IDIOTIC AND FEEBLE-MINDED CHILDREN 
REPORT OF STANDING COMMITTEE TO THE ELEVENTH NATIONAL 
CONFERENCE OF CHARITIES AND REFORMS, 
ST. LOUIS, 1884 
BY 
ISAAC N. KERLIN, M.D., of Pennsylvania 
AND 
Hon. H. M. GREENE, of Kansas 
BOSTON: 
Press of Geo. H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street 
1884 PROVISION FOR IDIOTIC AND FEEBLE-MINDED 
CHILDREN. 
By request of the honorable President of this Conference and 
in response to letters received from several of its members, your 
Standing Committee on Provision for Idiotic and Feeble-minded 
Children beccfmes active ; and, on its behalf, vve present two papers, 
— this, and one to follow by Hon. H. M. Greene, of Kansas,— con- 
stituting the first formal report made to this body by your Committee. 
It is not strange that the claims of idiotic and feeble-minded 
children should have waited a hearing until your twelfth conference ; 
for this clientage is almost a voiceless one, hidden away often from 
its nearest neighborhood, shunned of companionship, and until the 
last census but half reported. 
Society moves with most alacrity — whether to repress, to save, or 
to aid — toward those forms of misery or those conditions of accident 
to which its active members are most liable. Hence, hospitals for 
the physically maimed, hospitals for the sick, pest-houses for the 
plague-ridden? and asylums for the poor and aged are the first of a 
series of human activities, reaching a higher evolution of unself- 
ishness when the idiotic-born share their measure from the store- 
house of human sympathy. 
Do not understand me to say that this Conference has been entirely 
oblivious to the large class of unfortunates whom we would faithfully 
present to you to-day. On the contrary, the lamented Hervey B. 
Wilbur, the American pioneer in State provision for the idiotic and 
feeble-minded, stood here for years, their life-long friend; while there 
are found in your published records short but earnest and practical 
calls to broader thought and better labor for them. 
NUMBERS AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE IDIOTIC POPULATION. 
The total idiotic population of the United States, reported in the 
census of 1880, amounts to 76,895, which is only 5,102 less than the 
total insane, and nearly equals the total of the blind and deaf mutes. 
“ During the last decade, the increase of population has been 4 
30 per cent.; but the apparent increase in the defective or afflicted 
classes has been a little more than 155 |>er cent.”— Page 1659, Com- 
pendium of the Tenth Census of the United States, 1880. 
The ratio in returns of idiocy for 1880 shows an increase of 209 
per cent, over the returns of 1870. 
It is not claimed by any one that these returns do more than 
establish an approximation to the truth. With increased care in the 
taking of the census, and clearer apprehension on the part of the 
public of what are diseased and defective conditions, the tables will 
more and more approach accuracy. Those of 1880 are an im- 
measurable gain on the tables of 1870, but are still, in the records 
of idiocy, insufficient by 20 or30 per centum. The term “idiot” is so 
repugnant that it is only the most avowed subjects fhat will be so 
returned by its family. Of 295 applications for admission to our 
institution received during 1880, 178 do not appear in the census; an 
omission of 60 per cent. Hence, it is idle to attempt any conclusion 
as to the actual increase in the ratio of new cases of this class. No 
one can read the sources of error as presented by Mr. Wines without 
being fully convinced of the great labor performed by his bureau, its 
conscientiousness and thoroughness. 
Of this great army of 76,895 idiots, there were in institutions for 
the feeble-minded only 2,429, or a little over 3 per cent. 
Supplementing the valuable returns of the census on idiocy in 
Pennsylvania with what we gather from our correspondence, it is safe 
to say that there are about 3,500 idiotic and feeble-minded children, 
between five and eighteen years of age, who are recognized to be 
such in their families and communities. 1 think this gauge of 
one to every twelve hundred will apply, if laid to the population 
of the several older States of our Union. 
A careful examination into the social status of idiotic and feeble- 
minded children, made in 1871, indicates the following as about the 
distribution of these 3,500 feeble-minded children in our own Com- 
monwealth : 717 are in families of ample ability to furnish support, 
either luxuriously in their own homes or in private institutions; 
604 are in families of moderate circumstances,— they could not pay 
more than half rates as are now charged in institutions; 1,619 are in 
poor families, who are quite unable to pay for support away from 
home, yet absolutely unwilling to relieve themselves of a painful 
burden by casting their Children on the county; 560 are in homes of 
the most degraded character or at public expense in almshouses. 
Or, putting these estimates in percentages, 20$ per cent, need 5 
never become a burden to the State; 17 per cent, more might be 
classed in the same favorable category; while per cent, are 
being maintained at the most expensive rates in the homes of their 
suffering families,— families deserving of a prudent, State philan- 
thropy, which, meeting the mechanic and the laborer half way, and 
without absolutely pauperizing as the almshouse does, which he pain, 
fully refuses, would take the heavy end of the burden, lifting to a 
higher and better grade the imbecile himself, emancipating groups 
of brighter children from the tyranny of rule prescribed in almost any 
home where a blighted one dwells, and releasing exhausted mothers 
for the untrammelled care of their households. 
Who can estimate the waste of energy, money, and heart in this 
extravagant home care of feeble-minded and idiotic children ? When 
told, no history of the “ annals of the poor ” is more searching and 
pathetic, and no defence of the doctrine of State aid to relieve the 
calamities of her citizens more impassioned and irresistible. 
DEGREES AND GRADES OF IDIOCY. 
Any comprehensive survey of the defective class under considera- 
tion must take in the infinite variety of conditions embraced under 
the generic term, “ idiocy.” The popular and prejudiced sentiment, 
springing from an inadequate knowledge of the subject or originating 
in an accidental and imperfect acquaintance with one of its lower and 
more unpromising forms, is absolutely wrong, and doing unpardon- 
able injustice to very many innocent and helpful creatures, whose 
blight should not be made more sickly by mean aversion and selfish 
avoidance. 
You must permit me a few minutes of description of these chief 
varieties or grades of idiocy, before proceeding to their practical 
consideration. 
It has been found convenient to group them under the following 
syllabus : — 
i Idiocv APathetic- 
‘ (b) Excitable. 
2. Idio-imbeciles. 
(a) Lower grade. 
3. Imbeciles: \b) Middle grade. 
(c) High grade. 
4. Juvenile Insanity. 
Groups. 
To aid description, imagine that you walk through a considerable 
range of separated buildings, allowing me to select the types of the 
seven or eight grades we shall encounter in as many localities. 6 
Here, in a large, airy, sunny room, lying on couches or advanced to 
rocking-chairs, is the saddest and lowest group. You are likely to 
stop before its type, a helpless gelatinoid creature, ten years of age, 
so limp and structureless that, in the language of the nurse, “ he 
doubles in three like a clothes-horse, when lifted from his l>ed.” 
