the reform of the tariff stands first in importance. It is necessary
to bring it more into line with the industrial conditions of to-day,
which call for foreign markets rather than a domestic or closed
market; and for a liberal commercial policy in place of one that
regards the products of other countries, whether imported in the crude
or manufactured forms, as constituting a menace to American labor and
American interests. It calls for a systematic and intelligent
revision, which shall throw out such duties as are no longer of
service even for protection, and to reduce those that are hostile to
the products of other countries and bear in themselves the seeds of
reprisals in the future. Now that the United States is going into the
great markets with its manufactures, and obtaining a foothold against
all competitors, the invitation to retaliation holds a danger far
greater to its own interests than any that can be inflicted on other
peoples. The greater the advances made the more readily will recourse
be had to reprisals and hostile legislation; and in support of every
act appeal may be had to examples set by the United States.[8]
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Wealth of Nations, vol. i, p. 112 (Rogers's edition).
[7] Bastable. Public Finance, p. 181.
[8] "The old protectionist, with the stock arguments about the
influence of the tariff upon wages and all the rest of it, is
beginning to die out. He told us all he had to say about the 'pauper
labor' of Europe, by which he often meant the best educated and most
skillful artisans of the world. We got tired of hearing about how the
importer paid the tax, how it was Europe and England in particular
that was all the time squeezing our lives out, till nearly all of us,
being of English ancestry ourselves, wondered whether we, even, could
be so good as we hoped we were, if we had sprung from something so
essentially perverted and bad. We were told, too, that American
tourists who went to Europe and spent money there which they ought to
have squandered at home were not friends of their country, and that
they did us a particularly hostile act when they brought clothing,
statuary, or diamond rings back with them from foreign parts. A season
of high prices was a real heaven, and wars and fires were good things
because they destroyed property that would have to be replaced, and
this would create that demand which, reacting on supply, would
increase prices. To say that an article was cheap was to say that the
political party in power was no longer worthy of public confidence. It
was related that each government could make its people so rich, and
the idea was thought to have been traced down from Henry C. Carey,
that the rest of the world could be safely disregarded altogether.
"Seriously, who believes any of this stuff nowadays? The protectionist
is not reckoning with such popular impotency and stupidity. He
believes in his fellow-man, and wants to give him a helping hand. He
does not care what effect it has on England or Ireland. He is not sure
that a protective tariff in and of itself will increase the wages of
the workmen. He is even inclined to think that less wages and profits
would do well enough for every man, if it were cheaper to live and
there were not such extravagant demands upon every person from all
sides--this without being a socialist. He is certain that 'a cheap
coat' does not necessarily make 'a cheap man,' but the cheaper the
coat the better it will be for the wearer. That is what we are all
trying to do, improve our processes, increase our effective working
power, which means, if you please, to make things cheaper."--_The
Manufacturer_ (organ of the Manufacturers' Club of Philadelphia).
MENTAL DEFECTIVES AND THE SOCIAL WELFARE.
BY MARTIN W. BARR, M. D.,
CHIEF PHYSICIAN, PENNSYLVANIA TRAINING SCHOOL FOR FEEBLE-MINDED
CHILDREN, ELWYN, PA.
Periods of extraordinary efflorescence or fruitage are followed by
exhaustion and sterility not infrequently demanding the free use of
the pruning knife; and, just as we remark how frequent is idiocy the
offspring of genius, so do we find the same seeming paradox, of mental
defect in rank and increasing growth the product of this most
wonderful nineteenth century.
True, science has contributed to numbers by revealing as mental
defectives the many "misunderstood," "the backward," "the feebly
gifted," as well as by showing what was once esteemed moral perversion
to be moral imbecility; but a truth to which science also attests is,
that unstable nerve centers uniting and reacting through successive
generations, producing various forms of neuroses, evidenced in
insanity, moral and mental imbecility, idiocy and epilepsy, do show
the influence of a highly nervous age.
Our last census reports, although necessarily uncertain and
unreliable, yet show ninety thousand mental defectives, not including
the insane. Unrecognized and unacknowledged cases swell the number
easily to one hundred thousand within our present borders--how many we
are going to annex remains to be seen; but this is an enemy that
attacks not our frontiers but our hearthstones. We have reached that
point when we must conquer it, lest it should conquer us, and the
means to this end may be summed up in three words--separation,
asexualization, and permanent sequestration. "Diseases desperate grown
by desperate appliances are relieved, or not at all," and we must
recognize that heroic measures now are as essential to the welfare of
the unfortunate as to society, which will then naturally adjust itself
to new conditions. Viewing the separation and massing of these
irresponsibles--innocent victims of ignorance, debauchery, or selfish
lust--men will come to realize that a greater crime than taking is the
giving of such life; and so a greater reverence for the sacredness of
marriage, a deeper sense of the great responsibilities of parenthood,
will do more to avert this evil than the most stringent marriage laws.
