Yoshiya Makita

The Ambiguous Terrain: Articulation of Disability
in the Municipal Administration of New York Cityin the Early Twentieth Century( 曖昧な境域：20 世紀初頭のニューヨーク市政における障害概念の構築）
Yoshiya Makita*
SUMMARY IN JAPANESE: 本稿は 20 世紀初頭ニューヨーク
市の社会福祉政策における障害概念の構築過程とその帰結を、
市営簡易宿泊所の組織改編とランダルス島児童施設における知的障害者の収容実態を事例として考察するものである。19141915年、ニューヨーク市行政は周期的な経済不況とそれに伴う失業問題に対処するなかで、市営簡易宿泊所の組織改編を実施した。市公共慈善局は簡易宿泊所に滞在する貧困者を、「雇用可
能な者たち(the employable)」と「雇用不可能な者たち(theunemployable)」とに分類し、前者を有用な労働者として市営職業紹介所等を通じて産業労働に復帰させるとともに、後者を労働能力を有さない者として公共慈善施設へと収容する政策を立案した。身体的健常性(able-bodiedness)という基準によるこの貧困者の分類・分配の過程で、障害(disability)は労働遂行能力の欠如(inability to labor)として規定されたのである。ランダルス
島児童施設に収容された知的障害者たちは、しかしながらこうした行政による障害の概念規定から逸脱していた。
「精神薄弱者(“the feeble-minded”)」と総称された者たちの多くは知的障害の判定を受ける一方で労働可能な身体的健常性を有していた。また優生学と結びついた知的障害の医学的分類の進展は、同時にその副産物として医学的に明確な判定を下し得ない「境界事例」を生み出した。その結果、公共慈善施設はこれらの障害と健常の狭間にある者たちの一時的滞留の場としての機能を担うこととなったのである。
* 牧田 義也 Graduate Student in Ph.D. Program, Department of History, Graduate School of Arts
and Sciences, Boston University, Boston, U.S.A. and Graduate School of Social Sciences,
Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan.

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I. Introduction
In 1916, John Burton, formerly a resident of West 121st Street in Manhattan,
spent most of his days in a bed at Metropolitan Hospital in New York City. On
March 30, Burton entered the hospital with a diagnosis of tuberculosis in his hip.
Fortunately, the physician in charge decided that an operation was not necessary
in his case. Burton steadily regained his strength, and in August the physician
assured that he would soon be ready for discharge. His former employer promised Burton a position which would pay his board, clothing, and possibly five
dollars a month upon discharge. For all his prospects in the future, however,
Burton found himself still lying in a bed at the hospital ward when the summer
passed and even after the first snow powdered the ground of Blackwell’s Island.
Osteal tuberculosis had changed him into a different social existence. Now he wasbarely able to get about even with the aid of a crutch. Even if discharged, unlesssomeone came to his support, Burton seemed likely to become a public charge on
the city again. The physician told Burton that he could become self-dependent
again provided he had a brace and that it would be possible even to continue thekind of work offered by his former employer with the help of a brace. However,
the hospital budget had no room to provide Burton with a brace, causing his
prolonged stay at the ward.
At this point, the Social Service Committee of Metropolitan Hospital decided to refer John Burton to outside private charity organizations for assistancewith a hip brace, and the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor
(AICP) jumped into the case. Unusual was the approach the AICP took to solve
the problem. Instead of urging its Joint Application Bureau to collect charitable
donations for a brace as it had regularly done, the AICP demanded the necessary
funds from the City Department of Public Charities. It was the duty of public
hospitals like Metropolitan to provide such supplies as a brace, explained Bailey
B. Burritt, general director of the AICP, and in case the public hospital did nothave enough funds, then the City should secure them. Burritt insisted that “theprovision of the wherewithal to get about” be as essential a part of hospitaltreatment as the provision of food, nursing, and medical attention, and “a failure
to recognize this on the part of the Department means that the case is notadequately treated, from the medical or any other point of view.” In reply to thisdemand, John A. Kingsbury, Commissioner of Public Charities, made an additional appropriation of $2,300 for surgical supplies, conceding that “the Depart60

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ment ought to be doing this sort of thing and that a brace for a case of this kind is
as essential as a suit of clothes.”1
The John Burton case reveals the ambiguous status of people with disabilities within the city’s public welfare program. John Burton was currently disabled
but not necessarily permanently. He was now dependent on public relief, but
could be again self-dependent with the aid of some device. Underlying the agreement between the AICP director and the Commissioner of Public Charities was asense of “public” responsibility for the rehabilitation of the disabled poor. In theearly twentieth century, municipal officials of New York City developed anadministrative system of public charitable institutions. City workers tried torehabilitate those deemed potentially self-dependent at public charitable institutions and reinstate them into the industrial workforce. But who could be rehabilitated and who could not? The difficulty in measuring the possibility of rehabilitating those on the “borderline” between the able-bodied and the disabled presented city officials with certain problems in elaborating the welfare program.
Departing from many of the previous scholarly discussions on disability history
which centered on incontrovertible impairments such as blindness and deafness,this paper inquires into the way in which public charitable institutions in New
York City actually functioned for those who stood on the edge between the ablebodied and the disabled, and thus examines the process of social construction of
disabilities in the Progressive Era.2
The public welfare program of New York City resonated with the major
tenet of the nationwide social insurance movement launched by the American
Association for Labor Legislation (AALL) which led the social policy agenda inprogressive reform efforts.3 The ideological basis of this movement was thebifurcation of the welfare program into social insurance and public assistance.
Social insurance implied an “entitlement” to public social benefits, while public
assistance was means-tested relief traditionally thought of as “charity,” whichbrought fewer social benefits and carried the stigma of the “unworthy” poor.
Large-scale unemployment caused by cyclical economic depressions and theincreasing frequency of industrial accidents in this period revealed that ordinary
working people often fell into poverty due to no fault of their own, thus undermining the traditional perception of poverty as caused by moral defects in thecharacter of the poor themselves. Advocates of the movement intended the social
insurance program to be a bulwark for industrial workers against the taint ofcharity. David Moss argues that from this stratification of the welfare program
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emerged the “security state,” which prioritized the social security of white maleworkers and redistributed social benefits disproportionately.4 The social insurance movement led by the AALL never attained much success in national legislation in this period. Yet, the AALL exerted vast influence on the city’s welfare
program at a crucial point.
In practice, the ideological bifurcation of the welfare program generated forcharity officials the task of classifying the applicants for public relief into two
categories. Within the public welfare system of New York City, municipal officials at public charitable institutions assumed this task of categorization of thepoor. The question is how municipal officials classified the poor into those
automatically entitled to social benefits and those allotted to charitable care. In
the early twentieth century, the criterion of this classification was the ability to
conduct labor. The principle of industrial citizenship which Amy Fairchild points
out in her analysis of the Federal immigration regulations in this period also
permeated social welfare policy. The principal obligation to be entitled to publicsocial benefits was to join the industrial workforce.5 Municipal officials in New
York City classified applicants for public relief on the ground of their physicaland mental ability to conduct labor. Based on medical examinations, officials
assessed the able-bodiedness of applicants, classified them into the “employable” and the “unemployable” categories, and sent those deemed able to conduct
labor to public institutions with no taint of charity, while committing thoseunable to join the workforce to charitable institutions.
The disabled poor who stood on the edge between the able-bodied and thedisabled, however, deviated from this dichotomic scheme of categorization. The
possibility of rehabilitating those diagnosed as a “borderline case” undermined
the static concept of able-bodiedness.6 They were currently “unemployable” butwould perhaps be made “employable.” This ambiguity left ample room for thedisabled poor to utilize public institutions for their own end. The ways in which
public charitable institutions actually functioned for the poor in the early twentieth century have remained relatively unknown, compared with the vast accumulation of historiography on the institutional development of poorhouses in thenineteenth century. David Wagner has recently revealed that the poor in the earlytwentieth century often used poorhouses as their safety-net in a rapidly industrializing society, as a place where they could obtain shelter, food, and medical carein times of unemployment, illness, and permanent debility, thus undermining
social control functions initially intended.7 While in theory municipal officials at
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these public institutions sought to categorize applicants on the grounds of physical and mental ability and reorganize the industrial workforce by excluding thosefound disabled, these institutions also functioned in practice as a place where
people with disabilities could claim temporal relief.
In this paper, I first analyze the reorganization of the administrative systemof public relief in New York City and the bifurcation of the welfare program in theearly twentieth century. The focal point of my analysis is the Municipal Lodging
House, which city officials reorganized into a “clearing house” in order to categorize the poor in the midst of the serious economic depression of 1914-1915.
Then, through an analysis of mentally retarded children committed at the Randall’s
Island institutions in the city, I examine the actual functions of public charitable
institutions for people with disabilities. The welfare program of New York City
was far-reaching in scope, covering not only adult workers but also children. In an
era when reformers gradually curtailed the economic activities of children througha series of child labor legislations, city officials regarded mentally retarded children as the least employable group in the population, committing poor children
with mental retardation to public institutions for charitable assistance. The
institutionalization of mentally retarded children sharply exemplifies both thetheory and practice of charitable assistance to the disabled poor. Public charitable
institutions were the practical sites where progressive social thoughts crystallized into enforcement, and from which emerged disability policy, a terrain still
ambiguous in the early twentieth century.