The only noise that interests him is that of a bell. The only object 
he ever seems to look at is his hand. He cries when he is hungry. 
He enjoys being held and rocked, and shows actual delight when 
bathed. With his great, luminous, soft, jet eyes, he reminds one of a 
seal. Perhaps his intelligence is rather below that of a trained seal. 
It is certainly not that of a babe four weeks old. He is a profound 
idiot, with epileptic complication. Near by is another of the same 
age,— mute, dwarfed, and helpless. She actuates nothing. Her 
only expression of common wants is a low moan or cry ; but she 
rewards the faithful nurse by a smile, recognizing the epithet “baby,” 
which has been applied to her. She sleeps well, and enjoys her 
bath. 
Kxcitable idiots are not so common as t]ie apathetic. They usually 
die early from exhaustion or, less happily, sink into apathetic forms; 
but there is a group in every large asylum of this class, taxing the 
ingenuity of their present care-takers, after wasting the best life of 
their families. 
The temptation for their extinction rises to the lips of the careless, 
forgetful how far such practice would be from all moral or judicial 
right, how revolting to every religious sentiment and contradictory to 
every logical principle. 
So we have them with us, although so little oF us. Annie F., the 
saddest type, aged eight years, mute, wild, and vicious, biting any 
one whom she can reach, with a nervousness in the act that suggests 
its irresponsibility; darting to an open window to throw herself head- 
long below, her glittering eyes, tensely drawn lips, and sudden pal- 
lors indicating the pain and commotion of her poor and worried 
brain. How fittingly and terribly does this disturbed life project 
itself from its ante-natal unrest,— an unwilling and unhappy concep- 
tion, for the destruction of which the mother’s stormiest passions had 
unceasingly but unavailingly contended! And there are a few 
others as sad, exciting wonder why they continue to live, and greater 
wonder how the home and the neighborhood tolerated for years their 
cries, discordant noises, and uncouthness. 
Advanced beyond these apathetic and excitable idiots, we find an 
intermediate group, the idio-imbeciies. Many have the facial ap- 7 
pearance, the deformed heads, the dwarfishness of body, the narrow 
buccal arches, the imperfect teeth of very imperfect creatures; but 
there is dawning intelligence. Taken from their isolation, they feebly 
grasp, through their shyness and sensitiveness, for the better things 
about them. Expecting them to do little or nothing, the trainer is 
daily sustained by successes, and goes on hopefully introducing 
most of them to a higher grade,— that of the lowest forms of imbe- 
cility; and here we discover the strongest individuality, so that it 
is quite impossible to select a type. T. T., age twelve, will illustrate 
as well as any. He is a microcephalic paralytic imbecile of low 
grade: articulation quite imperfect; sense of sight and hearing 
good ; hand well formed; imitation above the grade in which he is 
placed ; cruel in his disposition ; showing discrimination, analysis, and 
candor, when he says he “ likes to wear heavy boots,—good to kick 
boys with.” He is the better of two similarly mal-formed and im- 
becile brothers now living. In this lowest plane of imbecility will be 
found many mutes who are yet possessed of perfect hearing, ready 
appreciation of language, and often dexterous finger and hand ca- 
pacity. Under special training in articulation and the inspiring 
effect of concert recitation and song, they come to the partial posses- 
sion of speech. They rarely become perfect in speech. As their 
capacity is gradually developed, they are carried forward into the 
higher ranks, to become our most interesting children. The idiocy 
or imbecility displayed by them is, as often as not, the effect of 
their isolation. The brighter children of the family outgrow them. 
They betake themselves to solitary lives and belittling occupations, 
until the range of their intelligence becomes very limited. They 
are the Kaspar Hausers of our community. 
Advancing into another apartment, the fifth or sixth of the series 
through which you must imagine yourselves to have been led, we 
find the middle-grade imbeciles of a congregate family. They are 
orderly and neat at their school tables, because, from habit training, 
they have become so. They are patient under the discipline of 
light work, many of them becoming useful drudges and domestic 
servants. They crowd forward into our great laundry, where, com- 
mencing with the folding of our table napkins, they come to dispute 
with one another for the use of the ironing-table or power-mangle. 
The tone of the place being industry, they creep out of their 
sloth and indolence to keep lagging steps with the crowd that carries 
them forward. 
The unfairness of applying to the highest grade, or indeed to any 8 
grade of imbecile children, the word “ idiot,” in any other than its 
generic sense, will occur to any sympathetic and thinking person, 
as he steps across the threshold of the class room, or calisthenium, 
devoted to the higher grades of our defective children. 
The mental deficiency or deviation is often so slight, or the im- 
perfection is found in such a limited range, perhaps involving only 
the power to form a judgment of values, or a judgment of social 
proprieties, or a judgment of moral risk, or a judgment of the preva- 
lent wickedness outside of asylums, that it may seem strange that 
several of these boys and girls should be under the care of an insti- 
tution of this character. 
In this first rank are often found children who have been typical 
cases of idiocy from deprivation, who, under the advantages of 
educational influences especially adapted to the infirmity, rise to the 
first rank, many to become self-supporting under kindly guidance, 
but who, left to themselves, sink lower in their enforced isolation. 
SUSCEPTIBILITY TO IMPROVEMENT. 
This has already been favorably suggested in the description 
given of degrees and grades of idiocy. The wisdom and economy 
of their training and education are no longer a question in those 
communities where institutions have been established. It is now 
a universal admission that one of the pointings of nature is that 
any organized creature, from monad upward, may be modified for 
advancement or retrogression, for good or ill, by the environments 
of its early life. None so subject to this law as human beings, and 
no humanity more obedient to it than the idiotic or feeble-minded 
child. 
Faith, patience, and the peculiar attributes of feminine skill have 
been exercised on more than five thousand congenital imbeciles in 
the institutions of these United States, and the results are quite up to 
the reasonable expectations of those who, in the beginning, pro- 
jected this work. The Ohio institution reports that 24 to 30 per 
centum of its inmates become capable of self-support. The Ken- 
tucky institution reports about the same percentage. If we, of the 
Pennsylvania institution, should count the available labor of those 
whom we retain on our free lists because of their service, perhaps 
almost the same favorable showing might be made. Of those dis- 
charged by us, 10 per centum are reported as getting along quite 
well and earning their living under moderate and judicious guardian- 
ship. Our institutions have received almost unanimous approval 9 
from parents and guardians whose children or wards have been 
placed with us; and, even when necessity has compelled the re- 
admission to almshouses of discharged cases, the testimony of county 
authorities is nearly always commendatory of the improved condi- 
tion of their waifs. They note the diminished toil in administering 
to them, and often acknowledge that these children trained in our 
institutions become valuable in the county hospitals and infirmaries. 
