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PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL ADDRESS. (1)

By Martin W. Barr, M.D., Chief Physician, Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble-Minded Children, Elwyn, Pa.

GENTLEMEN: -- To me this year falls the pleasant duty of bidding you twice welcome, for we come together not only for our annual meeting, but also to celebrate the coming of age of our Association. Remembering that Pennsylvania was its birthplace, I count it for myself a most fortuitous concurrence of events that places me on this anniversary in the chair first filled at Elwyn by Dr. Seguin, and that I should be here to welcome back to the work our friend and my former associate, Dr. Alfred W. Wilmarth, of Wisconsin.

Born of the inspiration of the Centennial year, and with such enthusiastic workers as Seguin, Wilbur and Kerlin as its originators, it is no marvel that the association passing the period of youthful inexperience has lived to attain its majority in vigorous proportions, growing in this time from a membership of six to one hundred and sixty-three, with institutions and states falling rapidly into line, and to-day it adds to its list the names of Polk, Pa., and Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Gentlemen of the Association, "let us press forward." The day of mourning for our fathers is accomplished, and eulogies and panegyrics have been too long our theme. Forget them! we would not if WE could, as we pursue the paths they opened with such patience and courage, but we must recognize that the plans they proposed have already been fulfilled. Our work broadens and must broaden -- for one hundred years advance in the march of civilization opens to us new fields of which they could only give us the "peradventure."

Both within and without, the work assumes new aspects. Closer classification and growing possibilities, drawing clearer and more definite lines between the trainable and the untrainable, are fast changing our school rooms to work shops and art-rooms. The massing and setting apart in happy, busy life of such numbers once deemed incapables, simultaneous with the movement of the new education to promote better classification in the schools, has presented a much needed object lesson and called the attention of the public to the study of the mental defectives in their midst, and of its bearing upon practical pedagogics.

Classes in sociology, physiology and psychology, come to us to observe, compare, and report likenesses and differences between normal and abnormal minds. This interchange of thought cannot but be conducive to progress and must influence both their work and our own.

The recognition as defectives of those backward and feebly-gifted children who have hitherto so embarrassed the work of the teacher has already led to new and better grading of the schools on the Continent and in London, while with us, Providence, Rhode Island, is taking the lead in a movement which must soon become general.

The new schools made up of this backward class, will naturally seek to be benefited by our experience in classification and training, and we shall draw largely from them if indeed we do not absorb them altogether; and it is just here that our work in its second half century takes a new departure. Relegating many of the occupations and means of development first employed by our pioneers to asylums, which may or may not be attached to future training schools, we shall press forward on the same lines to broader operations with possibilities of the ultimate establishment of communities of skilled artisans working in the various trades and applied arts. Here the imbecile, separated from the world and forbidden to marry, shall become a self-supporting, self-respecting citizen, who in the possession of an assured freedom -- always under careful direction and supervision -- enjoys happiness and protection in lien of ignorance, degradation and ignominy.

In addressing ourselves to work under these new conditions which are rapidly shaping around us, there are several points which conference may simplify and united action accomplish.

History already classes the rescue and training of the imbecile among the wonderful achievements of our wonderful age, and society, aroused not only to the knowledge of the existence of such numbers, but of the rapid increase, and agitated by questions which affect its very being, will soon demand of our century of experience some authoritative teaching as to remedy and redress. Are we prepared to answer the inquiries which must, and indeed, do, come to us frequently, many times throughout the year. For what are you preparing the imbecile? How can you secure the greatest happiness to the greatest number? How best render the imbecile harmless to himself and to the world? -- are but a few of the many problems we are called upon to consider; to which might be added a discussion of how to meet the inevitable demand of the future for trained professional workers -- physicians, teachers and attendants, and the advantages to be gained in establishing communities of the feeble-minded, and the advisability of seeking national aid in averting general and wide-spread calamity. These are the plain questions before us if we are to grasp and prepare for the momentous issues of this new era, which, I might almost say, calls anew for pioneer work. Results obtained from training, and also the grade of many applicants seeking training, plainly show that the day of the mere housing and self-help of the imbecile is no longer our one object, while on the other hand over-crowded conditions prove that we must educate the public to the difference between idiocy and imbecility. We must make some protest against the forcing into our institutions of the untrainable; and to this end might not an established sequence of manual work, following out the same line of development which we find so helpful in both kindergarten and sloyd for the benefit of those who can enter upon it, be also a means of protection against those who cannot, and thus the legitimate work of the training school be not lost in that of the asylum.