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*Read before the National Educational Association, Washington, D. C., July 13, 1899.

That sentiment of Charles Dickens, "It is better that every kind of work honestly undertaken and discharged should speak for itself rather than be spoken for," applies most pertinently to work among the feeble-minded; for not by exhibits alone, which show merely results, but by viewing actual working processes can the public be brought to rightly estimate the tremendous importance of this work, or in fact to understand at all the how, the why, and the wherefore of the training of mental defectives.

The basis in this scheme of development, where the three H's supersede the time-worn three R's, is the recognition of touch as the most sensitive as well as the most reactive of all the senses; therefore we utilize it as the master key which shall set free the powers of the head -- the hand -- the heart.

The axiom that the will is best stimulated by and through the emotions is daily verified in dealing with natures abso-lutely sluggish and indolent, intensely preverse and obstinate or unduly nervous and excitable. This stimulus to be health-ful must be natural, and what more natural to a child, from the days of traditional mud-pies up, than the love of making something, unless it be the love of tearing up, and even that has long since been recognized as due to a spirit of investigation, and to be therefore constructive rather than destructive. In-deed we must take the child as he is without attempting to make him over again; direct the destructive activities into constructive channels -- make the stream turn the wheel and it will not sweep away the mill.

A little ball which I have in our museum of children's work I am inclined to consider the most valuable thing in the whole collection. The boy who made it was almost of the lowest grade of mentality. His hand against every man, he fancied every man's against him. Always under close custodial care that he might harm neither himself nor others, he would vent his spleen in tearing his clothing. His teacher, a woman of rare patience and devotedness, one day sat beside him tearing strips of old linen and laying them in order. "See, Willie, let us make some pretty strips and lay them so." His wonder grew at seeing her doing what he had been scolded for doing, and at once there was a bond of sympathy. She was playing his game -- the only one, poor little fellow, that he was capable of -- and he joined in. "Now we will draw out the pretty threads and lay them in rows." For weeks the child found quiet pastime in this occupation and the violent nature grew quieter in proportion. One day the teacher said: "Let us tie these threads together and make a long string." It took him months to learn to tie those knots, but meanwhile his attend-ants were having a breathing space. "Now we will wind this into a pretty ball and I will cover all you make for the boys to play with," and a new occupation was added to his list. The next link in this curious chain of development was a lesson in knitting. Through months of patient teaching it was at last accomplished, and the boy to the day of his death found his life happiness in knitting caps for the children, in place of tearing both them and their clothes.

You see she was wise enough to utilize the natural activi-ties of the child and direct evil propensities into a healthful channel. Had she brought knitting and bright yarn or any-thing foreign to him first it would have been truly putting new wine into old bottles. His obstinacy would have been aroused and he would have torn clothes to the end of the chapter. Now just what this shows is to be found in varying re-sults throughout all the grades of trainable defectives or im-beciles. The idiot or unimprovable class and the idio-imbe-cile, the direction of whose feeble powers so far as to aid in the care of himself or his weaker brother can hardly be dignified by the term training, we will not discuss here, although they are unfortunately found in large proportion in the custodial departments of all training schools in this country. It is the imbecile or trainable class which is here presented in the four different grades which experience has dictated and proven. These grades of mentality are not to be confounded with school grades in the common acceptation of promotion in studies; on the contrary between these grades there is a distinct line be-yond which there is rarely an individual case of advance, though there may be, and often is, retrogression.

Here we have the low-grade who can never learn to read or write, trainable only in the simplest acts of house or farm service, who can know nothing beyond a life of drudgery, but will on the whole be content therein. This grade generally presents two types -- one good, docile, obedient, having little or no will power; such a one out in the world becomes the ready tool or the victim of the designing or the vicious, and thus innocently helps to fill our prison wards. The other obstinate, preverse and indolent, needs always a strong hand to keep him at constant occupation, which is all that preserves him from a lapse into idiocy. He would be the tyrant of a household-the terror of a community.

The middle grade, trainable in varied degree in the useful and mechanical arts, may or may not as an aid in his develop-ment be taught to read and write, but will never use the knowl-edge practically in his work as a good servant or a fairly good mechanic.

The high grade, capable, in intellectual capacity, of ad-vancement as far as the first intermediate, can never, without danger of breakdown, attempt all the studies of that course. His life work must therefore he sought in the various trades and handicrafts to which his development by means of manual training, from the kindergarten up, has always been directed, and life happiness, possibly as a skilled artisan, for him be assured.