It is not in harmony with the urgent and diffusive work of this 
Conference for me to recite cases confirmatory of these statements; 
and, moreover, the report of individual successes without as lengthy 
rehearsal of failures excites fancies about a very practical work, which 
end in disappointment and hindrance to the real progress of our 
institutions. Suffice it here to say that, in our own family of four 
hundred and fifty inmates, we count the productive value of work 
performed by the industrial classes as equal to $400 per month (that 
is a saving of wage labor of $400 per month), the performers being 
all imbecile persons, and some quite idiotic, who, unemployed, 
would not only be unproductive consumers, but worse ; and as con- 
fidently I can state that ninety per centum of those received are sig- 
nally and appreciably benefited in their own personal happiness, in 
their habits of nicety and cleanliness, in their notions of right and 
wrong, in their perceptions of the relations of things, in their sensi- 
bilities to external influences, and in their development of normal 
selfhood. 
Our work has been blindly done for years, based on the successes 
of accidental and experimental activity; but modern discovery floods 
our labor with a new light, and our experiences come to confirm the 
physiologist, who finds that it is not only true that, under sensory and 
mental exercise, cell growth and atomic residua are induced in ah 
undeveloped, possibly in a defective, part of the brain, but that the 
lost function of the impaired centre of one side or of one part of the 
brain may be restored in the development of another or of the cor- 
responding and, until now, inoperative centre of the opposite side. 
This the physiologist calls the vicarious substitution of one centre by 
another. 
A recent writer in the Popular Science Monthly presents the same 
physiological theory in another form, and with the merit that it has 
been proven by direct experimentation on lower animals and by the 
results of disease in the human subject. 
In brief, it is this : The various perceptions and the various mem- 
ories they fix have certain defined areas, or centres, which are con- 10 
nected with the external organs by insulated white nerve fibres over 
which the sensory impressions are carried. The perceptive and 
memory centres, or areas, have each an inner boundary, where re- 
sides a present power to discriminate and memorize. This is called 
the actual area, outside of which is another boundary, enclosing what 
is called the potential area of the same capacity. Disease may 
attack the actual area, or, as possibly happens with many of our 
feeble-minded children, this actual area may not exist; but there 
resides in the lobule, or potential area, a power of development 
under necessity and stimulating impressions. Like the unimproved 
outlying acres of a farm, which, upon the exhaustion of the home 
tract, are by tillage made to rival the original, so this outlying 
potential area may come to possess all the powers of perception and 
of fixing memory pictures of which our patient had been temporarily 
deprived or had the misfortune to be born without.* 
Seguin, the first to apply himself studiously to the training of 
idiotic children, pointed out more than thirty years ago a physiologi- 
cal education of defective brains, based on cultivating the hand, eye, 
and ear. It was sneered at by many as visionary; but the experi- 
ence of his little school in Paris and the confirmation of the great 
institutions of which he was the seed-planter are to-day verified by 
the testimony of pathology and experimental physiology. 
THE OBLIGATION OF SOCIETY TO ITS DEFECTIVE MEMBERS. 
VVe might consider helpless idiocy in its relation to organized so- 
ciety from two points: — 
1. That of the preservation of society itself from a baneful, 
hindering, or disturbing element generated within itself and too 
often from avoidable causes. 
2. The right inherently existing in a defective and irresponsible 
member of society to protection from the body in exact ratio to his 
necessities. 
Two modes of treatment suggest themselves when considering the 
supposed increase of the defective classes : — 
The one is a cold, uncharitable disregard of misery itself, accept- 
ing the evil as a necessity and as a penalty for the offence against 
the laws of religion or of society or of health by which it comes, 
its advocates looking for the self-extirpation of defective classes and 
families, and the “ survival of the fittest.” 
•“ Where and How We Remember” By M. Allen Surr, M.D., in Popular Sc tone e Monthly, 
September, 18S4, p. 609. 11 
Another view of this serious subject confesses that the need of 
this age and of ages to come is paternal government rather than an 
ideal impersonal government,— a government wisely dealing with the 
wants of individual man. It recognizes that a very large portion of 
humanity is still in its swaddling clothes, or scarcely yet beginning to 
walk, requiring much help and much patience before arriving at that 
self-knowledge which guarantees self-care. It holds that, in our pres- 
ent development, government, where best for the common weal, 
should assume the relation, not of almoner, but of parent to its 
subjects: licensing here and refusing license there ; correcting an 
evil at one point or absolutely abating that evil at another; giving 
personal liberty where self-reliance proves its rightful claim, abridg- 
ing personal liberty where its exercise is attended with a crusade 
against the rights of the peaceable, whether in the spoliation of the 
house-breaker or house-burner, in the tyranny and brutality of the 
inebriate’s home, or in the corruption of the very springs of life in 
the prostitution of the brothel. 
The only satisfactory way for a physician to treat a diseased con- 
dition is on a clear diagnosis of his case. Until that is made, his 
course is likely to be doubtful and hesitating; and errors are not only 
possible, but probable. So, in social and governmental dealing with 
the defective classes, it is all-important that a right interpretation be 
put upon observed phenomena; for, if a mistake be made in the 
premises, the sequences of the relief or correction administered may 
be most detrimental. To illustrate what I mean, I cannot do better 
than to note the so-called Juke family from a point of observation 
which does not seem to have been hitherto taken. Max and Ada 
Juke rarely fail of an introduction in these Conferences, and always, 
it seems to me, under a cloud of- prejudice, that may bias judgment 
as to true conditions. Any close study of this unfortunate people 
reveals clearly the existence of a neurotic taint as the rational expla- 
nation of their crime, pauperism, and bestiality, and suggests all 
through their needed protection against themselves. 
The undoubtedly weak-minded Juke sisters married the two sons 
of Max, who is known as “ a drunken, eccentric, and lazy ne’er-do- 
weel ” who leaves a large illegitimate offspring. It is not strange 
that these unions entailed blindness, pauperism, prostitution and 
crime upon children and grandchildren. The record of Ada Juke 
through the marriage of her first legitimate child, who married her 
first cousin, is only less fearful than that of the illegitimate line. 
Both, in the sixth generation, after passing through the darkest 12 
and most loathsome channels of impurity, are represented in living 
stocks of half-witted bastards, criminals, and paupers, who will con- 
tinue to roll up the bill of expense for petty crime and misdemeanors 
and the untold expense of ruined character, wherever such plague 
spots are permitted. Had it not been too early in the history of 
society, it is fairly presumptive that the twenty-one grandchildren of 
Max and Ada might have been recognized as unfit members, and, 
very consistently with the public welfare and their own best interests, 
have been detained for the better part of their lives in jails or 
sequestered in asylums. 