II. Municipal Lodging House: “Clearing House” of the HomelessIn the winter of 1913-1914, New York City faced a serious problem of
unemployment caused by an economic depression. Streets in Manhattan werefilled with the unemployed in search of jobs. Anarchists and the Wobblies held
boisterous demonstrations for the unemployed at Union Square and elsewhere.
Harry Hopkins, an investigator of the AICP, estimated that over 300,000 people
were unemployed in the city.8 To discuss possible measures to ameliorate thisserious situation, on February 27-28 the AALL held the National Conference on
Unemployment in New York City, with representatives from 59 cities and 25
States. Although representatives disagreed on the severity of the present depression, all concurred in one thing: irregularity of employment was not unusual in the
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United States.9 At the turn of the century, reformers and public officials graduallycame to recognize the existence of involuntary unemployment due to cyclicaldepressions and seasonal layoffs.10 They saw widespread unemployment caused
mainly by this irregularity of employment as a structural problem of industrial
society. As Mary Van Kleeck of the Charity Organization Society (COS) stated,“it is conditions and not causes which should be studied in individual cases” of theunemployed, and “industrial conditions may be plainly a factor.”11
While defining unemployment as a problem of industry, the AALL members
at the same time constructed an ideological distinction between the “employable”
and the “unemployable” among those out of work. The aged, the infirm, or thecriminal were in fact not the unemployed, for they were ousted, or had willfully
withdrawn themselves, from the ranks of workers. The AALL officers thus
advocated the separation in policymaking of these unemployables from the employable unemployed who were both able and willing to work. The AALL
officers instructed that “[f]or the employable the need is constructive work—
regularized business, efficient labor exchanges, and adequate unemployment insurance. The care of the unemployable is the task of the relief agency, the hospitaland the reformatory.”12 When Mayor John Purroy Mitchel organized the Mayor’s
Committee on Unemployment of New York City on December 2, 1914, theCommittee adopted this separation of the unemployable as the basis of theirpolicymaking. The unemployable, or “those who are unable to perform regularlabor, whether because of sickness, old age, or some physical handicap, and those
who have drifted into becoming tramps or loafers,” should be excluded from “aconstructive policy” for the employable.13 But how in practice did public officials differentiate the employable from the unemployable? In 1914, municipal
officials of New York City designated the Municipal Lodging House as a site forthis task of categorization.
The Municipal Lodging House was established in March 1896, when municipal officials put in use an old barge as a lodging place for the homeless. The
initial purpose of this institution was to supplant the old practice of accommodating the homeless at police stations, and officials gradually expanded the size of
the Municipal Lodging House. In December of that year, officials moved it to arented building on 398 First Avenue with accommodations for 317 homeless men
and women. On September 22, 1904, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment
authorized the expenditure to enlarge the structure of the Municipal Lodging
House, and on February 15, 1909, it reopened at 432 to 438 East 25th Street with64

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normal accommodations for 1,064. Facing the unemployment problem in thewinter of 1913-1914 which made many jobless men and women also homeless,municipal officials further enlarged the institution by utilizing the Recreation Pierat the foot of East 24th Street as an annex, bringing the total accommodation
capacity in the two buildings to 2,700.14
With the growing demand for night shelter for the homeless unemployed in
1914, municipal officials set about reorganizing the Municipal Lodging House.
The reorganization was in line with the AALL’s policy advocacy of the separation of the unemployable. In March, Commissioner Kingsbury appointed William
Alberti Whiting as general director to conduct a preliminary investigation into thebackground histories of applicants to the Municipal Lodging House. Whiting
described the primary purpose of this investigation as determining “upon what
basis a practical service could be rendered to such [homeless] men, to the end thatthe worthy among them may be enabled to rehabilitate themselves, and all others
wisely and appropriately provided for.”15 The investigation consisted of socialand medical examinations of 2,000 applicants of that month. Fifteen social
examiners conducted interviews with the applicants and fifteen physicians madephysical examinations.16
The results of this investigation showed that while the majority belonged to
employable workers, a certain portion of the applicants fell into the unemployable category. The social examination revealed that the bulk of the applicants
were middle-aged men who were temporarily unemployed. Of 1,426 men who
answered the inquiry regarding the period of unemployment, the majority of theapplicants (57.6%) had been unemployed for one to six months, and 496 (34.8%)
had been so for less than a month. The number of those who were out of work formore than six months was only 102 (7.1%). Also, 1,304 out of 1,467 (88.9%)
were aged from 21 to 60. Whereas social examiners disclosed the actual conditions of unemployment, physicians measured the ability of the applicants toperform labor. Through the medical examination, physicians estimated that 1,774
out of the 2,000 applicants were physically able-bodied to conduct labor, while
the remaining 226 were deemed unable to work, or unemployable. Among theunemployable, physicians diagnosed 80 applicants as “temporarily disabled,”
and 146 as “permanently disabled.” Physicians specified tuberculosis, senility,
nephritis, heart disease, acute pleurisy, and blindness as the major causes of theirdisability. Robert Bertrand Brown, special investigator for the AALL, concluded
that the results of this investigation indicated that “a substantial proportion of65

