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WITHIN THE WALLS of private and public institutions in this country there are 115,000 defectives. They constitute roughly five per cent of the total number of defectives in the country as a whole. The remaining 95 per cent are walking the streets or holding down simple positions. This remainder is probably outreproducing the normal population by a ratio of 50 per cent. The sterilization laws which 27 states have at present are utilized progressively in but two. When one learns that approximately 80 per cent of our defectives inherited their lack, one gets a glimpse of a huge future problem. The immediate background of the present problem is familiar to social workers -- poverty, low home and family standards, delinquency, ignorance and sickness. A drag on his schoolmates, a joke for the cruel and a threat to his community, the defective committed to a state institution by court or agency receives little better than custodial care to the end of his days.

'Pleasant Home' the Ideal

"This school should be a pleasant home for these boys," said one well known superintendent of a state institution. No one will seriously disagree with that as a statement of the ideal type of environment which should surround the defective. In a friendly atmosphere he should be made secure against dangers, protected from illness and guarded against reproducing his kind. Depending on his mental age he should be given training, be it printing, music or weaving. Or it might be he should be taught how to eat with a spoon or to use the toilet. Constant psychometric testing should measure change or progress. The high-grade moron should be fitted for careful parole so that he can do useful work, and care should be taken to insure him against exploitation. For the large fraction who can never be released from the institution, recreational facilities are important and include, for example, movies, simple athletics, walks, reading and story groups, and outside work with flower gardens. Work programs are equally important for patient and for institution and are easily arranged.

Meet Serious Obstacles

This total program, on paper, is not a difficult one for our well organized society to lay down. Turning from it to the real program of a large state institution, let us observe the obstacles standing in the way of its realization. On this cold and wintry night there are 2,500 morons, imbeciles and idiots asleep in the large brick buildings which surround me. For the past eleven months I have worked here, at one time with a group of 130 morons of school age and at another time with 33 tubercular boys ranging from the lowest incontinent idiot to a moron who tinkers with radios. The problems which hinder the program outlined above divide themselves into two general areas: institutional factors and personal-psychological factors. Each is interrelated with the other, of course, yet each is distinct.

The psychological factors include patient attitudes and actions, personality traits of varying individuals, and the notional ingredients which make mankind so complex. Thus generalizations are suspect, even though necessary. One can safely say that the problem of group and individual discipline is the most acute and omnipresent obstacle to the "pleasant home" goal. Force, violence and restraint are the daily procedure for an attendant who is asked to control and not to train. Too often the attendant's first intact with the system is to be handed a stick and told to take over while the old attendant gets some lunch. Then he finds himself facing a crowd of 100 to 150 defectives, most of whom have a good deal of surplus animal energy and no acceptable place at which to direct it.

Nothing to Hope For

Conditioned thoroughly by a pattern of violence over a period of years, these defectives have nothing to look back on and less to hope for. They know no beauty, no affection and no rewards. Accordingly they exhibit slight regard for consequences -- even those "high-grades" who might think of consequences. In fact, one wonders whether daily corporeal punishment is not a type of fun or exercise for some of them. In many situations control is kept by using a working patient to intimidate the unwieldly group into keeping still. Even though the group may have spent the last four months looking out of the same windows, it learns to obey rapidly such a "firm" working patient. A less firm attendant often needs to call upon the patient helper to quell a fight or stop a near-riot.

As an individual, the defective is likely to be docile, easily led and amenable to direction. Stimulated, and in a crowd, he can create a genuinely dangerous situation because he unconsciously is longing for recreation and exercise. Further, more and more delinquents have been sent to defectives' institutions as they were found to be abnormal by judge or agency. The overcrowding of reform schools has caused this practice to develop. The type is often a "high-grade," something of a leader, and trained in a rougher school than most of the simply defective. Add to this a most serious lack of attendants of any sort and a scarcity of elementary equipment, and the need or a carefully thought-out disciplinary program in American institutions of this type is evident.

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Strain on Attendants

Speaking still of the personal factors which impede our ideal, the emotional drain on an attendant with sensitivity must be mentioned. One cannot work twelve hours a day in a stream of missed opportunities and amidst unhappiness without paying toll. Which or how much of the world's standards should be applied to those who will spend their lives in the institution? Is it necessary to appear to be on the verge of permanent anger to get results? (It surely seems to be, sometimes.) The practice of extreme patience, day after day, is wearing. Where are the permanent factors which will remain after we leave and which we can influence? Too often these permanent factors create their own valid reasons against change and our transient attendant sadly acknowledges their validity. Thus it is that his personal problems, added to the regular problems of defective psychology, place quite a damper on the "pleasant home" idea.

The other category of obstacles to the attainment of the ideal gives evidence that institutions create their own problems. They generate ruts and compound inertia. It appears that by the simple fact of being established these institutions as they now are can postpone our "pleasant home" to a non-existent future. A catalogue of specific blockades on the road to reform would include interdepartmental rivalry, favoritism, tradition, boondoggling, buck-passing, incompetence, fear of superiors and the future, lack of knowledge and pride in the work, shortsightedness and concern with appearances. Each deserves an essay to show how it hampers the progressive administration or attendant. For example, a recreational program cannot be run by volunteers because it might later be demanded of other attendants who would not want to do it and so would be unfair to them. Or a game program for pent-up imbeciles has to be stopped because the boys become too noisy. Or a backward department blocks the efforts of a more competent department. The total of blockading factors is colossal.

First Steps toward Improvement

Of paramount importance is the hallmark of all institutions: low wages and poor working conditions for employees. It is difficult to work ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week, living in a somber institutional room and eating a heavy institutional diet. To labor patiently in an emotionally tense situation and then to receive seventy or eighty dollars a month is not attractive to anyone, let alone a socially conscious person interested in the complicated problems of deficiency. This is the result of penny-pinching by state legislatures and ignorance among the people. That is where the blame lies when an ill trained or crude attendant harms a patient. Ignorance and lack of interest are basic because they create the conditions from which all other obstacles flow. Improvement in the type of employees attracted to these institutions is the first requirement for all progress.

In this world where every successful force is a dehumanizing force, the little spots of unhappiness in our institutions for defectives seem small indeed. In the picture that has been painted, the obstacles to relieving this unhappiness are evident; also, they suggest their own solutions. On paper, the path to the "pleasant home" is clear. It remains to be seen whether or not that path is traveled by people who are anxious and able to help America's continually growing army of defectives.