464 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
year, 1846, the legislatures of both these states began considera- tion of the question. In 1848 the General Court of Massachusetts made its first appropriation for an experimental school in con- nection with the Institution for the Blind. This was begun in October, 1848. A few months earlier in the same year, and almost simultaneously with Dr. Seguin's school in New York, the first private school for the feeble-minded in America was opened at Barre, Mass.
Agitation of the question was kept up in New York until, in 185 1, an appropriation was made by the legislature, and in October of that year an experimental school near Albany com- menced a work for the state of New York which has resulted in the present splendid training school at Syracuse, and the three custodial asylums for adult idiots and imbeciles in other parts of the state.
In Pennsylvania a private school at Germantown, organized in 1852 by Mr. J. B. Richards, who was the first teacher of the Boston school, developed the next year into an incorporated institution, supported partly by private subscriptions and partly by public funds. Removed, two years later, to a site near Medea, Pa., the school has grown into the present beautiful institution village of Elwyn, with more than a thousand inhabitants, includ- ing those of all grades of idiocy and imbecility.
The institution in Ohio was established in 1857, and the state, which is famous for its liberality to its benevolent institu- tions, has not been niggardly to the feeble-minded.
Schools were established in Connecticut in 1858; Kentucky, i860; Illinois, 1865. Other states soon followed the example of their more progressive sisters, and there are at present in the United States twenty-four institutions supported wholly or in greater part by public funds, and about nine private institutions of a similar kind supported by tuition payments."
In four institutions which were organized for the custodial care of adult idiots, and in, perhaps, three of the more recent of
' For recent statistics see "Care of the Feeble-minded," by F. M. Powell, M.D., in the proceedings of the Twenty-fourth National Conference of Chanties and Cor rection, Toronto, X897.
