"They are human beings."
"A pretty low example."
"And they are more Americans than your ancestors or mine were three hundred years ago."
"Nonsense. They're different, I tell you—different. Seriously, I know what I am talking about: I speak from systematic investigations, reports, statistics. The very latest investigation shows that all but about thirteen per cent. of these women were either born abroad or else are the children of foreign parents. It is always the newest immigrants that swell the ranks, and of course the newest immigrants are our lowest type."
"I don't see that all this alters the question."
"Well, it does."
"The lower they are, the more plainly it is our duty to raise them."
"My dear Marian, how can you raise them when you don't understand them?"
Marian shook her handsome head.
"You will come back to that," she said; "and all that I can answer is that, not being utterly stupid, and having come to understand a few abstract problems, I have hopes of mastering something so close at hand to me and so concrete as a fellow human being."