Lastly, the moral imbecile found in all three grades, often abnormally bright, may vary intellectually from a brute to a genius, but the moral sense is absolutely wanting. It is from this class that the criminal ranks in all lands are largely re-cruited. His permanent sequestration under close custodial care, with as many ameliorations as possible, is absolutely es-sential to the safety of himself and of society.

In hearing how we strive to arouse dormant faculties, and that manual training is not only the basis but the means and the end in all our efforts, you have probably already arrived at some of the many reasons -- why --

First: Safety for the individual. In dealing with mental weakness, either congenital or accidental, there is always dan-ger, under pressure, of outbreak into insanity or a lapse into idiocy. We must stimulate and arouse the sluggish nature while we quiet and restrain the excitable. Now in the wide field of its varied occupations manual training offers a great advantage over the purely intellectual; an advantage incal-culable to us, forced as we are to consider dot only different grades of mentality but the peculiarities and proclivities of in-dividuals in each grade. Not only does it afford greater selec-tion for the child, but opportunity to the teacher for observa-tion and immediate change according to needs. A diagnosis of intellectual processes under the excitement of class compe-tition is not so easy, and the remedy therefore not infrequently comes too late.

Second: The happiness of the individual; and all true hap-piness must have its root in self-respect. We are dealing with a race that has too long been despised and rejected, and sci-ence, by indicating many hitherto unrecognized, is adding a host bright enough to be extremely sensitive and unhappy un-der such conditions.

To avoid pauperizing and to stimulate self-respect we must offer some avenue for gaining the respect and appreciation of others. This is best done by uplifting and maintaining the dignity of labor, and this for all grades. Even the lowest is made to feel: "Who sweeps a room as to thy law, makes that and the action fine." "Study to show thyself a workman ap-proved" must be our charge to the many, if each is to realize "Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom." This, more-over, for the moral imbecile who, in close custodial care, must find his only safety in congenial employment if we would avoid that blot upon nineteenth century civilization -- the record of the unoccupied in prison cells.

The social qualities, also, so often dwarfed in the narrow-ness of class competition, expand freely in this natural atmos-phere, where honest work well done is made the true gauge of character.

The moral effect of the daily use of the try square cannot be over-estimated. Egotism, that bane of the abnormal, finds in it a constant check, while altruism is best fostered in the work-room where each is called to admire and consider "not his own but another's good." Furthermore, when the child in the kindergarten, the girl or boy in the work-shop, has faithfully modeled, improved or originated any one thing worthy to be offered as a gift, these children who can know nothing of the value of money, have yet within their grasp that without which the rich man with all his possessions would be poor indeed -- the power and the right of giving. We aim indeed to make this the dominating spirit -- even the acquirements of reading and writing are made tools to this end; those who can learn being encouraged to entertain and assist those who can-not. Music and drawing alike are not to be regarded as mere accomplishments for the individual, but all must minister to the common good.

And wherefore all this for imbeciles! Is it worth it? many may ask.

Ah! between that question and answer lies a hundred years of experience, and the working out by scientists and philosophers of a basis for the coining century to build upon.

Work among mental defectives, having its birth with the nineteenth century, has grown with it, enriched by its thought and discoveries; and adapting itself to its ever-increasing de-mands, it has so modified that its character and aims are alike changed. What in the beginning was a philanthropic purpose, pure and simple, having for its object the most needy, and therefore naturally directed toward paupers and idiots, now assumes the proportions of a socialistic reform as a matter of self-preservation, a necessity to preserve the nation from the encroachments of imbecility, of crime, and all the fateful con-sequences of a highly nervous age.

The enthusiasm of Itard in 1800 to reclaim the wild boy of Aveyron, which inspired the efforts of his pupil Seguin in his wonderful work at the Bicetré, was a noble preparation, but still, as Seguin himself admits, was only experimental until "Haller, Boerhaave and Morgagni had brought physiology to its rightful place at the head of the medical sciences," and Rosseau and Pereire and others had demonstrated its applica-tion to education. Then the closing decade of our first half century witnessed a simultaneous movement in England, America, and on the Continent in the establishment of institu-tions for the training of mental defectives. The work was good of its kind, and we have not improved upon it, nor can we, for it was expended chiefly upon the class which, as I have told you, is largely unimprovable. It was, and is, embarrassed greatly to-day by the idea eagerly embraced by the ignorant of cure. I wish it were only possible to convince some of the heart broken mothers that for congenital mental weakness there is no cure. One may as well talk of curing a child born without an arm as restoring a defective brain. We cannot replace that which never was placed.

