BLIND, EDUCATION OF THE; DEAF, EDUCATION OF THE.
The The problem of the feeble minded has come to be recognized as one of the most difficult and acute social questions. It has long been known that a considerable number of the inmates of reformatories and prisons were mental defectives but until recently there was no means of determining what pro portion of them belonged to this class. Within the past few years there have been devised the Binet-Simon tests, and other tests for ascer taining the mentality of children. These tests have been applied to inmates of reformatories in large numbers, and it has been discovered that from 5 per cent to 25 per cent of the boys, and from 20 per cent to 50 per cent of the girls in such institutions are distinctly feeble-minded. It is more difficult to ascertain the mentality of adults, but it is generally agreed that a considerable proportion, ranging from 10 to 40 per cent of the adult inmates of jails, prisons and reformatories are feeble-minded.
Dr. Henry H. Goddard, director of the department of research of the Training School for Feeble-minded Children, at Vineland, New Jersey, who has made extensive studies along this line, says that every feeble-minded child is a potential criminal. The feeble-minded child becomes a criminal, not because of deliberate viciousness, but because he has not the mental capability or the will power to withstand the ordinary temptations of life, and because he is readily susceptible to the influence of vicious associates who make use of him to promote their own ends, and initiate him into criminal ways. Many crimes of violence are committed by persons of defective mentality, especially by the high-grade feeble-minded who have come to be known as °morons° who are easily excited or frightened, and who are not restrained by motives of conscience or prudence.
The studies of Goddard and other investi gators have shown that the feeble-minded woman is twice as prolific as the normal woman, and that the large majority of feeble-minded children are the offspring of feeble-minded mothers. This arises partly from the fact that
she is an object of pursuit and becomes the mother of illegitimate children and partly be cause she is not restrained by the ordinary con sideration of prudence. If the feeble-minded woman consorts with the normal man there is more than an equal chance that the offspring will be defective; if she consorts with an inebriate or a syphilitic the probability of de fective offspring is greatly increased: if she consorts with a feeble-minded man her off spring is sure to be defective.
Under former social conditions a large part of the feeble-minded children died in infancy of early childhood; but with the gradual im provement in housing conditions, milk supply, and the general care of mothers and children among the poorer classes, together with the establishment of institutions for feeble-minded children, the lives of such children are pre served, and apparently their numbers are in creasing more rapidly than the normal class. The number of feeble-minded children in the community is unknown. Indeed an exact defi nition of feeble-mindedness has not yet been established; but the estimates of the best quali field experts indicate not less than one feeble minded person out of every 300 of the popula tion, which would indicate a total of not less than 300,000 for the United States. Some ex perts estimate a much larger number.
Remedies.— Much attention is being given to the question as to how the multiplication of the feeble-minded can be checked. The most important propositions to this end are instruc tion of the public as to the danger of the marriage of the feeble-minded, marriage re striction laws, sterilization and segregation of the feeble-minded, especially young women of child-bearing age. Instruction is only a partial remedy because those who need it most are incapable of profiting by it. Marriage laws are a valuable but partial remedy for the reason that the feeble-minded multiply their kind re gardless of marriage.