The percentage of idiocy and insanity as presented by Mr. Dug- 
dale’s Table VII. on diseases, malformations, and injuries, bad as it 
is, is manifestly short of the truth ; for an analysis of the specific 
tables furnishes larger proportions. Blindness, an evident physical 
infirmity, is reported, because so evident; feebleness of mind and 
insane conditions, less readily distinguished, are passed over in 
silence; while the bias of study, being the detection of pauperism, 
crime, and prostitution, gives comprehensive figures. 
We cannot believe that less idiocy and less insanity existed in the 
Juke family than pertains to general population; but, rather, as the 
negro population exhibits in the census a lower ratio of idiocy than 
do the whites, so the general mental enfeeblement of the whole Juke 
race was such that only profound cases of idiocy could protrude 
themselves into recognition above the low and sensuous level of this 
stock of half-wits. But leaving this, with the hope expressed that 
another “mother of criminals” shall be studied hereafter in the 
charitable and illuminating light of her presumed weakness of mind, 
I submit that there is free in the community a great host of crime- 
doers who are not so much criminals as mental and moral imbeciles. 
Of these habitual criminals, it is estimated that their average crime 
life is eleven and a half years, of which three and a half years only 
are spent in jail. Of six thousand prisoners examined in Scotland 
by competent authority, twelve per centum exhibited decided mental 
weakness independent of those who became actually insane. A 
movement has been inaugurated in that country toward life confine- 
ment of the incorrigible, morally insane and the imbecile classes, 
that their propagation shall cease, and thus crime be measurably 
diminished by the partial extinction of criminals. 
To those who look upon moral insensibility as an imbecility, Mr. 
Brockway’s analysis of his prisoners (or patients, as he facetiously 
— wisely?—terms them) at the Klmira Reformatory is very sug- 13 
gestive. Defining the moral sense as shown in “ filial affections, 
sense of shame or sense of personal loss,” he reports of 1,463 
examinations : absolutely no moral sense, 1,082, or 73.9 per cent.; 
possibly some moral sense, 229, or 15.7 per cent.; ordinarily sensi- 
tive, 88, or 6 per cent.; specially sensitive, 64, or 4.4 per cent. 
And yet, further to establish the doubt as to our present interpreta- 
tion of the nature and origin of crime, the researches of a patholo- 
gist, Moriz Benedikt, are significant. He publishes an anatomical 
study of the brains of criminals, describing the convolutions of 
twenty-two brains. He found in these a marked peculiarity, — a 
tendency of the principal fissures to run into each other, producing 
what he terms a “confluent fissure type,” — not a formation of new 
fissures by the development of new convolutions, but the cutting up 
of a comparatively simple series of convolutions by the formation 
of secondary fissures or the prolongation of those usually existing 
beyond the normal limits, thus distinctively altering the normal 
formation of the surface (the active) part of the brain. Unfortu- 
nately, brief mention is made of the mental abilities of these twenty- 
two cases. In seven, the men are described as excessively ignorant 
or of weak mental power. 
Our assistant, Dr. A. W. Wilmarth, a reliable pathologist, in 
examining the convolutions of the brains of twelve feeble-minded 
children, has observed, among other anomalies, the same peculiari- 
ties as are mentioned in Benedikt’s cases. Hardly an idiotic brain 
has been examined which does not show this departure from what is 
regarded as the normal type, and in many of them to a marked 
degree. 
Corresponding observations with the same results have been made 
by Dr. Mills, of Philadelphia, and by foreign observers, showing very 
decided analogies between the brains of criminals and the brains 
of idiotic and imbecile persons not under criminal accusation. 
Akin to the criminal, less responsible and more pitiable, is a great 
host moving up and down our country roads, the much-abused tramp. 
The stamp of his intellectual weakness is clear in his features, in his 
loose articulations, in his aimless, dogged contentment. He is rarely 
a thief, as he lacks a thief’s capacity. Of over two score of these 
fellows examined recently, more than one-half were vagabond imbe- 
ciles, irresponsible for the condition in which they are living, and, 
failing the offices of mercy in their childhood, deserve the kindness 
of a lifelong detention within enclosures devoted to bringing out 
their own self-support. 14 
There is another sorry phalanx of misery,— the abandoned pros- 
titutes of our city, recoiling on community for its laxity of law and 
surveillance, and contaminating how many births of even lawful wed- 
lock ! Who are these prostitutes? A class so feeble in will power, 
so ignorant, and of such uncontrollable emotions that it is no forced 
conclusion that very many are unsound and irresponsible, the sinned 
against rather than the sinners. 
And yet another host darkening the whole land,— the alcoholic in- 
ebriate,— more numerous than all the insane, idiotic, blind, and deaf 
mutes together, reinforcing the ranks of pauperism by other legions, 
and sowing a birthright of misery unto children of the third and 
fourth generations. Expert physicians are telling us — and daily their 
testimony is better received — that alcoholism is a neurosis, amenable 
to medical measures under the regime of complete isolation from 
provoking causes. This is wiser than to call it a crime, without de- 
priving the criminal of his misused liberty. 
To the practical, it would seem that the functions of government 
are not discharged toward its peace-loving, frugal, and law-abiding 
citizens so long as these disorderly, contaminating, and misery- 
breeding elements have share and share alike of that “ personal lib- 
erty under the Constitution ” which should only attach to personal 
reliability. Under the ethics of law and religion, they are almost 
unreached. The so-called education of the schools is admitted in 
the oldest communities to furnish a great many of its pupils only a 
better armament for mischief. So that, education, law, and religion 
failing, shall we not reform our conclusions as to the nature of the 
ills from which we suffer? May not the study of the humble idiot 
and imbecile in our institutions aid us in discovering some analogies 
heretofore undreamed of, and perhaps a healing to the so-called cor- 
rupt, and the only safety to the healthy, be found in an arbitrary but 
legal isolation of the unfit. 
There is no field in political economy which can be worked to 
better advantage for the diminution of crime, pauperism, and insanity 
than that of idiocy. The early recognition of some of its special, 
upper, and more dangerous forms should be followed by their with- 
drawal from their unwholesome environments and their permanent 
sequestration before they are pronounced criminals, and. have, by the 
tuition of the slums, acquired a precocity that deceives even experts. 
Only a small percentage should ever be returned to the community, 
and then only under conditions that would preclude the probability of 
their assuming social relations under marriage, or becoming sowers of 15 
moral and physical disease under the garb of professional tramps and 
degraded prostitutes. 
How many of your criminals, inebriates, and prostitutes are con- 
genital imbeciles ? How many of your insane are really feeble- 
minded or imbecile persons, wayward and neglected in their early 
training, and at last conveniently housed in hospitals, after having 
wrought mischief, entered social relations, reproduced their kind, 
defied law, antagonized experts and lawyers, puzzled philanthropists, 
and in every possible manner retaliated on their progenitors for 
their origin and on the community for their misapprehension ? How 
many of your incorrigible boys, lodged in the houses of refuge to be 
half educated in letters and wholly unreached in morals, are sent out 
into the community the moral idiots they were at the beginning, only 
more powerfully armed for mischief? And pauperism breeding other 
paupers, what is it but imbecility let free to do its mischief ? 
