direction. The family, once overwhelmed by tragedies of abnormality, can now be aided as never before in lessening or in bearing the burden of such troubles. For the less seriously handicapped yet specially in need of social consideration-the blind, the deaf, the crippled, those of cardiac weakness, and the children born tired who might become rested and strong-the family has helps in education, medical treatment and work opportunities suited to the particular need, such as no previous era could furnish. Agencies for finding employment for the handicapped now show ingenuity of the highest sort in fitting the work to special needs, and the way in which the blind are taught to rise above their misfortune in happy use of the faculties and powers they actually possess is marvelous. The deaf have as yet been able to triumph over their misfortune in less degree, but the art of reading from the lips and other educational devices used in their behalf make their condition so superior to that of the deaf-mutes of old that it is cause for gratitude to every parent of a deaf child. The crippled children now are seen not to be different from other children in their educational rights and as needing only more consideration of physical requirements to be fitted for useful work. The significance of the removal of educational provisions for the blind, the deaf, the crippled, and the invalid children from the provisions of Boards of Charity and their assignment to departments of state and local Boards of Education, is great. It shows that we are becoming as capable in the community-at-large of understanding the radical difference between those who are defective in mind and those who are merely handicapped by loss of some special sense or some physical power as loving and wise parents have been when either defective or handicapped children have called upon them for special care. The children that find it harder than most of their age and station to grow up to full enjoyment and use of life's opportunities, because of some weight of affliction, are, we now know, entitled to all the training that the normal child receives and whatever else of special education their condition requires. The children that can never grow up to mental maturity, even with all that educational ingenuity can offer, are the permanent members of Society's Infant Class. QUESTIONS ON THE CHILDREN THAT NEVER GROW UP 1. What is the modern social program in respect to the care and training of the feeble-minded? 2. What should fathers and mothers of the feeble-minded do to help realize that program? 3. How far should social control compel the segregation or sterilization, or both, of those obviously unfit to become parents? 4. What can be done by mental hygiene to lessen the numbers of the insane, the "queer," the weak-willed, and the slow-minded? 5. The consensus of experts seems to indicate that the first need is to segregate in suitable institutions under permanent custodial care all the markedly inferior who cannot be self-supporting and who lack power of self-protection against the grossest forms of exploitation; the second need is to introduce new methods of supervisory control and humane protection and training in the care of those who are not normal but who, under favorable conditions of vocational guidance and direction and with a new home environment suited to their peculiar needs, may become wage-earners and fairly useful members of society. In the town for which you seek better conditions, which of these efforts is most needed at the present time? Is it to meet the needs for institutional care or for supervision adequate and well applied for those left either in their own homes or placed in colony-care? CHAPTER XI PRODIGAL SONS AND DAUGHTERS "BECAUSE of fathers' sins the cost Is counted in the children's blood; They starve where once they might have stood "The primary function of social science is to interpret men's experience in passing from stage to stage in the evolution of human values."-ALBION W. SMALL. "Every wrong-doer should have his due. But what is his due? Can we measure it by his past alone, or is it due any one to regard him as a man having a future as well? As having possibilities for good as well as achievements in bad?"-JOHN DEWEY. "Judge not, that ye be not judged. He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone."-JESUS. "The Sage is ever the good Saviour of men; he rejects none. For the good men are the instructors of other good men and the bad men are the material for the good men to work upon. The good I would meet with goodness, the not-good I would meet with goodness also."-LAO-TSZE. "The good man is apt to go right about pleasure and the bad man is apt to go wrong. It is only to the good man that the good presents itself as good, for vice perverts us and causes us to err about the principle of action."-ARISTOTLE. "I cannot but think that the extreme passion for getting rich, absorbing all the energies of life, predisposes to mental degeneracy, to moral defects, or to outbreaks of insanity in the offspring."-MAUDESLEY. "Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world or out of it which can be called good without qualification except a Good Will."-KANT. "The object of moral principles is to supply standpoints and methods which will enable the individual to make for himself an analysis of the elements of good and evil in the particular situation in which he finds himself."-JOHN DEWEY. "I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to precise rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions."-CHANNING. Who Should Hear Sermons on the Prodigal Son?-A young woman deeply interested in social service was asked by the warden of a prison to address its fifteen hundred inmates on a Sunday morning when they should be all assembled in Chapel. Hesitating at undertaking such a difficult task, she asked the warden what he would think she should talk about. "Anything you like," he said, "except this: don't speak on the prodigal son, for the last fourteen ministers and speakers have read that parable and talked about it." "Indeed, no," answered the young woman, "that parable is not for them. They should be taught what is justice to the elder brother and preached to from the text, 'Work out your own salvation."" It is really a bit difficult to find just the right audience for a preachment on that appealing parable. The harsh-natured fathers who most need its lesson are not likely to be in church when it is read and the tender fathers often need to be stiffened up to work with all the rest of society to make the prodigal behave better; and the elder brothers, the hard-working "sons of Martha," who have to save in order to pay the taxes for the institutions and agencies that take care of the prodigal, should not have the fact that their sacrifice and service are usually taken as a matter of course unduly emphasized when they meet their fellows. The fact is that the prodigal, like the genius, is often one who takes life's practical affairs so lightly that until he is really hungry in the far land whither he has taken himself for pleasures denied at home, he seldom considers how his behavior affects the rest of the family. Moreover, the prodigal is often such a charming and engaging creature that all is forgiven him many times more than is good for his soul, and who, therefore, has many fatted calves set before him in renewed festivals over his repeated home-comings. Yet, when all is said in the way of caution against overindulgence of the wayward, the one thing about parental love that marks it as the supreme type of affection is the fact that it holds all its own in permanent bond whatever the character of the child or his return for devotion. Distinction Between the Mentally Competent and Defective in Criminal Class.-The parent who has a prodigal son or daughter to-day has the benefit of much social wisdom and much educational treatment of the wayward, unknown in the past. In the first place, we are learning to sort out in the criminal and vicious classes those who are mentally responsible and those who may be supposed to be the helpless victims of their instincts and tendencies.* If it is true, as one has said, that "the test of sound moral character is that it possesses coherence under liberty and has learned those various arts of adaptation to ever-varying circumstance which make it a working quality, constant, rational, and automatic," we must perceive the intimate connection between mental power and moral competency. In point of fact, we now know that the overwhelming majority of criminals and constantly vicious persons, in ordinary times when no social hysteria of recent war gives a "crime wave," come from the mentally feeble or perverted types. The draft examinations in the Great War gave a shock to all students of social conditions in their revelation of the widespread deficiencies, physical and mental, of young men of our country. Mr. Henry Wysham Lanier, writing on this topic, shows "that out of a total of fifty-four millions of men twenty-six millions were either in the Army or Navy or registered and ready for call," and that of these "three millions out of thirteen were unfit to serve their country as soldiers." Nearly three-quarters of a million had some mechanical incapacity, defects in bones, joints, etc. About one-half million had imperfections of sense organs and nearly as many serious troubles of the circulatory system. A third of a * See a valuable study by Dr. Bernard Glueck, Director Psychiatric Clinic at Sing Sing Prison, entitled, "Concerning Prisoners," and published in Mental Hygiene for April, 1918, showing the need for mental examination of all convicted persons as an indispensable basis for right understanding and treatment of prisoners. |