In this new era now opening before us, science again points the way, and having before dictated new principles as bases of practice, she now designates new cases to he treated. Med-ical science in all its branches, educators from kindergarten to university, have, during the last half century, studied man. Viewing this investigation, culminating as it has in this wave of child study, one might say that anthropology and sociology had led all in one common bond to the cradle, to note there the influences of fateful heredity and of a nervous environment.

This simultaneous investigation and comparison of views has caused rapid modification of thought, judgment, and con-sequent action, already materially affecting individuals and so-ciety. In law, in medicine, in education we find signs of less dogmatism and severe condemnation, more time given to ob-servation, and greater desire to assist rather than to force na-ture. As criminology begins to show the criminal the irre-sponsible victim of ill rather than its deliberate author, and as alienists and neurologists constantly note and report new ex-amples of nerve disorder, society begins to recoil from the evils of imprudent marriage connection, and from a high-pressure system of life and education, falsely so called, and so the signs of the times are full of hope -- hope which shows endless possi-bilities for teachers and guardians -- of a dominant and domi-nating race. It means success and victory all along educa-tional lines if untrammeled by defectives, but defeat which will lead to tedious and endless readjustments if teachers are forced to continue the impossible task of dragging normal and abnormal up to one common standard.

Let us meet the crisis, recognizing it as a national one, and win as our nation has won before. One hundred thousand of the feeble-minded in the United States alone, constantly in-creasing by birth and immigration, and not one-tenth provided for in institutions. The rest crowd our schools, walk our streets, and fill alike jails and positions of trust, reproducing their kind and vitiating the moral atmosphere.

Science and experience have searched them out and classi-fied them as here presented, but hundreds of their brethren are desolating homes, paralyzing the energies of normal peo-ple, or suffer in prison cells, the innocent perpetrators, not of crime, but of motiveless acts.

To nations and races as to households and individuals must come a clearing-out time, and it has come to us. There must be a sifting out, and "each must go to his own place" if we are to clear the way for twentieth century progress, and therein lies the wherefore of our work. We are already preparing to receive the element which the backward classes of feebly gifted children and the truant schools will eventually bring to us, and we are doing it by means not of mere trade schools -- that will come later -- but of an all-round system of development through manual training. We must take what the schools sift out, but in order to do this, we too must have our clearing, for we shall need space, and yet more space. With our untrainable popu-lation -- the idiots and idio-imbeciles -- provided for in institu-tions suited to their needs, and we relieved of the odium as well as the care, the better class of improvables will drift more freely from them to us, and we thus be enabled to extend our legitimate work of training to embrace the trade schools, which shall give life-long occupation to these children that sit in darkness and shadow. Not only must we be enabled to re-lieve the schools and to press forward ourselves, but soon we too will need relief from overcrowded conditions.

Having trained, What shall we do with the imbecile? is the question for those who send -- for us who receive -- to ponder. A question that has been fittingly addressed to a national as-sembly, of national importance, and requiring national legis-lation and provision, is one to be gravely considered by the whole nation.

Shall we turn these irresponsibles loose to undo the work of the past and redouble that of the future? Surely history would not write our names among the wise. Experience, and indeed every consideration for the individual and for society, points to the absolute necessity of permanent sequestration, and this, too, coupled with every means that science under wise legislation may dictate to stem the torrent of inherited ill and to forbid the increase of this pernicious element; meas-ures which, freeing the unfortunate from the bondage of pas-sion as well as that of a keeper, would secure greater happi-ness in permitting greater freedom of intercourse between members of a community.

The colony idea now working itself out will shortly give sufficient data upon which to form an opinion, and, if successful, will doubtless give a practical solution to this problem.

I do believe that under wise direction and national provis-ion, such a colony or colonies might be made almost self-sup-porting, and also be an encouragement by giving definite aim to the work in the various training schools; and it does seem to me, that these settlements of simple childless folk scat-tered up and down throughout the land, these victims of the follies and the vices of the past, who must themselves be in a certain sense always children, finding their happiness in con-genial occupations and quiet pleasures, would in time have an influence for good greater and more far reaching, because more subtle, than the frown of penitentiary walls. Protected from the world and the world from them, these children of the na-tion, instead of as now, its standing peril, would be a constant object lesson, at once a reproof and a warning to guide us to that "statelier Eden of simpler manners, purer laws" which the twentieth century shall usher in.