IS THE ABNORMAL TO BECOME NORMAL 197 



and if we know that it is likely to produce only unfit individuals; then, we 

 maintain that society owes it to the medical profession on the one hand and 

 to itself on the other, to say — in substance — to this child: "We will con- 

 tinue to do the very best for you; you shall be educated or trained to your 

 fullest capacity — and then you shall be either segregated or sterilized — we 

 will do our full duty by you, but there must be no more like you." 



One of the most terrible blunders connected with our present management 

 of these classes is that we keep some of them incarcerated in custodial insti- 

 tutions until they grow up, become sexually mature, and then, when be- 

 cause of the training we have given them, they have become partially or 

 wholly self-supporting, they are forthwith turned loose upon the public 

 to begin their calamitous career of freely reproducing themselves only to 

 curse the next generation. Segregation, to be effective in cutting off de- 

 fective germ plasm, must be strictly according to sex. In segregating the 

 female, the attendants immediately in contact with these unfortunate indi- 

 viduals should be of the same sex, for we should remember that each year 

 there are born over one thousand illegitimate children to feebleminded 

 mothers on our county farms. 



The chief objection urged against segregation is that of expense; this is not 

 a valid objection in view of the enormous amount of money spent in conduct- 

 ing the courts, and for the maintenance of hundreds of institutions of cor- 

 rection and detention which at present do not care for one-tenth of our 

 defective and antisocial population. 



The expense would normally decrease with each decade and would be 

 enormously diminished in a single generation. The details of the program 

 of segregation are too large a subject for this paper, but we merely say in 

 passing that these undesirables could be located on state farms and their 

 labor so utilized as to make them largely self-supporting. A large per cent 

 of the feebleminded would be able to do enough work to provide for their 

 own care. The group which could not contribute to its own support, such 

 as the insane, the highly criminal type, the epileptic, etc., the state would 

 continue to care for as at present. The point we want to emphasize is that 

 if they are all incarcerated for one lifetime so that they cannot reproduce 

 their kind at all, our problem will largely solve itself in two generations. 



And now concerning sterilization as a means of stopping reproduction on 

 the part of the defective classes: It is agreed by all that sterilization should 

 never be advocated in doubtful cases or in the milder and more questionable 

 forms of defectiveness, but it would seem to be admirably suited to cases of 

 undoubted feeblemindedness, whether the defect were manifested as crimi- 

 nality, imbecility, or some form of hereditary sexual perversion. 