We should not deplore, and we may certainly anticipate, a steady 
statistical increase of insanity and idiocy for the next four or five 
decades: even should it be at the rate of hundreds per centum in- 
crease for each census, it will indicate not so much an absolute 
increase of the diseases named as a broadening of definitions and 
better analysis of conditions ;—common sense, and a higher Chris- 
tianity dealing with defective and irresponsible people. 
THE INSTITUTION. 
When the facts relating to the distribution of idiotic and feeble- 
minded persons in any settled community are intelligently canvassed, 
it becomes conclusive that this distribution is not only detrimental to 
the individuals themselves, but subversive of the best interests of the 
family and neighborhood. Their aggregation into institutions be- 
comes, therefore, not only a charitable, but a conservative thing to do. 
American institutions, having been already in existence thirty 
years, it may be asserted that the experimental period is passed, and 
that, when States shall proceed to legislate for these defectives, it 
will be done on a permanent basis. 
The probability is that, because of the peculiar adaptation of fee- 
ble-minded persons to a community organization, State institu- 
tions may be created to embrace the care of all whose dependence 
needs it, and inclusive, too, of all the multiform grades; for it seems 
despotic to omit those who are epileptic, paralytic, or choreic, per- 
mitting a physical impediment to bar the individual from beneficial 
influences to which he is as responsive as any. This all-compre- 16 
hending care has been contemplated in Pennsylvania under the 
suggestion of an asylum village to be developed from the nidus al- 
ready existing at Elwyn. 
The grades of specific idiocy and imbecility, as already described, 
presuppose a wide range of classification; and, at the commencement, 
this should be planned for somewhat as follows : — 
1. Central buildings for the school and industrial departments, in 
the rear of which, or near at hand, should be located the shops. 
2. A separate building, not too remote, for a nursery department, 
with such special arrangement of domitories, day-rooms, and con- 
veniences as the infirm character of the children committed to it may 
require. 
3. Other more remote buildings for the asylum department, with 
arrangements to correspond for the necessities of both care and 
training. 
4. Provision should eventually be made for colonizing lads as they 
grow into manhood in properly arranged and located houses as 
farmers, gardeners, dairy help, etc. 
5. Other smaller structures, erected as the demand requires, might 
be devoted to the grouping of pay-patients, if the sentiment of the 
State would justify this. Or, at all events, such separated cottages 
would be useful for the lodgement of cases requiring unusual atten- 
tion and isolation. 
All of the above would constitute a general asylum or institution 
for the idiotic and feeble-minded of the State, and should be located 
at a point accessible to a city or town of considerable size and on 
a well-watered and productive farm. 
However limited in capacity, it should have at least fifty acres of 
good land devoted to garden and pleasure grounds, and more in pro- 
portion to the proposed growth and the special location. The State 
institution on the scale proposed should have a very large area of 
ground — hundreds of acres. In the great commonwealths of the 
West, sections of land should even now be set apart for the rapidly 
approaching future. An abundance of pure water is a desideratum, 
and means should be provided for raising it to reservoirs that will 
supply the highest part of the building with an amount equal at 
least to fifty gallons per inmate per diem. The appointments of the 
institution should be as homelike as possible, attractive and roomy 
without extravagance. The general dormitories of the schools and 
educational department should be arranged to accommodate from 
fourteen to sixteen or twenty, and there should be a few separate 17 
and small rooms for single cases requiring special care. Adjoining 
the larger dormitories should be small communicating chambers for 
attendants, teachers, etc. 
Those buildings devoted to the asylum department should be 
planned to secure an abundance of sunlight and air without obstruc- 
tive partitions, with great liberality of floor space, and be located at 
some distance from the other departments,— say from one-half to 
three-quarters of a mile. 
Large space must be allowed in the principal buildings for day- 
rooms, in each of which not over twenty or thirty should collect. 
The school-rooms should be of similar size and limitation. At least, 
five hundred cubic feet of air per inmate should be apportioned to 
these rooms. Ample clothes rooms are likewise necessary on all the 
floors and accessible to the dormitories. Very liberal accommoda- 
tions of lavatory and water-closets are imperative, for the reason 
that habit-training in personal cleanliness is one of the most obvious 
requirements. A large calisthenium or drill floor, and an audience 
room that shall fully accommodate at one sitting all the children and 
employes, are indispensable to the perfect institution. 
The first story should be completely above ground, and of such 
height of ceiling and abundance of glass and doors that cheerful- 
ness and purity of air would be actually secured. 
The building should not be over three stories in height, those of 
the asylum department not over two stories. Basement stories of 
low ceilings and partly underground or closely embanked are highly 
objectionable places for day-rooms for feeble-minded children. The 
floors should be laid in the very best manner of the best materials, 
the joints filled and the whole oiled or painted or otherwise rendered 
impervious to dirt and soil. Those of bath rooms, water-closets, etc., 
should be made of granolith or other material that will not absorb 
moisture. The stairways should always be of iron, stone, or other 
indestructible material, ample in size and number, of easy tread and 
rise, and convenient of access, to afford ready egress in case of acci- 
dent or fire. 
The most modern and best approved methods of ventilation, 
heating, drainage, sewerage, etc., should be adopted. 
The general grounds of the institution should be hedged or fenced 
to keep off improper intrusion, but be freely used by the inmates for 
walking-exercise and work. Large and convenient play-areas should 
be provided for the various classes, and asphalt or other pavements 
be laid in those provided for the lower grades. 18 
An institution for twelve hundred inmates may be thus described.* 
It is located, if possible, on broken ground, that ravines, woods, etc., 
may grant sequestration to the lower grades, but with arable grounds 
and levels for the promotion of agricultural work. The population 
embraces at least seven grades; and each of these should be again 
reclassified, in at least three separate buildings or groups of buildings. 
A community thus organized will have its industrial members, 
capable of doing the washing and ironing and domestic service of 
the whole, so that hired labor from the outside shall be reduced 
to a minimum. It will have its fields and gardens, which can be 
worked by the industrial classes in the production of a very’ large 
portion of the food. The same community will have its schools, 
where young, improvable feeble-minded children can be educated 
in habits of propriety and to read and write. Various forms of 
amusement will be developed. Many imbecile persons possess 
imitative faculties, by which they come to create and enjoy simple 
games, amusements, etc. Many have musical inheritance, and can lie 
trained to use fairly well, cornets and stringed instruments. So that 
such an ideal institution develops within itself means not only of 
subsistence, but means of improvement and amusement. The low* 
grade classes are made to participate in the trained capacities of 
the higher classes. The cornet band, the stereopticon, the dance, 
may lighten the dulness of even the infirmary, and all at little or no 
cost outside of the stock in apparatus and appliances. 
