The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-09-20
THE VLLAG FOOL.

In the October American Magazine
Arnold l.. Gesell writes remarkable
article entitled THE illage of Thou
sand Souls" 1t is a compilation or
facts about the 22O families that make
I'D certain village of about 1000 pop
uIa ton in the middle west. The results
of this investigation prove that 26 per
cent of the population show signs OF
being either feeble-minded or insane.
This is an appalling situation. On the
subiect of feeble-mindedness the author
goes on to say:
In the retrospect OF 33 years What
village pictures crowd about the cap
ton, Feeble minded! The grinning
simpleton, whom everybody joked; the
queer old woman who played with
big rag doll; the child who never
learned to walk and could not hold up
its head; the overgrown girl in school
whom the other little children always
leased, and who scratched BACK or spit
back; the man who played an accor-
dion, but could not do much of any
thing else; the gray-haired woman who
always wandered about the streets!
1T is interesting that only one or
two of all these and other feeble-mind-
ed inhabitants were ever sent to an
institution. The reasons are plain. In
many cases the feeble-mindedness is
not recognized or understood. The
family realize that the boy is Slow
and wish that people would not tease
him SO much. But he will get along
all right the parents say; and this
prediction is partially justified. In a
village, particularly a rural village,
where gardens, barns, and domestic
animals are common, the conditions of
life are primitive. They may not be
too severely complex, for even the
feeble-minded boy, who learns how to
tend the stable, is happy in a simple
round of chores and masters a simple
occupation, like saving wood. A few
of these worthy. feeble-minded viii
layers have almost supported them
selves by such routine occupation; and,
while their lives remain confined to
their narrow sphere, they are more of
butt than a menace for the COM
munity.
Putting it briefly, you may get
combination of circumstances in a VIII
lage which are equivalent to the GUS
todial supervision of a good institution
for the feeble-minded. This feeble
mindedness leads to none of the classic
consequences of vice, pauperism, crime,
etc. The individual is socially harm
less-while the happy accidental COM
bination of circumstances persists. The
trouble is some day the harmless
fellow who has been saving wood in
the village goes out into the country
and marries and has childreni A
glimpse of the consequences then is
offered by the tremendous fact that two
thirds CT the inmates of institutions
for the feeble-minded have feeble
minded ancestors. About so per cent
of all cases of feeble-mindedness are
due to homeopathic hecedity. Few
things transmit themselves as inevita-
bly, as feeble-nindedness and the fee
ble-minded have much larger families
than normally prudent parents.
In an industrial city (the villa ge
under discussion has practically no
manufactures the struggle for exist
ence is more complex, and feeble
nindedness comes to clearer express
sion. Turn one of these harmless fee
ble-minded villagers into such a city
(where he cannot saw wood, where his
relatives cannot look after him), and
he easily drifts into unemployment,
thieving, vagrancy, or the like. Hence
the apparently larger number of feeble
minded in the city; and in this age OF
cities. A large amount of feeble