The Rome State School and Its Colony System
MENTAL WELFARE
Mr. Robert York, the Director of Vocations, Colonies and Parole at the Rome State Schools, New York, paid a visit to England last October. He very kindly consented to address the Annual Meeting of the C.A.M.W. at Caxton Hall on October 12th and we give below a summary of his interesting remarks on the organisation of the Colony system in the United States where social conditions differ so much from those in this country.
Before I speak of the Rome State School I would like to say some- thing regarding what I have seen here. You know we do things on a big scale in the States and a great many times when we have effected a large project we are satisfied just because it is large. What interests me here has been the fact that while your Institutions are not so large as ours, the after- care which you give is away out of proportion to what I have been acquainted with at home, and I think you have put the pedal on exactly the right spot. I have been going through London Special Schools and seeing different Homes; 1 have also read your reports and I find that you always keep track of those who are sent out from your Institutions. There seems to be very definite follow-up work.
The Rome State School was started in 1894 ^or Unteachable Idiots, and continued as such until the departure of Dr Fitzgerald and the arrival of Dr. Bernstein, when the name was changed, ” Unteachable Idiots ” was dropped out and it was called ” The Rome State School.” Early in 1900, after a great deal of contention, Dr Bernstein rented a house a short distance from the school. There was much objection to any attempt to place any of the boys outside the parent Institution, but the Doctor insisted that it should be done. He sent to this farm a man and wife with about a dozen boys with mental ages of eight and below, and gradually added to it cows, horses and other essentials. This all had to be done without full co-operation from the Authorities in the State Board. This particular farm proved quite a success, unfortunately for those who did not like the idea. The scheme was extended until now there are thirty-five farms and fifteen homes in cities distributed throughout the State. The success of the first few farms indicated that if this could be done for boys it might be done for girls. We were sending girls out into the city to do domestic work but always coming back to the School at uight. It was one thing to get boys into the country but it was terrible to think of getting girls into the cities on the same basis. In several cases either citizens went to the State Government, or neighbours went to Mayors, and if a Colony had been started, insisted that it be closed immediately. They did n?t want girls of their own town to be contaminated by a group of girls definitelv known to be feeble-minded.
The Colony acts as a working-girl’s Club. The girls take their meals where they work but come home at night. The fact that they are living in one place makes it easy to supervise their work, their recreation and also their health, which is one of the biggest factors in keeping the girls happy in their work. The local physician makes examinations regularly, as, also, does our woman physician. We have tried the same system in knitting mill towns.
We have, also, a colony of girls sewing baseballs, no machine having been discovered to do this. I think that possibly the distance from the School is directly responsible for the success of the project. After all, if you give people an opportunity to do a good job and do not watch them too closely, they usually do well. These colonies are rather casually supervised. We hire a man and wife, or possibly two women, and these women are not chosen because they are Social Service graduates. We try to get our help within reasonable mental touch with those with whom they are to deal. For instance, we had a woman with an M.A. degree and she was very much interested in the psychological side of the proposition but made a hopeless failure of the work; whereas, a woman who had never been through a Grammar School made a great success of it.
In looking over your facilities for the employment of boys trained in your institutions, I find you have fifty-seven varieties of perfectly good in- dustrial activities. We do not have this in America, for the Trade Unions prevent it. However, the agricultural section consumes about all the boys available. The State of New York, while it is the most populous of the Union, leads in agriculture, and it is in this line that our boys seem to be the most successful. Throughout the State there are a great many farms where only the father and mother now live?the children having gone to the city. These farms, usually, are back from the main roads and are not particularly modern in equipment but are most decidedly within the capacity of the boy.
Many of these people are very anxious to rent these farms to us at a nominal rate. We make such improvements as are essential to proper sanita- tion but do not try to modernize the farm; the effort being to train these boys in an environment which is about the same type as that to which they will return, or to which they may be sent out for employment. This system of in- expensive housing makes the Institution very elastic. It does away with over- crowding and a waiting list. It also reduces tremendously the per capita cost as most of these farms are largely self-supporting.
The girls’ colonies are started in very much the same way. Where we find a locality in need of domestic help it is a simple matter to rent a house and place therein some twenty or thirty girls who have been trained in the Institution along domestic lines. It takes practically no capital to do this. For instance, in the case of East Aurora, which is a suburb of the city of Buffalo, the inhabitants were anxious that we should start a domestic colony there.
So, a Matron with six girls, sufficient bedding and essentials for immediate needs were taken along. They were, however, without money to make necessary purchases for food and other essentials. We went to the merchants and said, ” Here we are, you asked us to come, now you have to take care of us. We want a stove, food, etc.” These were provided, credit was established and in a few days a colony was running.
They hired our girls by the week, day or hour. About one-third of the girls’ earnings are given directly to them for the purchase of clothing and other personal wants. Another portion is placed in the bank to the credit of the girl who earned it and the remainder goes into a fund which is used to provide those things which the State does not find it possible to provide. In this manner the colony not only serves as a means of helping those living in it but adds to the comfort and pleasure of those not so fortunate. Each colony has an automobile so that the colonists can go to the Beaches and to other places of recreation.
You are, undoubtedly, interested to know a little about the type of colonists. They represent a cross-section of the whole group both as to chrono- logical and mental age. We have six colonies of the pre-school kindergarten type. Here, children from the ages of five to ten years are instructed. These arc in the city and here the child may grow up with the noise and bustle of the city about him and become accustomed to its activities. If, later, he gets back to his city home he finds himself well adjusted to that type of life. There are colonies for the pre-adolescent for training in domestic, agricultural and industrial work. Here they have part-time formal schooling. However, at about fourteen years of age we usually move them either to their homes, to other institutions for placement, or to colonies where definite agricultural or domestic project work fits them for Working Parole. The lower grades find a definite place doing the work which requires less training and intelligence and they are pretty generally distributed throughout the whole system. Quite naturally these colonies take on distinct individualities reflecting the person and capacity of the man and wife in charge. In this way about twelve hundred patients find an environment inducive to their development.
We find a great many boys coming to us around the age of ten who, undoubtedly, will become unstable and delinquent. It is our effort here to train these boys but with as little chance of institutionalization as possible. The colony offers a rather exceptional opportunity for this and in many instances it is possible to guide them through to foster homes and better social adjust- ment. Of a thousand boys of this type placed out in the last six years in foster or working homes, only three have given serious trouble while directly under ?ur supervision.
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