Estimates vary from 350,000 at the present time to nearly
400,000 as early as 1890, Henry H. Goddard, Ph. D., of the Vineland,
N. J., Training School, being authority for the latter statement. Only
34,137 of these unfortunates were under institutional care in the
United States in 1916, the rest being free to propagate their kind--piling
up public burdens for future generations. The feebleminded are
notoriously prolific in reproduction. The close relationship between
poverty and ignorance and the production of feebleminded is shown by
Anne Moore, Ph.D., in a report to the Public Education Association of
New York in 1911. She found that an overwhelming proportion of the
classified feebleminded children in New York schools came from large
families living in overcrowded slum conditions, and that only a small
percentage were born of native parents.
Sixty thousand prostitutes go and come anew each year in the United
States. This army of unfortunates, as social workers and scientists
testify, come from families living under like conditions of want.
In the New York City schools alone in December, 1916, 61 per cent of
the children were suffering from undernourishment and 21 per cent in
immediate danger of it.
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