An institution so organized and developed furnishes an abun- 
dance of life and variety to the best class of attendants and teachers, 
who will come to live in and labor for it. To expect to get proper 
care-takers for an institution devoted exclusively to the lowest idiots 
and epileptics is to expect what is impossible. But the graded 
institution on a large scale and in scattered pavilions and cottages 
presents a multitude of phases and interests, that make official resi- 
dence in one not only tolerable, but singularly attractive. 
One of the agencies to this end is the constant movement between 
the proximate families. Details of trained cases may be tempo- 
rarily installed in the infirmary department, there to aid in nursing, 
cooking, etc. The monotony of living is broken into, and the inmates 
get the change which their temporary irritabilities and inharmonies 
require. The population of two whole pavilions may be annually 
* With this paper, Dr. Keriin presented a diagram of the (arm, adjacent land*, pretest plant, and 
prospective additions of the Pennsylvania Institution, all of which when accomplished will furnish 
residence for twelve hundred feeble-minded persons 19 
turned over; and the stereotyped sameness of the views out of doors, 
and of the furniture, places, and sights indoors, be completely broken. 
Work is, by an experienced psychologist, pronounced a sedative to 
disordered minds. So, too, sharp and unexpected change of place 
will establish a new order of thought, and break up a perversely in- 
tractable habit. 
It is the small institution against which may be pronounced the 
objection of moral “hospitalism.” The large, diffuse, and thoroughly 
classified institution is another affair, and can be to its wards and 
employes as cosmopolitan as a city. 
No work that is worth doing can be well done without a liberal 
expenditure : the appropriations of to-day are but the beginning for 
this class of State dependents, if it be even less than well done on 
the line which has now been marked, and, coming from the general 
tax, must grow to an oppressive burden, if this humanitarian policy 
be pursued to its end under conditions as now existing. 
But the State, adopting as its policy the protection in institutions 
of the defective classes, acquires a right of inquest into the causes 
generating this tremendous burden to the thrifty tax-payer, who must 
be protected from the rapacious social ills which deplete his own 
strength. 
If the State assumes this duty, it may exercise the right to lessen 
the drain on its resources, when it can be proven that more than half 
the bulk of all this misery and its cost are avertible. Statistics are 
everywhere pointing that way; and it needs only the education of 
the people and perhaps some prohibitory legislation, springing out of 
popular sentiment and aversion, to diminish the number of the wards 
of any Commonwealth by choking the sources whence they spring. 
To this end, it would be wise State economy to attach to all appro- 
priations for charitable purposes an enabling clause that institutions 
disbursing this charity should contribute to the Commonwealth, in as 
precise form as possible, statistics of the origin of the evils they 
affect to relieve. Or, as it is made the duty of boards of public 
charities to act as bureaus, of statistics, these bodies should be so 
well supported that they could direct investigation in more minute 
forms than can now be done, and to distribute tracts very freely 
among the public through their county organizations, presenting in 
sharp lines such illustrations of deterioration of race as these in- 
quiries must furnish. 
Supported by an influence of this sort, our institutions might pre- 
sent such an array of facts as to be convincing of the truth, and 20 
converting to better forms of living,— to natural marriage, normal 
birthhood, and noble child-culture. 
In this way only can a State receive adequate returns for its 
charitable expenditures. She will not receive them so much in the 
betterment of the imperfect, pauper, and criminal she protects, as in 
a scientific analysis of causes for these conditions through a knowl- 
edge of which must come prevention. 
The State, assuming her highest function of protection, obtains at 
last her authority for prevention. Not until she assumes one will she 
be able to carry out the other. THE OBLIGATION OF CIVILIZED SOCIETY TO IDIOTIC 
AND FEEBLE-MINDED CHILDREN. 
If civilization is the material expression of the beautiful tenets 
of Christianity, if the acme of its perfection is reached when society 
shall believe and practise the code of the Great Teacher, and hold 
the rights and claims of each other as sacred and dear as our own, 
it will not be difficult to accept this question as already disposed of. 
No mere matter of the helplessness, the repulsiveness, or the un- 
profitableness of these subjects, will affect its decision, other than 
the natural impression such characteristics should make upon our 
sympathy. If civilization accepts the task, without demur, of caring 
for the other dependent classes, upon what principle of logic or 
reason can prudent provision for the idiot and imbecile be denied ? 
Let us first briefly glance at the obligations civilized society is 
under on its own account. 
Organized society, which is but another name for the State, is an 
accretion of individuals guaranteeing the inherent rights common 
to each, and requiring in return for the protection it affords the best 
possible service of the citizen. One of the duties of selfhood is 
the maintenance and care, in their proper proportions, of each and 
every member of the body. If self-preservation is the first law of 
nature, a policy which allows any one of these members to become 
useless or deformed is suicide to the entire system. This being true, 
— and no physiologist will doubt or deny it,— it is equally the duty 
of the family to exercise equal care for each member thereof, not 
one of whom has been abridged in a single right by his entrance 
into that relation. When this self-care is impossible, it is the duty 
of other members of the family to exercise this supervision, at least 
until the individual becomes qualified to assume the task himself. 
No one regards this action as charity. It is accepted as a duty, 
inseparable from the relation which the parties sustain to each other. 
The same law which holds the relations in either of these organiza- 
tions rules in the State. 22 
The same watchful intelligent care which the individual extends 
over even the minor parts of the system, that thereby injury to all 
parts may be prevented, is but the index of the oversight which must 
in a government comprehend all details, and every particle, even 
the most minute, and of the skilful application of remedies to the 
diseased or of preventions to the threatened portions. It follows 
that, if in the system of society there are found elements of in- 
harmony, a proper regard for the welfare of the whole dictates such 
care for the diseased portions as shall restore the harmonious condi- 
tions. It is admitted that some scientists have met this question in 
another way, and have advocated the excision of such affected 
members for the benefit of the whole body. But every dictate of 
humanity and enlightened self-interest prompts a use of restorative 
appliances, at least, before the act of amputation is performed. Not 
only has no person or community a right to invade the rights of 
another innocent of crime, but such invasion is in direct conflict with 
the fundamental principle of all governments, that which renders 
such organizations necessary; namely, protection for the weak. So 
that the duty of a government is but partly performed when it 
refuses to cast away or cut off its incomplete members, and magnani- 
mously allows them to remain under its nominal protection, without 
its real care. They must be cared for, and, if possible, restored to 
a condition which will cease injuriously to affect the other members. 
For, in all this statement, I regard not the interest of the affected 
members, but solely the effect of their condition upon the whole 
system. The duty, therefore, referred to is the duty due the inter- 
ests of good government. 
