that in Michigan, 75 per cent. of the prostitute class is infected with
some form of venereal disease, and that 75 per cent. of the infected
are mentally defective,--morons, imbeciles, or "border-line" cases
most dangerous to the community at large. At least 25 per cent. of the
inmates of our prisons, according to Dr. Fernald, are mentally defective
and belong either to the feeble-minded or to the defective-delinquent
class. Nearly 50 per cent. of the girls sent to reformatories are
mental defectives. To-day, society treats feeble-minded or "defective
delinquent" men or women as "criminals," sentences them to prison or
reformatory for a "term," and then releases them at the expiration
of their sentences. They are usually at liberty just long enough to
reproduce their kind, and then they return again and again to prison.
The truth of this statement is evident from the extremely large
proportion in institutions of neglected and dependent children, who are
the feeble-minded offspring of such feeble-minded parents.

Confronted with these shocking truths about the menace of
feeble-mindedness to the race, a menace acute because of the unceasing
and unrestrained fertility of such defectives, we are apt to become the
victims of a "wild panic for instant action." There is no occasion for
hysterical, ill-considered action, specialists tell us. They direct our
attention to another phase of the problem, that of the so-called "good
feeble-minded." We are informed that imbecility, in itself, is not
synonymous with badness. If it is fostered in a "suitable environment,"
it may express itself in terms of good citizenship and useful
occupation. It may thus be transmuted into a docile, tractable, and
peaceable element of the community. The moron and the feeble-minded,
thus protected, so we are assured, may even marry some brighter member
of the community, and thus lessen the chances of procreating another
generation of imbeciles. We read further that some of our doctors