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the men who apply at the Municipal Lodging House are unemployable—men
whose unenviable lot it is to be the less fit in the struggle for survival.”17
Based on these observations, William Whiting made recommendations totransform the Municipal Lodging House into an institution at which municipal
officials could classify applicants into the employable majority and a certain
remnant of the unemployable by measuring their able-bodiedness to conduct
labor, and provide them with separate treatments.18 But Whiting and othersencountered a serious obstacle in the process of change. Before Kingsbury assumed his duties as Commissioner of Public Charities in January 1914, the management of the Municipal Lodging House had been long under the influence of theTammany machine of the Democratic Party. Ex-Deputy Commissioner Frank J.
Goodwin, a Tammany leader of the seventh Assembly District, had utilized theinstitution to patronize voters in his district by providing posts and accommodations, while thefts and other misconduct among lodgers and staff were allpervasive under the superintendency of William C. Yorke. When Kingsbury discharged Superintendent Yorke and appointed Whiting as Acting-Superintendent,
Whiting and his supporters faced the animosity of old Tammany folks. Immediately after Whiting took up the superintendency on the morning of April 26, a firestarted in the basement of the Municipal Lodging House, and other threats andassaults followed.19
As late as December 1914, under the pressure of massive unemployment
anticipated in the coming winter, municipal officials finally established the Advisory Social Service Committee to reorganize the Municipal Lodging House. John
B. Andrews, secretary of the AALL, chaired the committee, and realized the
AALL’s idea of the separation of the unemployable in a substantive reorganization of the institution.20 The pivot of this reform was the creation of theSocial Service Department and the Industrial Department. Whereas the Social
Service Department was designed to undertake the classification and proper
dispositions of applicants, the Industrial Department was to assess their actual
ability to perform labor. Under the new system, applicants to the Municipal
Lodging House were directed by city workers to a registration procedure after
having a meal, in which city officials investigated each applicant’s social background such as name, address, nationality, length of time in New York City andState. After bathing, applicants also underwent a medical examination by aphysician. Based on the information thus obtained, from 7:30 the next morningsocial workers at the Social Service Department conducted daily social examina66

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tions by interviewing applicants, and classified them into the employable and theunemployable categories. The purpose of the Industrial Department was tocomplement the classification of the Social Service Department by means of awork test. The Industrial Department allotted jobs to applicants who had spenta night at the Municipal Lodging House, testing their actual ability to conduct
labor. Officials intended the work test to provide “every man a chance to work
for all he gets, and thereby prove that he is in the employable class.”21
The Advisory Committee set this classification procedure as the basis forredesigning the Municipal Lodging House as a “clearing house for the homeless,”where municipal officials separated the employable from the unemployable anddirected them to different institutions which would meet their individual needs.
The Advisory Committee thought that the needs of the employable were not thesame as those of the unemployable. Robert Brown contended that “[t]he employable man without a job needs to be directed toward a job without a man—a job[to] which he is fitted. The unemployable man needs either to be treated for thecauses of his dependency, to be protected from the competition of the more fit, or
to receive both such treatment and protection.”22 Under this “clearing house”
plan, municipal officials designed the Public Employment Bureau to take a complimentary role for the reintegration of the employable unemployed into theindustrial workforce. On April 28, 1914, the Board of Aldermen of New York
City passed an ordinance establishing the Public Employment Bureau as a division of the Department of Licenses. The Bureau formally began its work of
employment exchange at the corner of Lafayette and Leonard Streets on November 4, under the direction of Walter Lincoln Sears, former superintendent of theState Free Employment Office in Boston.23 Sears defined the task of the institution as rescuing the employable unemployed from the taint of charity, insisting“that the problem of ‘employing the unemployed’ and of ‘relieving distress’ and‘treating pauperism’ had better be, so far as possible, kept absolutely distinct. . . .
It would be very unwise to oblige the laboring men and women out of work to
submit [to] the ordeal of the usual charity application.”24
By connecting a jobless man with a manless job at the Public Employment
Bureau, officials intended to reintegrate the employable into the labor force, andthus to secure “the right to work” of the employable. City workers of theMunicipal Lodging House sent persons who seemed employable to the Public
Employment Bureau, whereas they committed the unemployable to charitable
institutions. During the first quarter of 1915, the Social Service Department
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directed a number of able-bodied lodgers to the Public Employment Bureau, andplaced 1,477 homeless persons in paid positions. At the same time, officials sent
809 aged persons to the city homes for the aged and infirm, and referred 178
homeless persons to private charitable agencies. Some 156 lodgers were sent to
Bellevue Hospital for emergency treatment, and 49 either to Bellevue or to theClearing House for Mental Defectives for mental examination.25
In 1914-1915, the Municipal Lodging House thus changed its function froma temporary shelter for the homeless to a central clearing house to classify anddistribute the city’s homeless population. The experiment at the Municipal
Lodging House reflected the ideological bifurcation of the social welfare program
led nationally by the AALL. By differentiating treatments for the employablefrom charitable assistance for the unemployable, municipal officials enlarged thefunctions of the Department of Public Charities beyond charitable relief, andembarked on the new policy agenda of social insurance. As William Whiting
pointed out, “the Dept. of Public Charities under the present administration was
not contemplating a limitation of it’s [sic] work to charity, but was taking advantage of it’s [sic] close contact with the homeless, to provide ways and means bywhich they could be given temporary lifts back to independence” (emphasis
added).26 This expansion of the administrative system of public welfare also
implied a reconceptualization of the “worthy” poor. Unlike many of the charity
officials in the nineteenth century who had evaluated the poor in their moral
character, municipal officials in the early twentieth century measured the worthiness of the poor by their able-bodiedness to perform labor through a medical
examination and work test.
Within this new perspective, the disabilities of the unemployable were defined as inability to conduct labor, the opposite of the able-bodiedness of theemployable.

