Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/491

 CONCERNING A FORM OF DEGENERACY 471

work of caring for the feeble-minded, at least for many years to come. The institutions can take these undesirable and hurtful citizens and make of them, or of many of them, self-supporting members of a separate community, and at the same time avert the dangers of reproduction and increase. In this work the training school is the nucleus ; around it, and subsidiary to it, the whole institution should cluster.

It is true that the cost of these schools has been great in the past, and when we consider the number to be provided for — at least ten times as many as are now in the institutions — the total cost would appear prohibitory of this plan.' But just as soon as it is demonstrated that a large proportion is self-support- ing; that the improvables can be cared for, with decency and humanity, at a very moderate ratio of expense, by utilizing the labor of the trained higher grades ; that only the younger ones, who belong to the educable grade, and a few of the lowest grade, violent and dangerous idiots, require a high per capita cost — it seems probable that the means to gather in and care for the whole class will be forthcoming. When that period arrives, the number of idiots and imbeciles in the nation will cease to increase, and, if other classes of degenerates can also be brought under control, the number may diminish very rapidly. It is too much to claim that idiocy and imbecility can be stamped out, even by the most vigorous segregation of the present generation. Sporadic cases continually occur from apparently inscrutable causes. Acci- dent and disease will have their victims ; but these are few, indeed, compared with those whose mental weakness is the result of evil heredity.

The method suggested for carrying out the theory above stated is known as the colony plan. Although not in full opera- tion anywhere, yet beginnings have been made which have abundantly justified the expectations of their promoters. The plan in its-fullness is somewhat as follows :

' These considerations of cost have reference rather to present public opinion and possibility of immediate action than to the real interests of the commonwealth. It would be far cheaper to segregate the entire class of the imbeciles and idiots, were the cost five times greater than that of the most expensive training school, than to neglect them as we are now doing.