"[1] Taking an aggressive tone in criticizing many aspects of contemporary institutions, Wells proposed a doctrine he called "New Republicanism," which "tests all things by their effect upon the evolution of man.

Wells proposes to "provide the first tentatives of a political doctrine that shall be equally available for application in the British Empire and the United States."

"[4] Renouncing any claim to an "absolute truth" on the ethical, social, and political questions addressed in this volume, Wells says his views are "designed first for those who are predisposed for their reception."

Only in the 19th century, with the idea of organic evolution, has such a view become "definite and pervading," "alter[ing] the perspective of every human affair" and enabling a criterion of judgment based on "wholesome and hopeful births."

A child needs (i) "exclusively to itself" the "constant loving attention" of "a mother or ... some well-affected girl or woman" who is in good health; (ii) warmth; (iii) shelter; (iv) cleanliness; (v) bright lights; (vi) good food; (vii) intelligent and articulate caretaking; (viii) access to skilled medical care.

[7] Rejecting an approach to the problem via philanthropic homes because these encourage "inferior people" to have children and in any case "do not work," Wells argues that public policy ought to "discourage reckless parentage" but not lighten at all the burden of parental responsibility.

"[8] Wells views a child at birth as "at first no more than an animal," but during the first year "a mind, a will, a personality, the beginning of all that is real and spiritual in man" "creeps in" in the course of a "process" that is "unanalyzable."

Wells, following Froebel, emphasizes the child's need to hear clear consistent speech, and disapproves of baby talk and of nurses speaking foreign tongues.

"[11] A key factor in human development is the home, understood broadly as the circle of people with whom the child is in "constant, close contact."

The impression of home life on the child is nearly indelible, and derives principally from In Great Britain there are three main traditions: "the aristocratic, the middle, and the labour class."

Wells emphasizes the tendency to introduce into the curriculum elements "irrelevant to schooling proper"; these are justifiable only if they serve "to widen the range of intercourse."

It demands a thorough overhaul of how English composition is taught, and, except for physics and some rudiments of the concepts of chemistry, regards most instruction in facts of science, history, etc., as superfluous; these are relegated to the school library and the initiative of the student.

Wells also emphasizes the importance of giving children enough time for free play, which he defines as "a spontaneous employment into which imagination enters," and privacy.

[13] As for politics and society, New Republicanism takes the position that any institution that does not "mould men into fine and vigorous forms" must "be destroyed."

3 of his earlier Anticipations (1901), that "in a sense, the British system, the pyramid of King, land-owning and land-ruling aristocracy, yeoman and trading middle-class and labourers, is dead—it died in the nineteenth century under wheels of mechanism."

Here, he stresses the importance of "good general text-books in each principal subject" developed by universities as the basis of instruction, rather than a professor's lectures.

In the third stage of education, "the University Course," lasting "for three or four years after eighteen or twenty-one," in such subjects as medicine, law, engineering, philosophy and theology, physical science, etc.

[16] Upon thought depends the hope of achieving civilization, for society is now hobbled by having become "a heterogeneous confusion without any secure common grounds of action."

Wells rejects communistic socialism and proclaims himself a "moderate socialist" whose goal is "equality of opportunity and freedom for complete individual development."

And this is his reason for condemning existing "local government bodies" as "impossibly small," because "a revolution in the methods of locomotion" has fundamentally altered the economy.

The success of Anticipations in 1901 led to a demand for a sequel, which Wells wrote while his wife was pregnant with his second child, Frank Richard, born on October 31, 1903.

Wells considered Mankind in the Making weaker than his other books on modern socialism, Anticipations, A Modern Utopia, and New Worlds for Old: in his Experiment in Autobiography he describes the book as "my style at its worst and my matter at its thinnest, and quoting it makes me feel very sympathetic with those critics who, to put it mildly, restrain their admiration for me."