PENNSYLVANIA'S PROBLEM IN ERADICATING FOCI OF 

 MENTAL DEFECT 



FLORENTINE HACKBUSCH 



Field Representative, Bureau of Mental Health, Department of Welfare of Pennsylvania, 



Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 



Several years ago in going through some textbooks in Sociology to find 

 out what our college students, future voters and taxpayers, were being 

 taught about the problem of mental deficiency, I found this statement in 

 one of them: 



It is strange that a problem so easy of solution has been sadly neglected in the past. 



This problem can be readily handled. All that is needed is a little agitation, the proper 

 legislation, and a small appropriation for initial investment. Afterwards there will be 

 required only small yearly appropriations for upkeep, and even these in many cases may 

 not be necessary. 



In just what Utopia this ideal arrangement was to come to pass after a 

 few years has never been discovered. After many years of much agitation, 

 suitable legislation, and constantly increasing appropriations, we still find 

 the problem of the mental defective as serious as ever. Our institutions, 

 in common with those of other states, have long waiting lists, a large per- 

 centage of the population of our institutions for delinquents is defective; 

 and the number of special classes for defectives in the public schools is far 

 too inadequate. 



There are, in Pennsylvania, at least, too many defective families which 

 have been allowed to continue and add to our problem. Pennsylvania is, 

 geographically speaking, largely a mountainous, rural state, its industries 

 being concentrated at certain points, and in these mountainous, rural 

 sections we find everywhere little pockets or foci of defective families. 

 They have been engaged in industries now abandoned in these localities, — 

 lumbering, tanning, mining, or oil. The more conpetent families have 

 moved on; the less competent have stayed behind. Inbreeding is com- 

 mon; even incest is not frowned upon. Living was rather simple, but with 

 the coming of the machine, even such simple jobs as working on the road, 

 or lumbering, have become more complicated and beyond the capacity of 

 these families, and they have not been able to exist without charity, either 



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