Extra-Institutional Care of Mental Defectives in New York State, U.S.A.

No State should consider itself either humane, or efficient from a business point of view, which continues to support in idleness any of its dependents (not excluding those physically or mentally handicapped), who might, under proper training and supervision, become at least partially self-supporting. But as a rule it is not until an intolerable weight of taxes drives a state into new methods of conservation , or when some big-hearted genius undertakes to relieve conditions which he or she vicariously feels to be intolerable, that the partial powers of handicapped dependents are ever fully developed. Fortunately for the feebleminded all over the world, both these conditions have prevailed during the last decade in N.Y. State, U.S.A. The demands of educational authorities who, finally roused to the importance of dealing adequately with mental defectives in the public schools, set up a standard of a'' speical ungraded class" for every ten children three years retarded in school work; of social workers who, appalled by the many social evils resulting from the full liberty allowed feebleminded persons in the community after school age, were pressing both parents and judges toward the committment of all mental defectives to proper State institutions; and the irritation of the State Institutions, which, already full to overflowing, were rebelling at the apparently never ending pro