and, to such an extent, literacy becomes closely associated with elementary mental ability. But, at closest, this correlation shows many gaps. There are many low-grade adults who can read a little, and there are also, in parts of Europe, many persons who can not pass the literacy tests, but who, nevertheless, are of average mental ability. The mental tests which have been devised and developed, and increasingly better standardized during the past few years, could be used to much better advantage than the literacy test in testing quality and strength of mind, in an effort to admit persons of sound mind and to exclude mental weaklings. A series of mental tests especially adapted to the immigrant testing, in much the same manner as the Alpha and Beta mental examinations of the Division of Psychology of the United States Army was adapted to recruits and the draft during the World War, would, without doubt, constitute a better adapted system for the determination of the native mentality in immigrants than is found in the present literacy test. The thing we wish to admit into the United States is not primarily the ability to read; it is the ability to learn to read, to understand, and to govern conduct and to direct energy in accordance with understanding; we wish to exclude the inborn inability to do these things. For the year ending June 30, 1922, the immigration service debarred 1,249 persons on account of their inability to read. During the same period, 112 persons were debarred as idiots, imbeciles, or feeble-minded. Principally, in deterring illiterates from sailing thither, but also in turning back a few who reached out shores, the literacy test doubtless kept out an undesirable contribution to the population; however, the modern mental tests would do the work more accurately and would act more directly upon the selection ideal which caused this country to require literacy in the immigrant, which ideal calls for the ability to take on an education and, if opportunity is presented, to develop into a peaceable, law-abiding and energetic citizen. If in the Old World