The Pennsylvania Crisis
NEWS AND COMMENT.
An obvious duty is confronting the Legislature of the State of Pennsylvania. Several bills are at present before the House, providing for the care of the feeble-minded, and one bill, introduced by Hon. William C. Freeman, of Lebanon, contemplates the sterilization of feeble-minded and criminal males. This measure has already been adopted by Indiana, Connecticut, California, and Oregon, and there is every reason why Pennsylvania should no longer hesitate to follow their example. The sterilization of all feeble-minded males, if it be accompanied by the custodial care of all feeble-minded females, would in the course of a single generation remove an enormous and ever increasing burden from the taxpaying community. If these defectives are allowed to have children, the children will inevitably be defective, and the state will be under the expense of caring fox* more and more of these helpless and useless beings. How great the responsibility has become is evident from the investigations of Dr Walter S. Cornell and Supt. Samuel Laughlin, under the direction of Dr Joseph S. Neff, of the Department of Public Health and Charities of Philadelphia. This Department has made a census of the feeble-minded in the city, and has arrived at the conclusion that three thousand is a conservative figure. Of these only G07, or about one-fifth, are in proper institutions; 72 are in the public schools; G17 are in improper institutions (insane asylums); 332 are in very improper instjtuNEWS AND COMMENT. 27 tions (almshouses, orphanages, etc.), and the rest are at large. Among those at large are known to be at least 113 females of child-bearing age. The accommodations for feeble-minded women in Pennsylvania are conspicuously inadequate. There is no institution for their sole custody, although some of them are at Elwyn and at Polk, and many more are in almshouses and jails. New Jersey maintains at Yineland a home for 300 such women.
In estimating the whole number of feeble-minded in the state of Pennsylvania, two sources of information are available, the United States Census, and the Philadelphia Census for 1910. Since 1890, in pursuance of an Act of Congress, the census of the feeble-minded outside of institutions has not been taken by the national government, but a study of the figures for that decade and the preceding shows that the ratio of feeble-minded to the whole population is about 153 per hundred thousand. In view of the house to house methods of census taking, this proportion is certainly an underestimate. Dr NefE calculates the minimum number of feeble-minded persons over five years of age in Pennsylvania to be 15,000. Of these the state provides at Polk for 1,480, and at Spring City for 300. At Elwyn, which is not a state institution, 1,066 more are cared for. Elwyn alone has a waiting list of 3,800. It is time for Pennsylvania to take action. As Dr Neff justly observes: “It is infinitely more to the credit of the community that Mary Smith, of high-grade feeble-mind, is in a proper institution doing plain sewing or house work, than in an almshouse doing nothing but bear illegitimate children. “It is more to the credit of the community that William Jones, of middle-grade feeble-mind, is in a suitable institution doing farm work, than in an almshouse.
“It is infinitely more to the credit of the community that John Brown, of high-grade feeble-mind, is in a proper institution, altogether self-supporting by reason of careful supervision, than that he is in prison for rape, arson, theft, or even murder, with a belated plea before the court that he has always been irresponsible.”
The Child Study Section.
Mr. Lewis M. Terman, of the Department of Education of Leland Stanford Junior University, is arranging for the next meeting of the Child Study Section of the N. E. A., to be held in San Erancisco in July. In order to give unity to the deliberations of this section, Mr. Terman is organizing the discussion around the general topic of Child Hygiene, using the term in its broad sense. The programme as he is planning it, promises to be of unusual interest. Some of the questions to be taken up at these meetings will be: (1) The relation of the school to tuberculosis; (2) The training of the school medical officer; (3) Eree medical and dental treatment in school clinics; (4) The teaching of hy28 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. giene; (5) Desirable adaption of school architecture for semi-tropical states; (6) The world’s progress toward school health supervision in the last two or three years; (7) The function and conduct of a psychological clinic in the school; (8) Fatigue, ventilation, desks, etc.
An English Journal of Child Welfare.
The sixth number (March, 1911) of The Child, a Monthly Journal devoted to Child Welfare, of which Dr T. N. Kelynack is the editor, shows that the magazine is already well established. It contains twelve articles and two symposia, besides a department of correspondence, numerous book notices, and other items of general news and information. The field which Dr Kelynack has chosen for his journal is very wide. The subjects treated range from eugenics, the birth rate, and the crime of cruelty to children, to a discussion of school athletics, motion pictures, rationalized spelling, and an account of St. George’s School, Harpenden, for boys and girls. There is an historical article on George Macdonald, and a topographical article on the health resort, Tenby, South Wales. The Child is well printed and very fully illustrated. The publishers are Messrs, Bale, Sons, and Danielsson, Ltd., 83-91 Great Titchfield Street, Oxford Street, London, W.
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