The fact that every individual is not self-supplied with ability to 
live comfortably and happily is the primal argument for human 
organizations. The family exists as an organism, because the chil- 
dren are unable to live without the fostering care of the family. 
The State exists because families are too weak to endure without 
its protection. So the State is really, and perhaps almost mainly, 
an outgrowth of this just sentiment of care for each of its component 
parts. 
In his essay on the “ Progress of Nations,” Seaman says : “Nearly 
all the elements and instruments of progress being artificial, in- 
vented by the intellect and genius of man, they require intellect and 
intelligence to use them advantageously. Hence a defect or weak- 
ness of natural element, and a want of intelligence and knowledge 
of the principles and instruments of mechanism, are both great 23 
impediments to the progress of a people." If this be true in the 
aggrega.te, it will be true in detail. If ignorance is a defect or a 
weakness in a government, and constitutes an impediment to the 
progress of its people, the difference between the injury wrought by 
general or partial destitution of knowledge becomes only a question 
of quantity. 
In his celebrated essay in the Massachusetts Quarterly Review, in 
1848, on the causes and prevention of idiocy, Dr. Howe says: — 
An ignorant, vicious, or suffering class is a disturbing class. It 
is a disturbing force in society. It has no business there. It must 
be removed, or there never can be order. Now, as it cannot be 
removed bodily, because the men and women composing it cannot 
be put out of the world, the only way of removing the disturbing 
forces is to change them into intelligent, virtuous, and enjoying 
persons ; and then there will be harmony. 
It has been indicated that a proper and, indeed, one of the most 
important subjects of governmental supervision is the scrutiny of 
all incongruous and inharmonious elements, and the adoption of 
measures for their conversion into harmonious action. And the 
insignificance of the obstacle cannot be logically pleaded. A grain 
of dust may blind a king. A beggar has slain a ruler, and changed 
the whole course of statecraft. A single woman mentally malformed 
has cost a great city many lives and thousands of treasure. The 
errant boy, who knows no guide or governor save his own lawless 
will, may lead a mob to the sack of a burning city. The statesman 
must recognize these perils, and provide against them. “Ill can he 
rule the great that cannot reach the small.” If Almighty Power 
stoops to support the falling bird, it may surely be considered a task 
no less divine to sustain the struggling child, and guide its feet in 
ways of purity and peace, especially when by this intervention many 
lives may be saved to the service of the State, who, but for it, would 
have been ruined by the tempter thus himself rescued. 
It may be held that the principle which governs in the family is 
affection for each member, and that this sentiment should still be 
permitted to provide suitable care for its defective members. But it 
can be shown that public welfare often demands measures which are 
strongly opposed by family affection. Vaccination is deemed a nec- 
essary operation, in order to protect the community; but it is often 
violently rejected by family affection. The patient dreads the nau- 
seous medicine, and refuses to receive it, even while convinced that 
it will remove the disease from which he suffers. So the ignorance 24 
or false kindness of the family often negatives the acts most needed 
to promote its welfare, and in a degree that of the community. Of 
all the agencies for promoting and maintaining health, the ordinary 
family is least reliable and successful. That the ignorant, the super- 
stitious, the abjectly poor, even the openly vicious, should be in- 
trusted with the care and improvement of the most desperately 
deplorable case requiring aid, is a proposition, abhorrent as it seems, 
which is often urged by pretended statesmen. Scarcely better is the 
attitude of those States which permit their insane and idiotic popula- 
tion to die in county jails, wanting not means, but disposition, to build 
asylums for their care. 
In the paper previously mentioned, Dr. Howe says, alluding to the 
idiots in the State of Massachusetts, said to have been a thousand in 
number at that time: — 
“ Yet these thousand senseless human beings, who are utterly 
dependent upon others, who are regarded as irresponsible by the law, 
who may commit even murder without legal or moral guilt, are only 
occupants of the lowest rank in the social scale. Rising above them, 
little by little, are other ranks, up to the high platform upon which 
stand our most gifted and best educated men and women. In the 
rank next above the idiot stand those helpless creatures who are 
supposed to know right from wrong, and from whom are drafted 
almost all the tenants of our jails and prisons." And it might be 
added that above these rise, rank upon rank, successive gradations of 
enfeebled intellects, each capable of successful development, yet 
each banned by the contemptuous voice of the public as idiots. 
This quotation opens appropriately to a broader aspect of this 
work. There is certainly a field which, all will admit, may be profit- 
ably filled in the training of the multitudes in every State who are 
incapable of instruction in the common schools, and yet may be 
taught by the peculiar methods of the institutions for feeble-minded, 
and may thus become, under suitable supervision, factors in the pro- 
ductive forces of the State. If he is a public benefactor who causes 
two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before, of how much 
higher honor shall he be thought worthy, who has rescued from the 
garbage heap of society, into which have been shot as rubbish, the 
waste remnants, materials converted from incendiary menaces to in- 
telligent and honest, if humble, citizens of society? No one can 
refuse to acknowledge the importance of this work. Without in the 
least joining in the contemptuous condemnation of the endeavors for 
the education of the idiot,— while, in fact, claiming for it that it is 25 
one of the loftiest in design and purpose among the grand beneficent 
operations of the age,— the training of feeble-minded children, 
that class of youth who possess faculties, few and dormant as they 
may be, will be readily seen by all to be labor well bestowed in the 
interest of society. It is in the interest of the repression of vicious 
instincts and dispositions, and the culture of powers which are capa- 
ble of rendering the possessor and the State some service. 
If there is a responsibility of different degree resting on the State 
to provide for its idiotic and insane, what shall constitute the differ- 
ence ? If insanity is a disease, why shall the Commonwealth en- 
deavor to effect a cure in this rather than in other classes of disease ? 
If the feeble-minded children of the State are susceptible of im- 
provement by culture, why shall the educational benefits bestowed 
upon more favored minds be denied them, in a scale adapted to their 
comprehension ? It is surely only justice that we plead for in the 
right of the one class to education as of the other to cure. The 
question of the cost cannot be logically nor justly pleaded in one case 
and denied in the other. 
In the last report of the Illinois State Board of Public Charities 
occurs this passage : — 
Suppose one-half of the idiots in the State to be under twenty- 
one years of age, how many of this two thousand is the State 
under obligation to educate, or at least to give such training as they 
are capable of receiving with profit to themselves ? If no amount of 
training will make them capable of self-direction and of earning a 
livelihood when removed from the care and oversight of the agents 
appointed by the State, then of what advantage to the State — we do 
not say to the idiots — is this training ? These are questions which 
have not yet been answered to our satisfaction; but upon the answer 
to be given to them depends the action to be taken in the matter of 
enlarged facilities for the care and custody of idiots upon the part of 
the State. 
