220 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



3. The cumulative evidence furnished by surveys, community 

 studies, and intensive group inquiries has now definitely proved 

 that feeble-mindedness is an important factor as a cause of 

 juvenile vice and delinquency, adult crime, sex immorality, the 

 spread of venereal disease, prostitution, illegitimacy, vagrancy, 

 pauperism, and other forms of social evil and social disease. 



4. Our estimates of the extent and the prevalence of feeble- 

 mindedness have been greatly increased by the application of 

 mental tests, the public school classes for defectives, the inter- 

 pretation of the above mentioned anti-social expressions of 

 feeble-mindedness, and the intensive community studies. 



It is becoming evident that some central governmental author- 

 ity should be made responsible for the supervision, assistance and 

 control of the feeble-minded at large in the community who are 

 not properly cared for by their friends. This proposal is not so 

 revolutionary as it seems, for a large proportion of feeble- 

 minded people at some time in their lives now come under the 

 jurisdiction of public authorities or private societies as de- 

 pendents or as irresponsible law-breakers. Many feeble-minded 

 persons eventually become permanent public charges. Many 

 run the gauntlet of the police, the courts, the penal institutions, 

 the almshouses, the tramp shelters, the lying-in hospitals, and 

 often many private societies and agencies, perhaps, eventually 

 to turn up in the institutions for the feeble-minded. At any 

 given time, it is a matter of chance as to what state or local or 

 private organization or institution is being perplexed by the 

 problems they present. They are shifted from one organization 

 or institution to another as soon as possible. At present there 

 is no bureau or officer with the knowledge and the authority 

 to advise and compel proper care and protection for this numer- 

 ous and dangerous class. 



This state supervision of the feeble-minded might be done 

 successfully by some existing organization like a properly con- 

 stituted state board of health, or state board of charities, or by a 

 special board or official ; but the responsible official should be a 

 physician trained in psychiatry, with especial knowledge of all 

 phases of mental deficiency and its many social expressions. 

 The local administration of this plan could be carried out by 

 the use of existing local health boards, or other especially quali- 



