It is universally recognized to be the inherent right of all groups of men, beginning with the family, and holding its inviolable sacredness in the municipality, in the State and in the nation, to protect themselves against immorality, disease and disorder; but it is only when purity and harmony exist within the gates that the gates are effectively closed to that which is bred without.

There is little use to establish national or State seaport quarantine, either sanitary or social, if what is quarantined against is breeding and flourishing within the boundaries.

It is of little avail to exclude the Chinese, on account of their dull moral sense, which, it is said, precludes the possibility of good citizenship, or paupers, imbeciles and insane persons, while we are cultivating crops of similar defectives with an indifference of neglect which shows as dull moral sense among ourselves as that attributed to the Chinese, or as imbecile or insane lack of attention to first principles as could be exhibited by the leering and gibbering refuse of Europe which we turn back from our shores.

Care begets care as surely as carelessness begets carelessness. A house-wife who presides in a tidy home will hasten to close all openings when there is a dust storm raging without. This is too axiomatic to enlarge upon, but the illustration is strong. It is only when we have perfected the character of our own Apprentice Citizens, by giving them every chance to develop whatever qualities they bring with them from our mutual Creator, by the best methods known to the Science of Child-Culture, that we can appreciably feel any good results of closing our ports to the defective and neglected children of China or Europe. It can only be when we are ourselves free from expressions of criminal neglect that we can preach to the world except in the form of a paraphrased adaptation of the saying of a political economist of the saloon persuasion to a solicitor for a waif's home, which was as follows: "Let the blokes as breeds vermin look out for their vermin. I ain't got no sugar for the kids of such."

It will only be when we have attended to our own national first principles—our Cadet Citizens—that we can notice imported dullards and perverts among us by contrast with our own product.

When we have applied the thoroughness demanded by our highest intelligence in character culture we can close our gates to the bad characters of all the world, and say, with good grace and effect: "No! No! friends. We respect the sacred title of 'Brother,' we believe in brotherhood, and hope for the time when the mandate of Christ shall be fulfilled in the establishment of a Universal Brotherhood of Man, but let us begin to accomplish it in the right way. We have learned how to cultivate the children the Creator sends us in such a way as to make perfect chrysanthemums of good citizens out of the skimpiest little wild flowers of waifs that have heretofore languished in neglect on stony wastes, unnourished and uncared for. We have yet some little gardening—kindergartening—to attend to before we are ready to open our National Character Exposition, and in the meantime we will ask you to excuse us from the usual conventionalities of old-time methods while we start the brotherhood idea to propagating right here at home where we can watch it. It will take about three or four years to organize a Mother Branch of Government, raise and drill a sufficient army of "Angels of the State" and make them efficient kindergartners, and five years more to get rid of the criminals and perverts of the present time, either by conversion under the warmth of a new point-of-view that will throw a mantle of charity over their past ill-doing, or by certain death which will seek them as victims within that time, if they are helplessly lost to reform.

"Let us see—four years and five years are nine years. We have just cleared the home, as well as the foreign, atmosphere of certain impurities, of lack of respect for us on account of our granger and commercial habits of prosperity, as if by a flash of lightning, so that we may work in peace and have plenty of time in the next decade to prepare for the exposition which we will offer to the world under the name of United States and Canadian Character Exposition and Peace Jubilee. When we have opened our exhibit and given our object lesson, after the manner of the kindergarten, we can say to the world: "Come and see what we have done with material gathered from all your lands and nations. Not one race or national ingredient has been omitted from our brew. What God makes is good and within the power of man to cultivate into usefulness, and here is the proof of it. Now go home and do likewise within your own national boundaries, and when you have produced good material for brotherhood send it to us and we will welcome it, but until then, the purity of our own establishment demands that we refuse your neglects who are already too set in perversion to be easily reformed.

"Good friends of China and of India and of Africa and of the Islands of the Sea, or any of the so-called semi-civilized or uncivilized peoples of our earth, we will send you missionaries and show you how to cultivate what you have as well as the quality of the material will permit, and we will supply all the world with an object lesson, but we cannot take your defectives as boarders in our family."

As a logical sequence of a Strict Social Quarantine it is possible for any civilized nation to make such an exhibit as given in the illustration in ten years, for the area of neglect is very small in which idleness and disorder and criminality breed, although the area of disturbance caused is as wide as the world. We say ten years as a measure of possibility on the authority of proved results, but fifteen years is a most reasonable time to settle as an aim if attempted by a majority co-operation.

It has been said that God never hurries. This is true when the contrast is made between our unit of time and our idea of eternity, but when His pure atmosphere has been encumbered with intolerable inconsistencies, He flashes the lightning, and calls the attention of the world to it by loud thunder.

In our opinion it is time that lightning should clear our social atmosphere. We have been shown the way and the fuse has been put in our hand. There is no difference of opinion as to there being impurities in the social atmosphere, and methods of purification have been proven to be effective and have been approved by social chemists who have intelligently investigated. No creed, no political party, no class interest, no selfish interest, nothing! opposes the giving of babies a chance to develop their best possibilities, while the cost of it, lavish though it may be in the beginning, is a better investment than any other, not only to the Commonwealth, but to each contributing unit; to you, and to me, and to our children.

Fellow Citizens, do you not see and smell and feel the impurities in our social atmosphere? Do you not realize, even if you are indifferent yourself, that your children are breathing and are being morally and spiritually asphyxiated by this atmosphere? With the fuse placed in your hand and the promise of the Master of our Civilization that "Of Such is the Kingdom of Heaven"; the heaven that we are seeking, can you resist applying the fuse? Do you not think it is time to lighten, when we know that the bolt of destruction will consume only the evils which now environ us and our own children? Are we not agreed? Yes! We are agreed! Then touch the fuse and let the lightning strike! Some children are now perishing, and we know it, and the means of rescue are at hand. The responsibility now is ours. Then, again, our responsibility demands it, IT MUST LIGHTEN!!

APPENDIX