III. The Disabled Poor: Back and Forth across“the Hill to the Poorhouse”
While officials at the Municipal Lodging House directed many of the employable unemployed to the Public Employment Bureau, they committed the unemployable to other public institutions for charitable assistance. At the turn of the
century, municipal officials gradually narrowed the scope of these public chari68

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table institutions by dropping their correctional functions. On December 31,
1895, the Department of Public Charities and Correction was reorganized into
two separate departments, and correctional institutions such as penitentiaries,
workhouses, and prisons came under the jurisdiction of the newly established
Department of Correction. Within the administrative system of the Departmentof Public Charities, public charitable institutions on Blackwell’s Island, Randall’s
Island, and Staten Island became the three major sites for commitment of thedebilitated poor in the city. On January 14, 1903, Homer Folks, Commissioner of
Public Charities at that time, ordered changes in names of public charitable institutions to eliminate the public image of these institutions as sites of correction.
The Almshouse on Blackwell’s Island was renamed the New York City Home for
the Aged and Infirm, and the Richmond Poorhouse and Poor Farm on Staten
Island changed its title to the New York City Farm Colony. By the same order,
the Randall’s Island Asylums and Schools and Infants’ Hospital were reorganized
into the New York City Children’s Hospitals and Schools.27
This section examines the actual functions of public charitable institutions
for the disabled poor through an analysis of the mentally retarded committed at
the Randall’s Island institutions. I hereafter use the word “feeble-minded” without quotation marks, for it brought specific social, moral, and biological connotations different from those now attached to “people with mental retardation.”
While doctors sought for a way to rehabilitate the physically disabled, the majority of the medical profession gradually came to reach an agreement on the
incurability of mental retardation by the first decade of the twentieth century, andmany doctors and asylum superintendents advocated permanent incarceration of
the mentally retarded for custodial care at institutions.28 The mentally retarded
were deemed unemployable in society at large and unable to become selfdependent without the ability to reason. Mentally retarded children, especiallyfeeble-minded girls, seemed least employable among them in the early twentiethcentury when reformers advocated the family-wage ideal in which they assigned
the breadwinning role exclusively to male adults.29 The focus on this least employable cohort of the disabled poor at the charitable institutions uncovers bothpractical and unintended consequences of the medical classification of publicwelfare recipients based on their ability to work.
The public charitable institutions on Randall’s Island began as a branch of thecity almshouse in 1846 when the commissioner of almshouse procured the island
to alleviate the overcrowding of children at the almshouse.30 In the early twenti69

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eth century, the Randall’s Island institutions came to assume the dual functions of
temporary hospital care for physically disabled children and long-term incarceration of the mentally disabled. On December 27, 1902, Commissioner Folks
reorganized the Randall’s Island institutions into four divisions under the same
superintendent. The Infants’ Hospital for infants under two years of age and theChildren’s Hospital for children aged two years or over provided medical care to
the physically disabled. Doctors at these hospitals set themselves to rehabilitatechildren with skin and eye diseases, paralysis, or other physical debilities, andthus to reintegrate these physically disabled children into community life. For
example, H. S., a boy aged thirteen, had never been to school owing to severe scalp
trouble when he was admitted to the Children’s Hospital in 1905. Doctors andteachers at the hospital and its day school provided a series of treatments on his
fingers, and H. S. was made ready to enter a fifth-year class at the public school
when discharged in 1907.31
In contrast, the School for the Feeble-Minded for children with mental retardation of teachable grade and the Custodial Asylum for mentally retarded childrenof unteachable grade were to function as semi-permanent colonies of the mentallyretarded.32 At the Industrial School on Randall’s Island, physically disabledchildren received vocational training to prepare themselves for industrial life after
discharge, while mentally retarded children had the same training to join theworkforce within the institutions.33 Mary C. Dunphy, Superintendent of theChildren’s Hospitals and Schools, insisted that the feeble-minded “be segregatedpermanently from society.” The feeble-minded should be kept under careful
supervision at institutions for life, for they could not survive the economic competition with skilled workers in the labor market, and the danger and temptations
on the streets would nullify the moral training at institutions. Dunphy asserted
that permanent segregation was “the first condition in making the training of
defectives of effective value to society.”34
At the turn of the century, superintendents of public charitable institutions
for the mentally retarded shifted their emphasis from special education for community life after discharge to permanent institutionalization of the mentally retarded under custodial care. With the rise of the eugenics movement, superintendents gradually turned to the diagnosis of feeble-mindedness as an incurable hereditary impairment.35 Superintendents along with eugenicists came to perceive thementally retarded, especially feeble-minded girls among them, as a menace tosociety, alleging that “mental defectives” would easily degrade themselves into
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the rank of criminals without moral instruction at institutions, and feeble-minded
girls would reproduce defectives of their kind often as prostitutes on the street.
Charles Davenport, one of the leading advocates of the eugenics movement, madethe point clear in a letter to Marion R. Taber, assistant secretary of the New York
City Visiting Committee, who investigated institutional care for the feeble-mindedat the Randall’s Island institutions. According to Davenport, “among the Morons
there are many girls who are without control of their sex passions, of their desire
for the property of others, or of control in other directions,” and “some of thechildren will have similar strong sexual and wayward tendencies, incapable ofcontrol.”36 Within this eugenicist perspective, permanent segregation of the feebleminded at institutions appeared as an effective and necessary means to prevent
crimes and further increase of “mental defectives.”
The actual conditions of the Randall’s Island institutions, however, did notcorrespond to this ideal of permanent institutionalization of the mentally retarded. The capacity of the School for the Feeble-Minded was overtaxed by thecontinuing flow of new applicants in the early twentieth century, and Superintendent Dunphy had to discharge a certain number of inmates for institutional management every year.37 From 1904 to 1908, nearly 220 out of about 600 inmates
were discharged on average every year, and from 1911 to 1914, about 370 out of
more than 1,000 were discharged on yearly average.38 Although some of thefeeble-minded were merely transferred to other institutions such as the State
Custodial Asylum for Feeble-Minded Women in Newark, more than a few ofthem were discharged to their own family in the city.
On the decision to discharge to their own family or relatives, family membersof the feeble-minded could find room for negotiation with officials at the institutions. Bertha Fries, a girl aged thirteen who lived in Brooklyn, was committed to
the Randall’s Island institutions on November 12, 1912. The principal of her
public school sent a complaint that Bertha had not attended school to the Brooklyn
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (BSPCC), and based on a reportfrom her neighbor who witnessed that “Bertha was considered to be an immoral
girl by the adults and children in the vicinity,” the BSPCC committed Bertha tothe institutions. The BSPCC saw Bertha’s “immoral” behavior as evidence of her
feeble-mindedness. Her family at first gave consent to the commitment under the
impression that Bertha could get a special education at the institutions, but after
knowing that Bertha was put “right in with prostitutes” there, her mother madeseveral applications for the release of Bertha. Although Arthur W. Towne, Super71

