“We are also confronted with the problem of the actually mentally deficient, of the more or less feeble-minded, and the deranged, epileptic... or otherwise mentally abnormal mother,” writes this authority.  “The `bad mothering’ of these cases is quite unimprovable at an infant welfare center, and a very definite if not relatively very large percentage of our infants are suffering severely as a result of dependence upon such `mothering."’(3)

Thus we are brought face to face with another problem of infant mortality.  Are we to check the infant mortality rate among the feeble-minded and aid the unfortunate offspring to grow up, a menace to the civilized community even when not actually certifiable as mentally defective or not obviously imbecile?

Other figures and studies indicate the close relationship between feeble-mindedness and the spread of venereal scourges.  We are informed that in Michigan, 75 per cent. of the prostitute class is infected with some form of venereal disease, and that 75 per cent. of the infected are mentally defective,—­morons, imbeciles, or “border-line” cases most dangerous to the community at large.  At least 25 per cent. of the inmates of our prisons, according to Dr. Fernald, are mentally defective and belong either to the feeble-minded or to the defective-delinquent class.  Nearly 50 per cent. of the girls sent to reformatories are mental defectives.  To-day, society treats feeble-minded or “defective delinquent” men or women as “criminals,” sentences them to prison or reformatory for a “term,” and then releases them at the expiration of their sentences.  They are usually at liberty just long enough to reproduce their kind, and then they return again and again to prison.  The truth of this statement is evident from the extremely large proportion in institutions of neglected and dependent children, who are the feeble-minded offspring of such feeble-minded parents.

Confronted with these shocking truths about the menace of feeble-mindedness to the race, a menace acute because of the unceasing and unrestrained fertility of such defectives, we are apt to become the victims of a “wild panic for instant action.”  There is no occasion for hysterical, ill-considered action, specialists tell us.  They direct our attention to another phase of the problem, that of the so-called “good feeble-minded.”  We are informed that imbecility, in itself, is not synonymous with badness.  If it is fostered in a “suitable environment,” it may express itself in terms of good citizenship and useful occupation.  It may thus be transmuted into a docile, tractable, and peaceable element of the community.  The moron and the feeble-minded, thus protected, so we are assured, may even marry some brighter member of the community, and thus lessen the chances of procreating another generation of imbeciles.  We read further that some of our doctors believe that “in our social scale, there is a place for the good feeble-minded.”