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Blood was at fever heat when the jingle of sleigh-bells was heard and a great voice shouted "Whoa there, Blitzen." In another minute in he came, pack, top-boots, red coat, tassled cap, white beard, and he was big, and stout, and real. Nobody doubted that. Such a greeting they gave him! He, himself, said that nowhere else in all the world, did he get such a reception as at The Colony.

THE RESEARCH LABORATORY

A succession of events, each springing from its predecessor, led up to the founding of the Research Laboratory.

In 1887 Professor Garrison opened his home in Millville, New Jersey as a Training School.

In 1888 he moved the School to Vineland.

In 1897 he brought E. R. Johnstone from the Indiana State School at Fort Wayne and made him his Vice-Principal.

In 1900 he died at the age of forty-seven. Professor Johnstone succeeded him at the age of thirty.

In 1901 the Paidological Staff (The Feeble-Minded Club) was organized.

In 1903 The Training School inaugurated its Summer School for Teachers -- the first of its kind.

This chronology, up to 1906, has been the framework of our previous stories.

We have now come to an event which, in its far-reaching and continuing influences outside The Village of Happiness, transcends other achievements of the School -- the opening of the Research Laboratory on September 15, 1906.

The way had been prepared. Scientific work, but without undue emphasis on its scientific character, had been done from the beginning; in the Village school; in its industrial and other employments of the children; in their care and development.

We have seen how the development of the Village began to attract the interest of scientists in other specialized fields leading to the forming of the Paidological Staff in 1901. Two years later the influence of that group of educators and other scientists who saw what the world of education needed and the valuable material at The Village of Happiness for supplying some of the essential parts of that need, led to the opening of the Summer School for Teachers.

The human element had not then, nor has it yet, been completely analyzed, classified and catalogued by science. The problems this human element had carried into the public schools were brought in large measure to the Village. Teachers from everywhere had questions to ask for which there seemed to be no adequate answer. The experiences of the Village, its methods and results, were invaluable to those teachers who attended its summer school, but their "Why is this?" and "Why is that?" too often brought the reluctant answer, "We do not know."

Before the close of the second summer school the purpose began to form in the mind of the Village Director to find the answer to those "Whys." He realized that the search would be long and difficult; that the obscure places in deficient intellects would be difficult to plumb, their actions and reactions, spiritual, mental and physical; difficult to weigh, measure and analyze; the causes contributing to their deficiencies to be discovered only by painstaking and exhaustive research -- yet these things had to be done. Professor Barnes had already not only said, "Vineland is a human laboratory" but, enumerating all but one of the essentials for a Research Laboratory, "Vineland has all of these things."

The one missing item was the scientifically equipped brain with a human touch to direct it. Like so many things in the history of The Village of Happiness it was at hand when the need had to be met. Six years earlier, as he himself expressed it, Doctor H. H. Goddard had "selected his chief" although neither of them then knew it. For seven years Doctor Goddard had occupied the Chair of Psychology and Pedagogy at the West Chester Pennsylvania Normal School. He had due him his Sabbatical year. Professor Johnstone invited him to take it at The Training School.

On September 15, 1906 Doctor Goddard took possession of a small second-story room in one of the Village's workshops. It was meagerly furnished -- a desk, a couple of chairs, and some empty shelves for a future library and whatever laboratory equipment might be evolved. The scientifically equipped brain with a human understanding was in charge of the Research Laboratory of The Village of Happiness. Its research material was scattered over the whole Village in school, shops, cottages, on the lawns and farm, at work or play. The germ of the future Laboratory was in his brain. He gave a glance at his workshop with its empty shelves, put on his hat, closed its door behind him and went out to survey that scattered material, to have that germ fertilized by personal contact with it, to mingle and get acquainted with the children in their natural and everyday life in The Village of Happiness. To those who saw him then and through later years in his relationship to the children, no further explanation of the scientific brain with a human touch will be needed.

The studies made, and the methods devised, the developments of the scientific work of the Research Laboratory during the following twelve years under the direction of Doctor Goddard are covered in his more than one hundred published research articles and books. These gave a new literature to the science of psychology in the field of mental deficiency, its causes and consequences; the identification, training, care and education of mental defectives; social responsibility for their welfare; and the prevalence of this class in unsocial and anti-social groups. They contributed to a better understanding and appreciation of the needs, capacities and possibilities of the mentally insufficient, both adults and children; and, of even greater value, they gave the methods and tools by which these capacities and possibilities could be measured, developed and utilized.