The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1904-12-29
FEEBLE MINDED IN MANI.
WOMAN'S COUNCIL MAKE SOME
STARTLING STATEMENTS AS TO
NEEDS OF THIS CLASS OF DELIN-
OUENTS.


STARTLING STATEMENTS AS To
NEEDS OF THIS CLASS OF DELlN-
QUENTS.
The committee from the Woman's
Council have sent out folders which
state the startling fact that there are
1000 feeble minded in Maine and that
the State provides for only nine at
Waverley, Mass, and that II Others are
in different State institutions. The
committee asks, "What about the re-
naming 1882" Certainly the facts
given might well bring horror to any
thinking person. The work of this
committee in trying to get an appro-
priation for a home for the feeble
minded is too well known to need es-
pecial comment. But the conditions
throughout Maine are not known to
every one and the work of the folder is
to give facts and figures. The following
will tell something of the condition of
these poor helpless human beings.
Some of the foremost women OF the
State have started out on a difficult
proposition. Scattered over the State
are small colonies of people from whom
decent, law abiding, intelligent folk
shrink. These colonies are growing
larger, and in several instances. it is
alleged, new colonies have sprung up
from older ones and in new places.
Families have been found colonized,
the members of which have entirely dis
regarded the social code, the laws of de-
cencv, and have drifted into condition
which does not allow them to grasp,
with any degree of clearness or intelli-
gence, the idea of social purity or the
common laws of nature.
Within few miles of a Maine city is
a colony of one family name. The men,
beers of the cummunity, which is separat-
ed from the real social centers, are
nearly always before the public eye by
reason of some misdemeanor, special
protiigacy or disreputable incident. 1t
is charged that the members of the
Community referred to have married
and intermarried; that some of the hus-
bands have dropped one wife for an
other without the usual form of mar
riage ceremony-the discarded wife be-
ing taken by another member OF the
community, ending in several instances,
it is alleged, in being the mistress of
the former husband S father.
The writer recalls visit to the col
ony three years ago. The spectacle
which was presented was of the kind or
sort that decent people will not believe
in story and must be witnessed to be
fully understood aud appreciated.
| Shacks of houSes-SOme wood hoveis
are better-clustered i'll a basin OF
worthless land, the stencil arising to
degree that can be determined from
afar; men and women dressed in scanty,
| filthy, tattered garments; children half
naked in summer, but little better at
tired in winter; faces so besmeared
with an accumulation of something
that water might at one time have re-
moved, but to which water is and
possibly always will be a stranger:
greasy floors, horse stalls and sleeping
rooms opening to each other-in some
cases there being no doors on the hinges
| between the apartments; men and
women, coarse of feature, coarser of
language, ill-natured, scowling, ugly,
| insulting, obscene and you have col
ony such as exists within shadow of
a city within almost signaling distance
of the State Capitol, and one which the
purity-loving women of Maine are try
ing to destroy-one which the busy
men of Maine find no time to consider
from any point of view.
Up in Somerset County, in a locality
similar to that so near Waterville, is
still another colony, larger than the
first, and, if it be possible, more filthy,
more degenerate, more immoral and
more concentrating. There two fam
lilies have married and intermarried,
with the result that more than half
| b,, IL, ho1
| beetles, cankerouS social leperS, have
come into existence and are spreading
over the surrounding country This
colony became such load to the town
where they lived for years that the
town charter was surrendered because
of the expense of maintaining the pau
pers.
The members of the colonies men
toned work very little, beg very great
deal and steal more or less, interspers-
ing the program with drunken de-
bauches superinduced by hard cider
and terminating in diluted alcohol in
the form of "split," making night hid
eous and day fury.
Within the past few days represen-
tatiyes of the women referred to
have been in Waterville looking up
data and arranging for the proposed
campaign against threatened demon
alization. 1t is proposed that the
colonies be taken to some spot within
the borders of the State where the
members of the colonies can be kept
separate as in prison and there begin
the slow tedious, possibly unchristian
work of destroying the families by
natural process of nature. Not to
abuse, to starve or kill the colonies,
but to prevent further increase of the
race, or, perhaps, to create new form
of race extinction.
Supt O. M. Lord of this city says
"There are probably 100 or more pupils
in the Portland schools who may proper
ly be classed as detectives. They are
mentally incapable of doing the grade
work and are consequently kept back
from year to year. They are with
classes of children from two to five
years younger than they. Many of
them have some marked physical pc
culiarities which make them objects of
curiosity to the younger pupils.
Their influence on the discipline of
room is bad. One defective in room
will take more out of teacher than 40
normal children. Detectives are often
vicious. Young children are prone to
initiate older ones, and so these older