That the present demands some restraint upon the ignorant and the
indifferent there can be no doubt, and laws preventing the marriage of
defectives and of their immediate descendants would go far to stem the
tide of harmful heredity.
But what to do with those now in our midst is the vital question! They
must be provided for in a way that shall insure safety to society,
economy to the State, and protection and happiness to the individual.
The answer found in the experience of half a century is, briefly,
asylums for the helpless--training schools and colonies for those
capable of becoming helpful. These in very name and nature being
widely separate, just as separate as titles and names indicate, should
be their working systems. Work among the feeble-minded, a
philanthropic movement directed first toward the idiot, soon found a
limit in dealing with a subject not trainable and but slightly if at
all improvable. Thence, diverging and broadening as idiocy became
better understood and imbecility in various phases became recognized,
it found its true province in strengthening and encouraging feeble
intellects, arousing and stimulating indolent and weak wills, and in
training and directing into healthful channels the abnormal energy of
those destitute of the moral sense. How wide the divergence can
readily be seen, as also how entirely incompatible with union must be
work further apart in reality than is the training of an imbecile and
a normal child.
[Illustration: EXCITABLE IDIOT. Practically unimprovable.
APATHETIC IDIOT. Practically unimprovable.
IDIO-IMBECILE. But slight hope of improvement.]
For the idiot, who not only can not be trained, but who in many cases
is unimprovable even in the simplest matters of self-help, nothing is
needed but that care and attention found in every well-regulated
nursery of delicate children, the _sine qua non_ being regular hours,
simple nourishing food, frequent baths, and tender mothering. As many
are paralyzed, blind, lame, or epileptic, it is desirable that the
dormitories, well ventilated, be on the same floor with the living
rooms and of easy access to bathrooms and playgrounds. Covered and
carefully guarded porches should afford the much-needed fresh air and
outdoor life in all weathers. These, with cheerful, sunny playrooms,
provided with simple toys and furnished with bright decorations
varying with the season, will contribute the maximum of pleasure for
this life of perpetual infancy. Low vitality, general poverty of the
whole physical make-up, the prevalence of phthisis and epilepsy and
kindred diseases require the daily inspection of a physician, while
the comfort and well-being of the whole, both workers and children,
are insured by a capable and sympathetic house mother.
The character of attendants is of the first importance, as these are
they who live with the children; it should combine that firmness,
tenderness, and balance that constitute an even temperament, capable
of recognizing and meeting an occasion without loss of self-control.
The duties involve not only the care of the idiots, but the training
and direction of idio-imbeciles as aids, and this dealing with natures
often wholly animal, requires a certain refinement and dignity of
character--at least an entire absence of coarseness--while a knowledge
of the simpler manual arts, and if possible of drawing and music, will
do much to soften and brighten these darkened natures. As these
qualities are valuable as well as rare, the remuneration should be in
proportion; certainly sufficient to induce permanency and to
compensate for such isolation. A life of constant wear and tear
demands also regular periods of rest, and the corps therefore should
be sufficiently large to give relief hours daily as well as vacations.
The idio-imbecile, but one remove from his weaker brother, to whose
wants he may be trained to minister, finds here his fitting place, and
the domestic service of these asylums may be largely drawn from this
class and also from that of the low-grade imbecile. Working as an aid,
never alone, always under direction, he finds in a monotonous round of
the simplest daily avocations his life happiness, his only safety from
lapsing into idiocy, and therefore his true home.
The relief to the home, the actual benefit to the State in this
housing and care of the idiot and idio-imbecile can never be fully
estimated. It is reckoned, however, in a general way that for every
idiot sequestrated the energies of two if not four normal persons are
returned to society.
Imbecility, mental or moral, congenital or accidental, is either an
inherent defect or an irrecoverable loss, an incurable disease for
which hospitals can do nothing, nor can reformatories form again that
which never has been formed. Could language be made clear enough to
enable the public mind to grasp this fact, the work of training
schools, the only hope of the imbecile, would then be simplified, and
people might be willing to accept what they can give, in the only way
in which it can be given, to be of any permanent value. As it is, the
few charlatans who profess to train and in a few years send out an
imbecile ready to take a high-school or college course not only
deceive those from whom they may gather a few thousands, but their
representations, coupled with that of a sensational press, effectually
impede the progress of a work which must eventually find its true
place in the system of public education.
