71 
THe FEEBLE-MINDED AND DELINQUENT GIRL. 
EK. H. JONES. 
It is a signal victory for the cause of education and social service in 
Indiana that the Indiana Academy of Science has seen fit to place on its 
program a symposium on “Some of the Scientific and Practical Aspects of 
the Problem of Feeble-Mindedness.” My part in this symposium is to dis- 
cuss the “Feeble-Minded and Delinquent Girl.” She presents a separate 
and distinct problem in the social and educational development of a State, 
simply because she is a girl. To her sex belongs the important function 
of bearing the offspring of the race, and through maternal functionings, 
mental and physical qualities of the race are propagated. Thus, the feeble 
minded girl occupies a most strategic position in the problem of race im- 
provement and development, a matter in which scientists have been pro- 
foundly interested since 1869, the date when Fances Galton published his 
wonderful work—Hereditary Genius. 
It is fitting that the science of this age devote itself assiduously to the 
problems of racial improvement, for by no other means than that of 
science can such a program of civilization be accomplished. 
My first problem this evening is to define the feeble-minded girl. What 
is she? What qualifications, limitations, and possibilties does she possess? 
What is her type of mind? What is her physical endowment? How much 
does she know? How far can she be educated? In what sense can she 
ever become self-sustaining? We must have a comprehension of these facts 
before we can fully define the feeble-minded girl. At the present time we 
have numerous scales such as the Binet-Simon Scale for measuring quan- 
titatively and qualitatively general intelligence; and in defining the feeble- 
minded girl, we must bring into play the use of all such instruments of 
measurements as will determine her mental and physical endowments. 
Such scales have been employed in the feeble-minded institutions and with 
feeble-minded children in the public schools with marked success, and 
we are looking to a time in the near future when these and other scales 
will be perfected and refined until it will be possible for us, early in the 