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intendent of the BSPCC, expressed his opposition to the discharge, the family
never abandoned their hope. In September 1913, Mrs. Florence Fries, Bertha’s
sister-in-law, renewed the application, and on October 1, 1913, Superintendent
Dunphy finally approved the discharge of Bertha Fries.39
The Bertha Fries case exemplifies active involvement of family members in
the process of the decision on discharge, but some families were reluctant about
discharge of their children. Hattie Mendlinger, a “girl” aged twenty-two, wascommitted to the Randall’s Island institutions on August 25, 1912. The firstmental examination indicated that her mentality was fair, but doctors eventuallypronounced a diagnosis of “mental deficiency.” When Mary A. Hopkins, aninvestigator of the New York City Visiting Committee, came to interview Regina
Mendlinger, the single mother of Hattie, the mother mistakenly thought that
Hopkins intended to discharge Hattie from the institutions, and told her that it
was impossible for her to take care of Hattie at home. Regina was working as adomestic servant, and it seemed economically difficult for her to sustain thefamily only by her earnings.40 Institutionalization of feeble-minded children wasoften a means of economic survival for families in utter poverty.
Poor families often sent their children to the Randall’s Island institutions toalleviate their economic burdens, and accordingly “alleged feeble-minded children” whose mental deficiency was doubtful flooded the institutions. To examine
and reclassify all children admitted to the institutions, on October 21, 1902,
Commissioner Folks organized the Special Committee on the Feeble-Minded
Persons, consisting of the president of the Medical Board, the attending neurologist, and the superintendent. The Committee examined every month “a large
number of the children on the Island, who have been sent there by parents, often
without good cause, and the result of their labors has shown that a number ofthese children are not feeble-minded.” In 1904, the Committee still found that
45% of 311 children admitted had to be reclassified.41
To preclude “normal” children from the School for the Feeble-Minded, theMedical Board of the Children’s Hospitals and Schools developed a diagnostic
procedure before admission. In the 1910s, before being admitted to the Randall’s
Island institutions, children “supposed and known to be mentally defective”
underwent a medical pre-examination under the direction of Dr. Max G. Schlapp
at the Clearing House for Mental Defectives of the Post Graduate Hospital.42
Schlapp examined applicants to the Clearing House by means of the Binet-Simon
Scale of intelligence test invented by French psychologist Alfred Binet and his
72Yoshiya Makita

colleagues, which had been by this time translated and revised by Henry H.
Goddard in the United States to measure the “mental age” of the feeble-minded.43
Goddard, a leading psychologist directing a research laboratory at the Vineland
Training School for Feeble-Minded Children in New Jersey, advocated the reclassification of the feeble-minded based on the intelligence test. Utilizing the term“feeble-minded” as an umbrella category, Goddard classified all the mentallyretarded into three basic sub-categories of idiots, imbeciles, and morons. “Idiots”
implicated those whose mental age was determined by the Binet test to be under
two years old with little expectation of further development, “imbeciles” three toseven years old, and “morons” eight to twelve years old. Goddard further subdivided each category into low, middle, and high grades, and deemed those whose
mental age was over twelve years old as “normal” persons.44 In 1915, the New
York State Commission to Investigate Provision for the Mentally Deficient reported that among the applicants to the Clearing House were found 386 idiots,
836 imbeciles, and 490 morons.45 After their admission to the Randall’s Island
institutions, the resident physician reexamined new inmates to reconfirm their
exact mental status, and doctors and teachers were to prescribe the specializedcare for these different categories during the period of observation.46
The Medical Board aimed to medicalize the care for the feeble-minded on the
grounds of “scientific” diagnosis and categorization, but they soon faced the factthat medicalization of the care for the feeble-minded generated a number of“borderline cases” as its byproduct which undermined the very notion of ablebodiedness. The case history of Frances Norton illustrates the ambiguous statusof people categorized as borderline cases. Frances Norton was subject to mental
examination at the Neurological Institute on July 18, 1910. At that time, Dr.
Collins at the institute diagnosed her as a high grade imbecile. After the examination, Norton secured a position in domestic service in New Brighton, but wassoon brushed off by her employer who could not tolerate Norton’s “shiftlessness, laziness and obstinacy.” Norton stayed for a while at Metropolitan Hospital on Blackwell’s Island, but on August 6, 1912, Dr. Schultz transferred her to aconvalescent home on the grounds that he could not consider her as feebleminded. The diagnosis on her mental state, however, backtracked again. On
September 6 of that year, Dr. Karpes of Bellevue Hospital diagnosed her as animbecile, but a few days later Dr. Schulz again insisted that Norton was “notfeeble-minded, but a wayward girl.” On October 18, Dr. Frederick W. Ellis at the
Neurological Institute insisted that as Norton “has a considerable degree of ability
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The Ambiguous Terrain

to work under direction it is more fair to her to classify her as feeble-minded andincapable of self-direction in the more important matters of life,” thus categorizing Norton as “a borderline institutional case.” Both her father and mother weredead, and public charitable institutions became a temporary home for Norton. On
August 25, 1913, Norton was transferred to the Randall’s Island institutions fromthe City Hospital on Blackwell’s Island, although Dr. Bacon of the hospital statedthat Norton “seemed to be very bright.” On January 9, 1914, however, aninvestigator of the New York City Visiting Committee found Norton again at theCity Hospital.47
The existence of “borderline cases” like Frances Norton who might be mentally retarded but possessed the ability to conduct labor blurred the medical
distinction between the able-bodied and the disabled. Doctors thought Norton to
be incapable of “self-direction,” but she was physically able-bodied. Norton
could work if directed, and in many instances common laborers did not need selfdirection for their unskilled jobs. A. C. Rogers, secretary of the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-Minded, characterized “Borderland Cases” as“backward and delinquent children” who had mild or partial deficiencies in theirmental capability but who still retained the ability to earn wages in society atlarge. “[A]ll those cases of abnormal children which [doctors] do not properlyclassify with the typical feeble-minded” provoked “the most doubt as to eligibility to a school for the feeble-minded, or advisability, and in some cases, possibility of retention in such institution.”48 In a sense, this ambiguity of status could beapplied to many of the feeble-minded at the Randall’s Island institutions. At theIndustrial School, the feeble-minded joined the institutional workforce, and theirlabor in fact sustained the management of the institutions.49 Theoretically,
Goddard’s revision of the Binet test was intended to eliminate the nomenclatural
ambiguity over mental retardation by judging one’s “normalcy” solely on the
numerical basis of the single measurement scale of “mental age,” artificially reducing all the “abnormal” into three sub-categories of feeble-mindedness. But atpractical sites of institutional management in which municipal officials set theinability to conduct labor as a criterion of charitable assistance, the feeble-minded,
except severely retarded people usually categorized as “idiots,” remained in an
ambiguous existence. The feeble-minded were mentally disabled but physicallyable-bodied, and this ambiguity in their status allowed mentally retarded children
to move in and out of the institutions.