Influenced by these misrepresentations, parents come with profound
idiots and high hopes of a course of training (here is one of the
misfortunes of an idiot asylum within a training school), and simply
refuse to accept a negative to their expectations. Again--to waifs and
strays, high-grade imbeciles, developing after years of labored
training proficiency in music, drawing, or some one of the industrial
arts, friends will suddenly crop up and, dazzled by what seems
phenomenal genius, seek to withdraw them just as they become useful to
the community. Little do they know of the weak will, indolent nature,
and utter lack of "go," that forbid competition with normal labor and
must forever be subject to the will of another; still less of the weak
physical build that is kept intact only by watchful care, and which
would succumb to any undue hardship. So much for the difficulties that
beset the work. Now as to the work itself.
As this must vary according to the status of the individual, a careful
study and a correct diagnosis are of primary importance in order that
the work may be fitted to the child, not the child to the work. The
plan pursued is as follows: A thorough examination--physical, mental,
and moral--is first made by the chief physician in connection with
papers properly filled out giving personal and family history. He is
then sent to the hospital for a fortnight to insure immunity from
disease. There, while perfectly free and unrestrained among his
fellows, he is under constant observation of the nurses; these
observations, carefully noted, are returned to the chief physician,
who turns both over to the principal of schools, designating the grade
in which he is to enter for probation. Here under different
environment he is again tested for some weeks and finally placed.
[Illustration: HIGH-GRADE IMBECILE.
HIGH-GRADE IMBECILE. Very improvable--can read, write, draw, etc.
LOW-GRADE IMBECILE. Only slightly improvable.]
It is hard for the uninitiated to understand that the grade, be it
high, middle, or low, is not associated with promotion and advancement
as in schools for normal children. On the contrary, it signifies the
quality and status of the individual, his limitations, his
possibilities, and consequently determines almost unfailingly the
training for his life work; not by any hard-and-fast lines, but by a
general mapping out of means which experience has proved will best
insure his development, because best suited to his needs. Every
latitude is allowed and, as the comfort of both the teacher and the
entire class depends upon each going to his own place, there is easy
and natural transference according to the necessity indicated by
either progress or retrogression; but the varied occupations in each
grade give ample scope for indulgence of individual proclivity in the
means of development, and it is found that the original diagnosis,
based upon experience, rarely errs.
The motto of the schools--"We learn by doing; the working hand makes
strong the working brain"--shows manual training to be the basis of
the scheme of development, varied for each grade to suit the
intelligence. Thus classified, various occupations are arranged and
presented with the double intent of securing all-round development,
and of giving at the same time opportunity for choice according to
individual bent, the child being gradually permitted to devote himself
more exclusively to that in which he shows a tendency to excel, and to
gain a certain automatic ease in what shall prove the initial of a
life employment. A knowledge of writing and of numbers is acquired
incidentally as a necessary part of these occupations in daily
practice, and arithmetic, taught with objects, is chiefly counting,
separating into fractional parts, and practical measurements. Books
are used rather as a convenient means of attracting and holding
attention while inducing habits of consecutive thinking than for a
knowledge of facts to be memorized. Those who can learn to read gain
naturally a means of self-entertainment, of self-instruction, hence a
certain amount of culture, so long as protected in an institution from
indiscriminate and pernicious literature.
The low-grade imbecile, but a slight degree removed from the
idio-imbecile, is, like him, totally incapable of grasping artificial
signs or symbols. He can therefore never learn to read or write;
figures have no meaning for him, nor numbers, beyond the very simplest
counting acquired in the daily repetition of some simple task such as
knitting, netting, braiding rope, straw, or knotting twine. The
excitation of interest in these, which will also give hand and arm
power, the arousing of the sluggish, indolent will, through the
stimulus of pleasurable emotions, the physical development by means of
the various drills and the moral influence of refined, orderly
surroundings--these, together with some practical work of house,
garden, or farm, which forms part of the daily routine, are all that
school life can do for him.
[Illustration: MORAL IMBECILE OF HIGH GRADE.
MORAL IMBECILE OF MIDDLE GRADE.
MORAL IMBECILE, LOW GRADE.]
From this preparation he passes to the industrial department, where he
receives training in that occupation which the school has indicated
for him, becoming in his limited way a useful and contented member of
a community which should be his life home. As both of these types
develop either extreme docility or perversity--the one quiet, gentle,
obedient, following any suggestion even of a comrade's stronger will;
the other obstinate, indolent, often brutal and cruel--the necessity
for constant guardianship is therefore self-evident.
When we consider that the training of a high-grade imbecile takes four
times the period commonly allotted to a normal child, some idea of the
vital energy expended on the training of the lower grades may be found
in the following example:
I find in our museum of educational work a little ball which I am
inclined to regard the most valuable thing in the whole collection.