The only comment upon this which occurs to me is to substitute 
the word “ insane ” for “ idiot,” throughout the paragraph. 
But I quote a sentiment of another character from the report. 
After considering at length the great cost of maintaining the several 
insane asylums and proposing various plans for meeting it, the 
report continues: — 
In the decision of the question, the first and most weighty con- 
sideration should be the welfare of the insane themselves. Other 
considerations, certainly, are not to be ignored, and may modify 
materially the action to be taken. But the interest of the insane 26 
is the only one which cannot speak for itself and make itself heard 
and felt. It is the highest consideration, because it is the most un- 
selfish. It appeals, more than any other, to what is noblest in the 
human heart. This burden has not been imposed upon us without 
our receiving at the same time the necessary strength with which to 
bear it, and with comparative ease. If we have not understood the 
magnitude of the load to be carried, still less have we comprehended 
and been grateful for the resources which enable us to carry it 
almost without feeling it; that is to say, in a pecuniary sense. 
Permit me to ask, Why not extend the same grand charity, or 
rather justice, to the work in behalf of the feeble-minded ? 
Perhaps this will be a proper place to object to the common term 
“charity"in this connection. If by charity is meant that quality 
which the apostle apotheosizes,— loftiest and lowliest of the sacred 
trio,— the State, while leaving its proper function, might be pardoned 
in invoking such heavenly assistance. But, if it be like the charity 
which doles out the crust to the back-door tramp, or like the worthy 
that Pollock sings, who 
“ With one hand . . . put 
A penny in the urn of poverty, 
And with the other took a shilling out,” 
it will be better for the State and its beneficiaries to reject its aid. 
If the noble institutions of the times — those temples sacred to the 
restoration of fallen humanity, nearer Christ in his work than half 
the shrines dedicated in his name — must be fed or starved at the 
caprice of a thoughtless public or of a mercenary legislative lobby, 
it were better, perhaps, to leave their wards with their burdened fami- 
lies, where at least no flattering promises of amelioration are subject 
to such possibilities of cruel disappointment. What the officials and 
patrons of these institutions demand is not the vacillating support 
of an ethereal sentiment or the doles of an omnibus appropriation 
bill, subject to expansion or contraction as certain policies prevail or 
whims dictate, but the strong, constant sustenance of the right hand 
of the State, as secure in the knowledge that the asylums of the 
Commonwealth will be built and maintained as that the penitentia- 
ries will be supported or the courts upheld. All we ask for is justice, 
which Burke terms “ the great standing policy of government." 
I may be met here with the statement that the States of our 
Union do support, generously and willingly, institutions for the 
dependent classes. It is not the measure, but the manner of this 
support, to which I object. What man among you has not known 
the task of waiting upon a legislature in session, and devoting days 27 
and nights to labor the most exhausting and most humiliating inci- 
dent to your position, in order to secure the passage of the neces- 
sary bill ? Who that is responsible for the asylums has not felt his 
heart burn at the repeated insults he receives, at the equivocal cold- 
ness he meets; or has not endured the pangs of suspense, fearing 
that, after all his labor, some freak may strike out an appropriation 
for indispensable items, and force him to go back to a work weak- 
ened and impaired thereby ? What would be thought of the judges 
of the respective circuits of a State who should attend the session 
of the legislature, and make personal appeals to the members to 
grant them living salaries? Yet the domain of one is accepted as 
that of justice, while the other is credited among the children of 
charity. Surely, in this instance at least, charity is not the greatest. 
We might be well content with justice.. 
But, before this body, I may urge a still stronger reason why the 
aid granted the institutions for which I speak should be bestowed 
as a measure of justice. Our wards are innocent of crime or fault. 
In the large majority of instances, they are the feeble and deformed 
expressions of parental sins or sorrows. And these sad traits, in 
very many instances, are the reflection of woes which the State has 
directly or indirectly caused. In my own State there have been 
successive eras of hostile invasion, with all the horrors of Indian 
and civil war, to say nothing of the occasional experiences of 
drouth and insect plague, which have left other traces than lonely 
graves and ruined homes and memories of eternal sadness. Picture 
a delicate woman, cultured and refined, leaving a beautiful Eastern 
home and loving life-long-known kindred and friends, and, in com- 
pany with the man she has chosen, selecting a dwelling-place far 
out on the green sea of the plains, where neighbors were a day’s 
journey away, and letters from home were weeks old before arrival. 
Lonely enough when he was with her; but, when he was gone and 
she was alone, who can picture her anxieties ? And when, one awful 
morning, the troops brought him home lifeless and mutilated, and 
she realized that life for her was done, you need not to be told the 
effects upon her new-born child. Affrighted at every sound, in a 
perpetual panic, he reproduces, happily for him without her mental 
sensibility, the terrible ordeal through which his mother passed. 
This is not a fancy sketch. The horrors of the formative era of 
our State can never be told, especially as they fell upon our brave 
pioneer women. The duty of the State to her heroic dead, slain 
in her settlement and service, is but half fulfilled when the dead 28 
are cared for. The unfortunate children, upon whom are impressed 
all the terrors of the time, are rightful claimants of her fostering 
care. 
There is another and a broader view which I venture to present. 
The State which licenses the sale of intoxicating liquors becomes a 
partner in the transaction. The cost of the license represents only 
a part of this share in the partnership. For a paltry sum, the 
Commonwealth allows municipalities to protect the procurer of 
unnumbered crimes and sorrows. In some States, a provision 
of law makes him nominally responsible for injuries indicted by the 
business of the firm; but the State bears the costs of the prosecu- 
tions and executions, leaving the widows and orphans, and the 
wrecks denuded and damned by the partnership, to struggle unaided 
through the remainder of life as best they may. Even these melan- 
choly ruins do not represent the entire devastation wrought by this 
arrangement. These woes, sad as they are, are perpetuated and 
intensified in another generation. Innocent children are doomed 
to an eternal passion for debauch or to an existence of helpless 
imbecility. If the women of America, who endure from intemper- 
ance, evils more debasing and destructive than even African slavery 
inflicted upon its victims, cannot induce a prohibition of a traffic 
which desolates their homes and quenches their hopes, they have 
a right to demand that a State which has profited by the act which 
ruined their sinless children shall provide unquestioningly for their 
support. 
The time will come, comrades,— and it approaches with no tardy 
tread,— when a State which neglects to provide for her unfortunate 
classes upon a full measure of justice will receive the reprobation 
of her sisters, when it will be deemed impertinent to doubt that 
legislatures will appropriate all the means which intelligent officials 
suggest as necessary to the successful operation of benevolent estab- 
lishments, and when those whose hearts and minds arc thoroughly 
enlisted in this — among the noblest of human employments — shall 
be cheered by receiving the full appreciation of the work from every 
right-minded citizen of the State.