The Defective Classes. 
177 
less these have their influence, but it is a more remote influence. The im¬ 
mediate cause is in the mind, and the cure, if there is to be a cure, must 
be addressed to the mind either directly by argument and influence or in¬ 
directly by changing the conditions surrounding the subject, so as to 
change his motives. Anything which fosters abnormal and ill regulated 
thoughts or passions or which weakens the control of reason, conscience 
and will over the mind tends to produce insanity, crime and pauperism. 
Everything which aids self-control reduces the tendency to these abnor¬ 
malities. 
I am speaking now of these classes as a whole and not here taking ac¬ 
count of the exceptions to be found in them. I know a man who was a 
good average man in every respect, but who by a fall upon his head from 
a load of hay, was made insane, deaf and dumb and blind, all at once, and 
who is still thus triply afflicted, but is otherwise healthy. In his case the 
insanity was a pure accident. The state of Georgia severely punished the 
missionaries who undertook to civilize and christianize the Cherokee In¬ 
dians contrary to the laws of the commonwealth. They were criminals 
in one sense, as violators of human law, but no one will attempt to class 
them as criminal in anything more than a technical sense. I once found 
an old man of good character and standing in the community in a poor- 
house. He had given his farm to his son on condition of his son’s caring 
for him in his old age. The father was tortured with chronic rheumatism 
and was therefore some trouble to care for. The son sold the farm and 
moved out of the state, leaving his poor crippled old father to die in the 
poorhouse. The father was an accidental pauper and could not fairly be 
included in the list of voluntary paupers. But such cases as these are ex¬ 
ceptions, and the rule is as I have stated it. 
The distribution of the defectwe classes by nationality, education, 
wealth, age, sex, occupation and the like, is interesting from a scientific 
point of view and important from a practical standpoint. A study of the 
distribution of insanity, crime and pauperism, may reveal the conditions 
which create or foster them. And as society has more or less control over 
social conditions, it may become possible to heal some of these ulcers on the 
body politic, if we know where they are and what irritant produced them. 
But please notice that I say may, not shall. The small success of all ef¬ 
fort in the past toward curing these evils, ought to make social reform¬ 
ers modest. 
First the question of sex. Men and women are about equally afflicted 
with insanity. Massachusetts has more women than men insane, because 
it has more women than men in the total population. Wisconsin has more 
men insane than women, because we have a preponderance of the male sex. 
Either the causes are the same in men and women, which produce insanity, 
or they are equivalent. Heredity, worry, over-work, under feeding, sick¬ 
ness and the weaknesses of old age affect women and men equally, and the 
12 —A. & L. 