The boy who made it was a low-grade imbecile. His hand against every
man, he fancied every man's against him. Always under strict custodial
care, that he might harm neither himself nor others, he would vent his
spleen in tearing his clothing. His teacher, a woman of rare patience
and devotedness, sat beside him one day, tearing strips of old linen
and laying them in order. "See, Willie, let us make some pretty strips
and lay them so." His wonder grew apace at seeing her doing what he
had been reproved for doing; at once he responded, and a new bond of
sympathy was established between them. She was playing his game--the
only one, poor little lad, that he was capable of--and he joined in.
"Now, we will draw out the pretty threads and lay them in rows." For
weeks the boy found quiet pastime in this occupation, and the violent
nature grew quieter in proportion. One day the teacher said, "Let us
tie these threads together and make a long string." It took him months
and months to learn to tie those knots, but meanwhile his attendants
were having breathing space. "Now we will wind this into a pretty
ball, and I will cover all you make for the boys to play with"; and a
new occupation was added to his meager list.
The next link in this chain of development was a lesson in knitting.
Again, through months of patient teaching, it was at last
accomplished, and the boy to the day of his death found his life
happiness in knitting caps for the children, in place of tearing both
them and their clothing. You see the teacher was wise enough to
utilize the natural activities of the child and divert evil
propensities into healthful channels. Had she brought knitting and
bright yarn or anything foreign to him first, it would in truth have
been fitting new cloth to old garments and the rent would have been
widened: his obstinacy would have been aroused, and he would have
continued to tear to the end of the chapter.
[Illustration: HIGH-GRADE IMBECILES (FEEBLY GIFTED) AT SLOYD WORK.]
The imbecile of middle grade receives that fuller presentation of work
suited to fuller capacity. Some time is devoted to the three "Rs," as
it is found that attention may be aroused and concentrated in the
phonetic drills, more especially if associated with pictures, and the
drawing of the objects named free-hand; thus eye, ear, and hand are
encouraged to work simultaneously. Those who accomplish finally the
reading of short simple stories not only enjoy evenings in the
library, but may be enabled to glean suggestions for the various
handicrafts for which they are being trained. This effort at quick
observation and original thinking is further carried forward in the
ambidextrous movements of free-hand drawing, designing, and sketching
from life--finding ready and practical application in the daily use of
tools. The value of the rule and the try-square is tested in the
manufacture of the various useful articles in both paper and wood
included under the head of sloyd, and "a boy can not learn to take a
straight shaving off a plank," says Ruskin, "or to drive a fine curve
without faltering, or to lay a brick level in the mortar, without
learning a multitude of other matters which life of man could never
teach him."
Equally useful to the girl in the workroom as to the boy in the shop
is this training of a ready eye, this quick intuition of balance and
proportion, this practice of obedience of hand and arm to brain, until
it becomes automatic. To both, therefore, the value of such
preparation will be incalculable. It is noticeable that boys of this
grade turn out as good workers in the ordinary crafts of shoemaking,
carpentering, and house painting as those of higher grade who,
although capable of grasping more intelligently the details of work,
yet do not bring to it that energy and perseverance of one who finds
in it "this one thing I do." With the imbecile of high grade, able to
accomplish studies equal to about the first intermediate of the public
schools, there is a diffusion of interest; the intelligence broadens
rather than deepens during the school period in natural response to
environment. With greater grasp of numerical values and of letters he
attains proficiency impossible to the lower grades in drawing, in
music, in printing, and in cabinet work. Other industries will
probably be provided for him as the demand increases, for it must be
remembered that this is a class whose needs have been the last to be
recognized in a work begun, as I have before said, for the idiot.
Regarded as queer, unlike other children--unable to keep up--he has,
after an unsuccessful trial at school, been kept at home, in some
cases an aid, in others a tyrant, to those relatives charged with his
care.
Changed conditions of both family and school, fortunately for him,
combine to render this no longer possible, as absence of proper
training is always certain to result in deterioration. The pressure
upon the primary schools in the struggle for higher education leaves
no time to contend with dull, backward children. In the family the
care-takers grow fewer in proportion as the home-makers become
home-winners, and so these feeble ones are a burden instead of an aid
in the ordinary household offices.
The next hope is a training school where, with false hopes fostered by
ignorance and sensationalism, they are entered, and after a few years,
a time all too short for any lasting benefit, a sentimentality equally
stupid withdraws them from that guardianship absolutely essential,
with just that little knowledge which will render them more dangerous
to society, because less recognizable--an evil element perpetuating an
evil growth. Under both conditions these unfortunates have suffered
from that lack of constant care and supervision which should be theirs
from the cradle to the grave.