60 
Our investigations brought to light the fact that eighteen members of 
this family have been at some time of their lives inmates of public insti- 
tutions in Indiana. Our information as to the length of time five of these 
were on public support is incomplete; it was before our present registra- 
tion of institution inmates was begun. Coucerning the other thirteen, 
however, we have accurate data. To date they have spent a total of 203 
years, 5 mouths in public institutions. 
Eleven have been in county poor asylums 44 years, 3 months; 7 have 
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been in orphans’ homes 40 years, 7 months; 8 have been in the School for 
Feeble-Minded Youth 110 years, 11 months; one has been in the Indiana 
Girls’ School 7 years, 8 months. If their maintenance has averaged but 
$125 a year, the total Gost has already amounted to more than $25,000. 
This is not all. There are now five young women of this family in the 
School for Feeble-Minded Youth at Fort Wayne. Their ages are 22, 23, 
24, 28 and 32 years, an average of 25.8 years. At the annual average per 
capita cost of maintenance in that institution last year ($140.68) these 
five young women cost the State $700.00 a year. 
I ask this question: What are we going to do about it? It is one 
of our problems. 
A legislative commission in New Jersey has recently made a report 
after a thorough investigation of the problem of mental defectiveness. 
Other commissions in New York, Massachusetts, and elsewhere have been, 
or are, engaged in this work. Is it not time that Indiana should wake up 
and have a commission to study the problem of mental defectiveness? What 
is the condition? What are the needs? How shall they be met? What is 
the wisest plan to follow? What are we going to do to save ourselves this 
continually increasing population of mental defectiveness, that is shown 
by this chart and could be shown by a hundred others, to be growing up 
in the State of Indiana without our knowledge, without our thought, with- 
out our effort to prevent it? The question comes to us: What will we 
do about it? 