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Yoshiya Makita

IV. Conclusion
In the early twentieth century, municipal officials in New York City redefined the meaning of disability through the reorganization of public charitable
institutions. As the experiment of categorizing the out-of-work homeless at theMunicipal Lodging House exemplifies, in the face of mounting pressure from theserious unemployment problems in 1914-1915, officials attempted to classify
the city’s homeless population into the employable and the unemployable classes.
Within this new scheme of social policy in which municipal officials measured theemployability of the poor by their able-bodiedness to conduct labor, the disability of the unemployable was determined by their inability to work. In the courseof the bifurcation of the welfare program, municipal officials designated publiccharitable institutions for “charity” assistance to the unemployable. But as theanalysis of the Children’s Hospitals and Schools on Randall’s Island indicates,
public charitable institutions also functioned as places where the disabled poor
could receive temporal relief. Doctors attempted to rehabilitate physically disabled children, and the Industrial School offered them vocational training for the
preparation of industrial life after discharge. Although the superintendent andother officials sought for the permanent institutionalization of the mentally retarded under the influence of eugenicist thoughts, as the case histories of the girls
diagnosed as feeble-minded reveal, mentally retarded children went in and out of
the institutions, and their family members utilized public assistance to theirchildren to alleviate the economic burdens on their households. The feebleminded diagnosed as “borderline cases” easily crossed the line back and forth
between the able-bodied and the disabled, thus disturbing the administration of
the city’s welfare program. Ironically, inarticulacy about these “borderline cases”
was generated through the process of administrative articulation of disability as
inability to labor buttressed by medicalization of feeble-mindedness.
As recent institutionalists’ discussions on social policy point out, the U.S.
welfare system has been complemented by provisions not accounted for under
the public welfare program, including private social benefits.50 In New York City,
numerous private charitable organizations had drawn public funds, complementing, and in fact setting the basis of, the city’s welfare system since the nineteenth
century.51 In the Progressive Era when reformers and social scientists began toemphasize the state’s role in social and economic relations, however, publiccharitable institutions emerged as the major site of state regulation on the lives of75

The Ambiguous Terrain

the poor.52 When the progressive reformers put their social thoughts into practiceat public charitable institutions, the notion of disability came to play a crucial rolein their administration. Disability mattered—not only as a criterion for officials
to classify the poor, but as a means for the disabled poor and their family members to appropriate the public welfare program through its conceptual ambiguity.
Notes
1 Bailey B. Burritt to John A. Kingsbury, 23 September, 27, 29 November, 12, 16 December 1916;
memorandum from Kingsbury to Henry C. Wright, First Deputy Commissioner, 29 November 1916;
quotation from Burritt to Kingsbury, 24 November 1916; Kingsbury to Burritt, 13 December 1916,
in order. John Adams Kingsbury Papers, the Library of Congress, Box I:9. Folder 10: Metropolitan
Hospital, 1914-1917, n.d.
2 In this paper, I use the term “disability” to mean social restrictions imposed on people with physical and mental impairment. For a social model of disability, see Michael Oliver, The Politics ofDisablement: A Sociological Approach (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990); Understanding
Disability: From Theory to Practice (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996). For disability policyin the United States, see Edward D. Berkowitz, Disability Policy: America’s Programs for theHandicapped (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), especially 2-7. See also Paul K.
Longmore and Lauri Umansky, “Introduction: Disability History: From the Margins to the Mainstream,” in The New Disability History: American Perspectives, ed. Longmore and Umansky (NewYork: New York University Press, 2001), 22. For the rehabilitation movement in the early twentieth century, see Brad Byrom, “A Pupil and a Patient: Hospital Schools in Progressive America,”
in New Disability History, 133-56.
3 Roy Lubove, The Struggle for Social Security, 1900-1935 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1968); See also Hace Sorel Tishler, Self-Reliance and Social Security, 1870-1917 (NewYork: Kennikat Press, 1971); Edward Berkowitz and Kim McQuaid, Creating the Welfare State:
the Political Economy of Twentieth-Century Reform, 2nd ed. (New York: Praeger Publisher, 1988);
John Dennis Chasse, “The American Association for Labor Legislation: An Episode in Institutionalist Policy Analysis,” Journal of Economic Issues 25, no. 3 (September 1991): 799-828.
4 Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (NewYork: Basic Books, 1986), ix-x. Linda Gordon argues that this stratification of the welfare systemin fact stabilized inequality along gender and race lines by reducing women and African-Americans
to the category of public assistance. Linda Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers andthe History of Welfare 1890-1935 (New York: The Free Press, 1994); “Social Insurance andPublic Assistance: The Influence of Gender in Welfare Thought in the United States, 1890-1935,”
The American Historical Review 97, no. 1 (February 1992): 19-54. See also Alice Kessler-Harris,
In Pursuit of Equality: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-century
America (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Mary Poole, The Segregated Origins

