Annotated and Abridged Artifact

Abridged Text

The defective classes form a series of small, but very troublesome, tumors upon the body politic. [1 »] For various reasons, ranging all the way from the imperative need of protection to society up to those humane influences for which our century is distinguished, these classes have fallen under the more or less effective guardianship of government in all civilized countries. Private effort is also doing much to palliate or to prevent the evils which the defective classes bring on themselves and upon society at large.

I propose the following classification of the defective classes, depending upon the three divisions of the mental faculties [2 »] which are generally accepted by psychologists. Insanity and idiocy are different forms of defective intellect. Crime and vice are caused by defect of the emotions or passions. And pauperism is caused by defect of the will. Blindness and deaf-mutism are defects of the senses, requiring special forms of education, but are not defects of the mind any more than the loss of an arm or a leg. Blind or deaf people properly educated are not a burden or a danger to society, as are criminals, insane persons, or paupers. Their defects are physical, not mental, and they should not be classed with persons who have these mental defects. The above classification has the advantage of starting from the center instead of from the circumference. "The mind is the measure of the man," and it is the abnormal and defective mind which produces the mischief. Anything which fosters the 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. [3 »] Everything which aids self-control reduces the tendency to these abnormalities.

The effects of climate have not been much considered. But I believe it will be found that warm climates do not have so great a proportion of insanity as cold climates. It is certain that in Europe, Greece has a much less proportion of insanity than Norway. In this country there is much less insanity in the South than in the North in proportion to population. A part of this is due to the negroes in the South having a small proportion of insanity, and the foreigners in the North having a large proportion. But it is possible that climate has also something to do with it. I cannot discover that climate has anything to do with crime. Pauperism is increased in cold climates by the greater difficulty of getting a bare subsistence.

Much has been said about the rapid increase of the defective classes, especially of the insane. Statistics show this both in Europe and America. But statistics of the mere numbers of insane at any given time are very deceptive. The greater humanity with which the insane are treated now than a hundred or even twenty-five years ago has preserved their lives and thereby caused an accumulation of the insane. This greatly increases the numbers who are alive at any given time, but does not show that any more persons become insane in any one year than ever. Careful statistics have been kept in England with reference to the latter point, and it is found that there was an increase in the proportion of commitments to the total population up to a recent time, but that it now seems to have reached its highest point and become stationary. It is believed that the increase in the commitments was caused partly by the discovery and placing in institutions of cases that would otherwise have been hidden at home, and partly by calling things insanity which formerly would have been called by some other name; such as senile, dementia, epilepsy, eccentricity, [4 »] or primary dementia. I believe that these statistics show that insanity is not now increasing faster in England than the population.

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In the United States insanity is obviously increasing very rapidly. In ten years in Wisconsin the insane under public care have increased from about seventeen hundred to over three thousand. This is partly due to the causes discussed above. But it is also due to another fact, to which I think I was the first to call attention: that the ratio of insanity to the population is much greater in the older states than in the newer ones, and in the older counties of Wisconsin than in the newer ones. The rapid increase of crime in this country is, doubtless, an incident of the rapid growth of city population. But probably the more careful administration of the laws has increased the number of prisoners, while the system of reformatories for boys and girls, and all the good influences of Christian civilization, have been resisting the increase of crime. It is noteworthy that a better prison system in England than we have in this country, joined to the private reformatory work of all kinds, has brought the increase of crime to a stop, and that there is absolutely less crime in Great Britain now than there was fifteen years ago, notwithstanding the increase of population.

The same causes have made an increase of pauperism in this country -- the growth of cities and the foolish or corrupt use of public money in aiding undeserving applicants for poor-relief.