334 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
women, the mothers of defective illegitimate children, often begotten as well as born in the poorhouse. Under present con- ditions few of these unhappy creatures will escape repeated motherhood until past the reproductive age. From these 90,000 neglected or abused feeble-minded persons have come, or will come, most of the next generation of idiots, imbeciles, and epileptics, and a vast number of the prostitutes, tramps, petty criminals, and paupers.
Of all the dangerous and defective classes this is the most defective, and the most dangerous to the commonwealth, the most to be pitied in themselves, and the most costly to the tax- payer.
After what has been said above there would seem to be no need of argument to convince anyone who accepts these premises that the care and control of the feeble-minded should be under- taken by the state ; that the increase or the continuance of a class so defective, so injurious, and so certain to transmit its defects to posterity should be checked.
The history of what the states have done and are doing, and a suggestion of what should now be done, will be the subjects of a subsequent paper.
Alexander Johnson.
Ft. Wayne, Ind.