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of Social Security: African Americans and the Welfare State (Chapel Hill: The University ofNorth Carolina Press, 2006). For the changing conception of poverty, Robert H. Bremner, From the
Depth: the Discovery of Poverty in the United States (New York: New York University Press,
1956) is still useful. David A. Moss, Socializing Security: Progressive Era Economists and theOrigins of American Social Policy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 4.
5 Amy L. Fairchild, Science at the Borders: Immigrant Medical Inspection and the Shaping of theModern Industrial Labor Force (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 2003). See also Alan M.
Kraut, Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the “Immigrant Menace” (New York: Basic Books,
1994); Douglas C. Bayton, “Defectives in the Land: Disability and American Immigration Policy,
1882-1924,” Journal of American Ethnic History, Spring 2005, 31-44. The term industrial citizenship was first coined by T. H. Marshall. T. H. Marshall and Tom Bottomore, Citizenship and Social
Class (London: Pluto Press, 1992 [1950]), 25-27.
6 The concept of able-bodiedness also intertwined with those of race and gender. Policymakers often
perceived immigrants, African-Americans, and women as physically and mentally not able-bodied
enough to be competent citizens. See Baynton, “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in
American History,” in New Disability History, 33-57; Natalia Molina, “Medicalizing the Mexican:
Immigration, Race, and Disability in the Early-Twentieth-Century United States,” Radical History
Review 94 (Winter 2006): 22-37; Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles,
1879-1939 (Berkley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006).
7 For institutional development of public institutions, see David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the
Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston & Toronto: Little, Brown andCompany, 1971); Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and its Alternatives in Progressive
America (Boston & Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1980). For social control over the poor,
see Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Regulating the Poor: the Functions of Public
Welfare (New York: Pantheon Books, 1971); Paul S. Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in
America, 1820-1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992). Linda Gordon, “Family Violence, Feminism, and Social Control,” Feminist Studies 12, no. 3 (Autumn 1986): 452-78,
points out social control in practice was not unilateral imposition but interactive negotiation
between social workers and poor women in turn-of-the-century Boston. For public charitable
institutions as a safety-net for the poor, see Katz, Poverty and Policy in American History (NewYork: Academic Press, 1983); David Wagner, The Poorhouse: America’s Forgotten Institution(Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005).
8 Leah Hannah Feder, Unemployment Relief in Periods of Depression: A Study of Measures Adopted
in Certain American Cities, 1857 through 1922 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1936). For
the protest movements for the unemployed by the Industrial Workers of the World and the anarchistsof the Ferrer School, see Philip S. Foner, The Industrial Workers of the World, History of the Labor
Movement in the United States, vol. 4 (New York: International Publishers, 1965); Paul Avrich,
The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1980). For the estimated number of the unemployed in New York Cityin the winter of 1913-1914, see Congressional Record, 63rd Cong., Sess. II, House (3 February1914), vol. LI, 2832.

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9 “Unemployment: A Problem of Industry,” Proceedings First National Conference on Unemployment, American Labor Legislation Review 4, no. 2 (May 1914): 209-54.
1 0 For the “discovery” of involuntary unemployment, see Paul T. Ringenbach, Tramps and Reformers 1873-1916: The Discovery of Unemployment in New York (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1973).
For seasonality of employment, see Stanley Engerman and Claudia Goldin, “Seasonality in NineteenthCentury Labor Markets,” American Economic Development in Historical Perspective, ed. Thomas
Weiss and Donald Schaefer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 99-126.
1 1 Mary Van Kleeck to John B. Andrews, 6 January 1915. American Association for Labor Legislation
Records, 1905-1943 (hereafter cited as AALL Records), Kheel Center for Labor-Management
Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library, Series I:B, Correspondence, 1910-1915.
1 2 “Unemployment: A Problem of Industry,” 218; “Separation of Unemployable and Unemployed,”
American Labor Legislation Review 5, no. 3 (November 1915): 534-39.
1 3 New York City Mayor’s Committee on Unemployment, Report of the Mayor’s Committee on Unemployment (New York: C.S.Nathan, 1916), 44.
1 4 “The Department of Public Charities of the City of New York: A Statement of Facts,” a pamphlet
published by the City Club of New York in May, 1908, 43-44; William Alberti Whiting, “Whatthe City of New York Provides for the Homeless,” a pamphlet published in 1915; Robert Bertrand
Brown, “The Men We Lodge: A Report to the Hon. John A. Kingsbury, Commissioner of Public
Charities, City of New York, by the Advisory Social Service Committee of the Municipal Lodging
House,” American Labor Legislation Review 5, no. 3 (November 1915): 616; press release to thecity editors by the Department of Public Charities, 17 January 1914. Kingsbury Papers. Box I:10.
Folder 3: Municipal Lodging House, 1910-1917, n.d., 2/2.
1 5 William Alberti Whiting, “Summary of the Report of William Alberti Whiting of the Investigationof the Homeless Unemployed Which Was Held at the Municipal Lodging House in March 1914.”
New York City Hall Library, Vertical File: N.Y.C. Homeless Shelter, 1.
1 6 Experts from both public and private sectors took part in the investigation. Charles K. Blatchly,
Superintendent of the Joint Application Bureau of the COS and the AICP, supervised social examinations, while Dr. James Alexander Miller of the Bellevue Hospital oversaw physical examinations.
Dr. Max G. Schlapp and other psychiatrists of the Clearing House for Mental Defectives also conducted mental examinations of suspected applicants. See Brown, “The Men We Lodge,” 601;
Department of Public Charities, Annual Report of the Department of Public Charities of the Cityof New York for 1914, 142.
1 7 Brown, “The Men We Lodge,” 604-13.
1 8 Whiting, “Summary of the Report,” 3-5; Tentative Program of Future Procedure for the Municipal
Lodging House. Kingsbury Papers, Box I:10. Folder 3.
1 9 Whiting to Paul U. Kellogg, 8 December 1914; testimony given by Richard Walsh as to the conditions at the Municipal Lodging House during the time Frank J. Goodwin was Deputy Commissioner; testimony of Raymond Culler; testimony of John Earley; report of Operator Simons; statement of Chief City Magistrate on the people of the State of New York, complainant, against William
C. Yorke and others. Kingsbury Papers, Box I:10. Folder 3, Department of Public Charities, Annual
Report for 1914, 142-43.

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2 0 Brown, “The Men We Lodge,” 600; Burritt to Andrews, 7, 13 January 1915. AALL Records, Series
I:B.
2 1 Brown, “The Men We Lodge,” 617, 620; Department of Public Charities, Annual Report for 1914,
72-76, 143-44; Andrews to W. Frank Persons, 8 January 1915; Persons to M. de G. Trenholm, 12January 1915; Persons to Andrews, 14 January 1915, AALL Records, Series I:B. Quotation from
Department of Public Charities, Annual Report for 1914, 143. Prior to 1915, the 1886 law restricted an applicant from staying at the Municipal Lodging House more than three nights a month.
To enhance the effectiveness of the new system, the Advisory Committee repealed this restriction
clause on 14 April 1915. Abolishment of the lodgment restriction was one of the demands theSocialist Party of New York City made amidst serious unemployment in the winter of 1914. See
Brown, “The Men We Lodge,” 617; Minute of Executive Committee, Unemployment Conference, 21
January 1914; Unemployment Conference, 7 February 1914, the Socialist Party New York Letter
Books, 1907-1914, Tamiment 056.5, New York University, Box 6:10, Unemployment Conference,
21 January 1914-22 February 1914.
2 2 Brown, “The Men We Lodge,” 626, quotation from 615.
2 3 Department of Licenses, City of New York, Report for the Year 1916, 56, 60.
2 4 Walter Lincoln Sears, “Unemployment: Its Cause and Cure,” pamphlet published in 3 February
1915. For the history of public employment offices in the United States, see J. E. Conner, Free
Public Employment Offices in the United States, U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor, Bulletinof the Bureau of Labor, no. 68 (Washington D.C., 1907); Proceedings of the American Association of Public Employment Offices, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletinof the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, no. 192 (Washington D.C., 1916); John G.
Henderson, Jr., Public Employment Offices in the United States, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureauof Labor Statistics, Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, no. 241 (Washington
D.C., 1918). See also Shelby M. Harrison and others, Public Employment Offices: Their Purpose,
Structure and Methods (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1924); Udo Sautter, “North American Government Labor Agencies Before World War One: A Cure for Unemployment?” Labor History 24, no. 3 (Summer 1983): 366-93.
2 5 Brown, “The Men We Lodge,” 620.
2 6 Whiting to Kingsbury, 24 April 1914, Kingsbury Papers, Box I:10, Folder 3.
2 7 “The Department of Public Charities of the City of New York,” 6-7, 45-46.
2 8 For the history of mental retardation, see James W. Trent, Jr., Inventing the Feeble Minded: A Historyof Mental Retardation in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994);
Philip M. Ferguson, Abandoned to Their Fate: Social Policy and Practice toward Severely Retarded People in America, 1820-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994); StevenNoll, Feeble-Minded in Our Midst: Institutions for the Mentally Retarded in the South, 19001940 (Chapel Hill: the University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Nicole Hahn Rafter, Creating
Born Criminals (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997); Steven Noll and James W. Trent, Jr.,
eds., Mental Retardation in America: A Historical Reader (New York: New York University
Press, 2004).

