The sterilization bill, which has passed the Senate, will be in the House this morning with a majority favorable report from the committee. It is probable that there will be real opposition to the measure on the floor of the House, because of considerable difference of opinion on the subject.

We have pointed out from time to time reasons why we believe this bill should pass. We have shown that hereditary insanity and feeble‐mindedness is apparently increasing in Vermont, owing to the fact that it is impossible to segregate all those who should be in institutions and under supervision.

We have shown that our State hospital for the insane and school for the feeble‐minded are filled to capacity, that there are before the present Legislature calls for additional facilities to care for those defectives, and that the cost of institutional care for these unfortunates in Vermont has mounted rapidly in recent years until the appropriations for the Department of Public Welfare now total nearly a million dollars a year.

We have pointed out that physicians are recommending sterilization as a method of meeting this difficult situation before we are overwhelmed by it. We have shown that the supervisors of the insane in their annual report recommend a sterilization law and that Governor Wilson in his inaugural address advocated such a law.

This morning we wish to speak briefly of the importance of such a law as a humane act, as an aid to the unfortunates themselves.

Under the present arrangement, the State is attempting to segregate in institutions all those who are mentally defective and cannot be properly provided for at home. But the institutions are not large enough to do this adequately, as there is a long waiting list, particularly for the School for Feeble‐Minded.

There are many confined in this institution who are not otherwise dangerous to society except that their lack of self‐control makes them an easy prey to physical passions and to subject to suggestions which stronger minded persons would resist.

Usually these people have no desire to bring children into the world, but they often do so just the same. With voluntary sterilization, under the supervision of the State, it would be possible to release many of these people, after training in the institutions to help them become self‐supporting so that they would take their places in the community without harm to themselves or to others. They thus would be free to come and go as they chose, without further confinement, but under observation and guidance of the State to such a degree as might be found necessary.

Release of these people from the institutions would make room for others who required the institutional care and who cannot now receive it because of lack of adequate facilities. It has been shown that in other states that in the large majority of cases sterilization has no detrimental after‐effects. Many who have had the operation have later married and lived as nearly normal lives as mentality would permit, with no impairment of functions except that they could not propagate.For these reasons we believe that sterilization is not only a safeguard to society, but that it is an actual aid to the mental defectives themselves.