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2 9 The family-wage ideal, which assigned women to domestic roles and children to the role of theprotected, permeated social legislations such as child labor legislation, extension of the publicschool system, and mothers’ pensions. For a recent study on the family wage system in theory andpractice, see S. J. Kleinberg, Widows and Orphans First: the Family Economy and Social Welfare
Policy, 1880-1939 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006).
3 0 Department of Public Charities, Annual Report for 1912, 143.
3 1 Department of Public Charities, Annual Report for 1902, 32-33; Annual Report for 1906, 296-97.
3 2 Department of Public Charities, Annual Report for 1902, 32-33; Annual Report for 1911, 139.
3 3 Department of Public Charities, Annual Report for 1906, 298; Annual Report for 1912, 147-49;
Annual Report for 1913, 207-08.
3 4 Mary C. Dunphy, “Modern Ideals of Education Applied to the Training of Mental Defectives,” apaper read at the Thirty-Fifth National Conference of Charities and Correction (New York: Martin
B. Brown Company, 1908), 9.
3 5 Trent, Inventing the Feeble Minded, 131-83.
3 6 Charles Davenport to Marion R. Taber, 13 March 1914. Kingsbury Papers, Box I:8, Folder 1:
Children’s Hospital and School, Randall’s Island, Case Histories, 1913-1914, n.d.
3 7 Department of Public Charities, Annual Report for 1913, 206.
3 8 Department of Public Charities, Annual Report for 1904, 332; Annual Report for 1905, 211;
Annual Report for 1906, 305; Annual Report for 1907, 379; Annual Report for 1908, 395;
Annual Report for 1911, 124; Annual Report for 1912, 139; Annual Report for 1913, 200; Annual Report for 1914, 137.
3 9 “Study of certain feeble-minded, immoral girls grouped at Randall’s Island-1913-1914"; Arthur W.
Towne to Angus P. Thorne, 1 October 1913; Quotation from Memo re Bertha Friese [sic]; case recordof Bertha Fries, 21 January 1914, in order. Kingsbury Papers, Box I:8, Folder 1.
4 0 Case record of Hattie Meudlinger [sic], n.d.; “Cards of girls now at City Hospital.” Kingsbury
Papers, Box I:8, Folder 1.
4 1 Department of Public Charities, Annual Report for 1902, 33, quotation from 209; Annual Reportfor 1904, 335-36.
4 2 Department of Public Charities, Annual Report for 1912, 14; Annual Report for 1913, 206; Annual Report for 1915, 157. Quotation from Report of an Investigation of the Municipal Civil
Service Commission and of the Administration of the Civil Service Law and Rules in the City of
New York (Albany: J. B. Lyon Company, 1915), 134.
4 3 Leta S. Hollingworth, “Differential Action upon the Sexes of Forces Which Tend to Segregate the
Feebleminded,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Social Psychology 17 (1922): 38; Leila
Zenderland, Measuring Minds: Henry Herbert Goddard and the Origins of American Intelligence Testing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 233-34.
4 4 “Report of Committee on Classification of Feeble-Minded,” Journal of Psycho-Asthenics 15, nos.
1-2 (September and December 1910): 61-67; Henry H. Goddard, “Suggestions for a Prognostical
Classification of Mental Defectives,” Journal of Psycho-Asthenics 14, nos. 1-4 (September andDecember 1909; March and June 1910): 48-54; “Four Hundred Feeble-Minded Children Classi-

80Yoshiya Makita
fied by the Binet Method,” Journal of Psycho-Asthenics 15, nos. 1-2 (September and December1910): 17-30. As to the categories of the mentally retarded, see also Trent, Inventing the Feeble
Minded, 162; Noll, Feeble-Minded in Our Midst, 3.
4 5 Report of the State Commission to Investigate Provision for the Mentally Deficient, Senate Document of the State of New York, 138th session, 19:42 (1915), 358.
4 6 Department of Public Charities, Annual Report for 1913, 206.
4 7 Case record of Frances Norton, 2 February 1914; “Cards of girls now at City Hospital.” Kingsbury
Papers, Box I:8, Folder 1.
4 8 A. C. Rogers, “Borderland Cases,” Journal of Psycho-Asthenics 11, nos. 1-4 (September and December 1906; March and June 1907): 19-24, quotation from 19.
4 9 See, for example, Department of Public Charities, Annual Report for 1912, 147-48, 150-54. At theIndustrial School, the inmate-labor force was divided into shoe-making, basket-making, tailoring,carpentry work, broom and brush-making, rug-making, embroidery and fancy work, and tin-smithing
departments. Outputs from each department substantially helped the financial betterment of the
Randall’s Island institutions.
5 0 Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the
United States (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, 1992), 63-151; Jacob S. Hacker, The Divided
Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (Cambridge& New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Skocpol points out that pensions for the Civil
War veterans in the North actually functioned as a “precocious social spending” at the turn of the
century, and Hacker argues the share of the U.S. economy to social welfare spending was not small
compared with the European welfare state, if including private social benefits programs.
5 1 Maureen Fitzgerald, Habits of Compassion: Irish Catholic Nuns and the Origins of New York’s
Welfare System, 1830-1920 (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Anna R. Igra,
Wives Without Husbands: Marriage, Desertion, & Welfare in New York, 1900-1935 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
5 2 John Louis Recchiuti, Civic Engagement: Social Science and Progressive-Era Reform in New
York City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic
Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, 1998).

81